six in the afternoon
There was a woman crying : in a hopeless little way on the platform , and a girl with sorrowful , loving eyes leaning out of a second-class window towards her ; there was a brown-faced squatter , in a tweed cap and slippers , to whom the three-hundred-mile journey was little more of an event than dining ; and there was the young man going selecting , and thinking England was little farther , seeing his wife and child were waving a year 's good-bye from the platform . There were sportsmen going two hundred miles after quail and wallaby ; and cars full of ladies returning to the wilds after their yearly or half-yearly tilt with society and fashion in Sydney ; and there were the eight we are interested in , clustering around the door and two windows , smiling and waving cheerful good-byes to the Captain . He did not look at all cast down as the train steamed fussily away -- indeed , he walked down the platform with almost a jaunty air as if the prospect of two months bachelordom was not without its redeeming points . It was half-past six in the afternoon when they started , and they would reach Curlewis , which was the nearest railway station to Yarrahappini , about five the next morning . The expense of sleeping-berths had been out of the question with so many of them ; but in the rack with the bags were several rolls of rugs and two or three air-pillows against the weary hours . The idea of so many hours in the train had been delightful to all the young ones ; none of them but Judy had been a greater distance than forty or fifty miles before , and it seemed perfectly fascinating to think of rushing on and on through the blackness as well as the daylight . But long before ten o'clock a change came o'er the spirit of their dreams .