Old Blastus of Bandicoot

It was in those days, so lately fled, when horseless carriages were a
curiosity beyond the seaboard. Some young bloods had made the journey
from Sydney to Melbourne in one as the most enterprising adventure at
command following the picturesque performances of the Boer War, and had
thereby rendered themselves as glamorous as minor flight pilots of later
years. Desirous of inspecting the country which produced their
high-priced staples, a few German or French wool-buyers had penetrated by
car to the Southern Tableland, but these were foreigners, and in local
consideration, their potentialities were outweighed by their
peculiarities.

It was another pair of sleeves when Sandy Lindsey and his son Ross came
back from Sydney with a car of their own. Motor cars became a personal
and local concern from Canberra to Brindabullah, Bombala to Yass, and
back again to Bandicoot, and the kernel of gossip. Nothing had so
titillated the neighbourhood since Mabel Barry "went wrong."

There was panic among the horses. Even the most ring-boned and sluggish,
as though of instinctive premonition, stood on their tails and with
terrified snorts and breathings, regardless of culverts or cuttings,
backed from the devilish monster which threatened their existence. Horse
breeders were derisive. Wait till the horseless wonder started up when no
one was in it and careered over a precipice or crashed into a shop window
in Monaro Street! Such evil-smelling, unnatural contrivances should be
stopped by law. What were innocent women, mothers of large families, to
do when a man had the right to make the roads unsafe for them? People who
drove cars were murderers.