ANT-HILLS.
There were only three cars in Darwin, and the snorting noise made by the one in which we returned awoke our horse to such terrified and mettlesome curvetting, that we could only remount the seat with considerable difficulty. We drove back through the gathering dusk with flying foxes soundlessly flitting across our path. By the time we reached the jetty darkness had come on. We had to make a hasty change, and after a hurried dinner, we started back again in the heavy, moist, scented darkness to find the hall in which the evening’s lecture was to be delivered. It was very funny to find that early closing was compulsory in Darwin. Chinatown must hate it. The little shops were half lighted, and in the dusk seated figures like small Buddhas were dimly discernible outside. A strong, Oriental smell hung over it all.
We shall always remember the scene of the lecture in the Town Hall. The moist heat, the little red ants that swarmed on the floor, above the voice of the lecturer, the frail rattle of the grasshoppers outside insistent and unceasing; and the white-clad rows of men, gravely, unwaveringly attentive.
After the lecture the kindly lady, who is the wife of the Administrator, proposed a delightful scheme of giving us an early breakfast at seven, and driving us out to the nearest native compound. How exquisite the freshness of morning would have been in that tropical country, and how full of interest and novelty the whole expedition. We were only too eager to go, but there were depressing rumours of our departure at dawn. We were now to visit our hostess of the afternoon, and, guided by our host, we stumbled across what they called a paddock, which seemed to be full of tussocks of some dead weed that smelt like horehound.
The stars were brilliant, the Southern Cross pointing our way as it hung just above the dark roof of the house. At the entrance to the garden was a banyan tree, and there were green ants’ nests among the leaves of the other trees, neatly sewn up like long, narrow bags, and green ants with red legs were running about everywhere, even on the window-sills. We sat on the verandah, and were given buffalo tongue sandwiches, which have an agreeable, esoteric flavour, quite incomparable to anything else. It was all very pretty and comfortable, despite the absence of servants. The Port Darwin housewife has to wage an active and unceasing warfare against insect pests. Food cannot be left on the table for a short time without ants swarming on it. Large cockroaches three or four inches long lurk behind furniture; the destructive silver fish conceal themselves in unopened drawers, and mosquitoes make life a continual irritation, unless ceaseless precautions are taken. Still, active vigilance will reduce all these pests to a minimum.
The pleasant evening slipped away too soon. It was time to return to the port. We strolled back through the mysterious night, moist and warm and scented by flowering frangipani in the gardens of the dimly seen bungalows. Our boat lying below in the harbour was a blazing patch of light; the glow of a distant bush fire lit up the opposite coast; and that was all—all that we saw of the Northern Territory, mysterious fascinating, and beautiful, with its vast and intricate problems of labour and climate waiting solution. For with early morning we slipped away from its red and green shores, just as the rising sun had crimsoned all the glassy sea. That is our last memory of Australia, and of all the places we visited it was Port Darwin that we were most loth to leave, for we somehow felt that Australia had kept her best till last.
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FOOTNOTES
[1] A genus named after a nurseryman who introduced these Australian plants into London.