Hughes bucked the sternest game in the world and with it began a series
of adventures that read like a romance and give a stirring background to
the man's extraordinary public achievements.
Hughes found out at once that all hope of earning a livelihood by
teaching in the bush was out of the question. His money was gone: he had
to exist, so he took the first job that came his way. A band of
timber-cutters about to go for a month's sojourn in the woods needed a
cook, so Hughes became their potslinger. Frail as he was, he seemed to
thrive on hardship. In succession he became sheep shearer, railway
labourer, boundary rider, stock runner, scrub-cleaner, coastal sailor,
dishwasher in a bush hotel, itinerant umbrella-mender and sheep drover.
With a small band he once brought fifty thousand sheep down from
Queensland into New South Wales. For fifteen weeks he was on the tramp,
sleeping at night under the stars, trudging the dusty roads all day. At
the end of this trip occurred the incident that made him deaf. Over
night he passed from the sun-baked plains to a high mountain altitude.
Wet with perspiration, he slept out with his flocks and caught cold. The
result was an infirmity which is only one of many physical handicaps
that this amazing little man has had to overcome throughout his
tempestuous life.
Yet he has fought them all down. As he once humorously said: "If I had
had a constitution I should have been dead long ago.
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