Out in its centre lies a village, Cohan, grown about a mountain of copper, and along the Darling are other villages, Bourke, Bremoroma, Welcanna, Wentworth, lingering on when no rain falls, and blossoming with a dripping month as rapidly almost as the herbage of the black flats. I never saw anything beautiful in them except the self-devotion of some few good women who shine as stars amongst the general blackness. But when the rain has fallen, particularly in the pleasant winter after a genial autumn, it cannot be said that the land lacks beauty. I remember winter days a hundred miles north and south from the Darling river at Bourke, when the face of nature seemed to shine in open placid beauty and to break into the tenderest imaginable smile with each dying day; mornings in June, when, awakened by the glowing log to see the flush of dawn through an oak hut or over a pine-ridge that seemed to rise mysteriously with the sun, and, as though actually molten down by the increasing heat, to vanish utterly in the full glow of day. There was no painful mockery in the mirage that hung at noon on the horizon, with its flat-crowned trees rooted apparently in the still blue water—for by any clump of broad-leaved colane or drooping myall there was water in abundance, water clear and cool in every hollow; and grass, herbage and flowers knee-deep over all the land, when the spotted leaf and trees were all abloom and the quandongs were heavily fruited, and the nardoo with its life-saving seed ripened and decayed unheeded. Often at eventide in that winter did the whole landscape seem pure and perfect as a single crystal, the sky just after sunset of the palest primrose or the colour of the neck of a wheat-stalk when the ear is just ripe; the flood water through the lignum bushes glassy still; not a leaf of any tree stirring nor a grass-blade or herb-bloom moving upon all the plain. From the multitudinous flowers of the sand-ridge comes a rare sweet fragrance mingling with the balsamic odour of the pines. There would be noise and tumult a little later, as the crested galahs came cackling homeward to rest, and then the long and solemn hush of night, with sound enough and yet no lack of peace. The whistle of the wild duck's wing and sharp blow of her descent on the water, the dull thunder of the wings of great birds—pelicans, native companions, swan, ibis, and crane—rising in hurried flight, scared by some movement of 'possum or night-feeding kangaroo. Always the tinkle of the horse-bell and the prattle of the flame-tongues within the little circle of heat and light. Beauty enough in the inner lands in such a year, a marvellous contrast to the ghostliness, the abomination of desolation, of the year when no rain falls and all life dies.
The northern table-land is intersected by the Great Northern Railway, and is bounded by the Pacific Ocean, the Macpherson range, the Dumaresque and Darling rivers, and the Great Western line. The third division of the colony contains upwards of 100,000 square miles of country, of mountain and plain and wild forest and fertile down, and infinite variety of scenery. Near to the coast, and south and west from the line leaving Newcastle for the north, such country as we have seen about Orange and Albany, but with the green in foliage and verdure which comes from a somewhat warmer and more genial climate. Farther inland there are more of the great pastures, and in the extreme north a prosperous agriculture and a beginning of tropical industry, which afford a pleasant contrast to all that we have seen before. We shall not linger long here to look upon any New England villages or prosperous towns. We shall not concern ourselves with the marvellous richness of the Breeza plains—where in the wet summers grass grows so tall that horses and bullocks are lost; and stockmen tell of patches where they have had the long seed-stalks above their heads, and they on horseback—but visit the north-eastern corner of the colony, where the three sugar rivers come down from the mountains.
All their surroundings are tropical and rich, and never so rich perhaps as in the heart of the country lying about the heads of the Richmond, and northward towards the Tweed River. There we find the vegetation whose density and glory and magnificence must be seen to be realised. It is the country known as the Big Scrub, where everything is gigantic, compared with ordinary Australian vegetation. The river flows deep and navigable for small craft between low banks of rich deep soil, chocolate loam, decomposed trap rock, spouted in remote ages from the mountains whose high wild crests overlook the Queensland country, a hundred miles to the north. The dense scrub growth covered all a half-century ago, and the huge cedar-trees towering above the jungle overhung the river; but now along many a mile the scrub has been cleared away, and the cane-fields surround the settlers' houses. Wonderfully delicate and fair look the canes beside the dark scrub, bright green or pale yellow, as varied in tint as wheat-fields between the time of the bloom and the harvest. They give grand evidence of the power of the soil, and fully justify the wisdom of those bold speculators who built the great mills lower down.
Quickly changes the foliage as the ascent to the table-land is made; vines and flowers and orchids are left behind. Pine and cedar give place to gum, box, and ironbark, while in the gullies are ferns of a hardier growth, and trickling water that seems of near relationship to the mountain snows. Higher and higher, and colder and fresher becomes the air; and, turning now, the panoramic view below spreads broad and fair, the half-dozen branches of the Richmond seen flashing at times through the trees, the corn and cane patches but bright green dots in the dense forest, and braids of a lighter green beside the broader stream, a reflection of the ocean upon the farthest sky; and last, upon the heights the distant northern mountains are seen the giant warders of the Great Divide. Mount Lindsay is the grandest of all, lifting crags and ramparts more than 5,000 feet from the downs below, as rugged in appearance as any escarpment of the Blue Mountains, and of a vaster height and bulk. The rich pasture-lands about his feet are buried in haze, and occasional lagoons sparkle like flakes of silver or eyes of a well-contented earth-spirit looking up to the sky. Waiting there till evening, you may see Mount Lindsay afire with the floods of light which catch his summit when all the trees below are dark; and farther south, where the Clarence River springs, the tall gaunt peak of the Nightcap will only lose the light before the mightier mountain. Both stand out above all neighbours, though joining them is a mighty chain, with beauties innumerable, stretching right along the line which separates the tropic land of Queensland from the beautiful and prosperous colony of New South Wales.
CHAPTER VI.
South Australia.
Configuration—The Lake Country—Heat in Summer—Fruit—Glenelg—Adelaide—Mount Lofty Range—Parks and Buildings—Mosquito Plain Caves—Camels—The Overland Telegraph Line—Peake Station—The Northern Territory—Early Misfortunes—Present Prospects—Insect Life—Alligators—Buffaloes.
J. A. G. Little. R. G. Paterson. C. Todd. A. J. Mitchell. Overland Telegraph Party. | Government House and General Post Office, Adelaide. |
South Australia should rather be called Central Australia, for it lies half-way between the western and the eastern seaboard, and the colony runs right through the continent from north to south. It is an enormous tract, 2,000 miles in length and 700 in breadth. The total area is 903,000 square miles, of which at present barely a tenth is in occupation, though exploration has already made known the existence of millions of acres of magnificent pasture-land ready for settlement. In the colonies, when you speak of South Australia, you are understood to mean the district of which Adelaide is the centre. If you referred to the inland portion, you would speak of the 'far north;' and again, if you meant the Port Darwin—Gulf of Carpentaria country—you would use the term 'Northern Territory.' The original South Australia is first to be noticed.