Waterfall Gully, South Australia.
No part of Australia is more strongly marked with Australian peculiarities than this. The Murray is the only river, and this stream brings down the waters of the ranges of the south-eastern colonies; the other streams are merely courses in which, under favourable conditions, water may be looked for, and not otherwise. The ranges are few in number, and are of no great elevation. But the grass plains and the scrub plains are immense. Gazing round from an eminence, the impression produced by the equal height of the vegetation, and the dull glaucous colour of the foliage, is that you are looking upon the open rolling illimitable ocean. South Australia contains whole principalities of the ordinary park-like bush of Australia; the eucalypts standing in grass without any undergrowth, either singly or in clumps, as though planted by a landscape gardener. If an expert were whisked during his sleep—like another Bedreddin Hassan—and dropped from Europe, Asia, Africa or America anywhere in these regions, he would exclaim the moment he opened his eyes—''Tis Australia.' A glance at the map would lead to the conclusion that the colony is well supplied with lakes. On paper, Lake Torrens, Lake Eyre, Lake Gardiner, Lake Amadeus, cover large areas, but unfortunately an antipodean meaning must be attached to the term; for the most part these lakes are either muddy reed-covered swamps, or salt marshes unfitted for navigation in winter, and evaporating into vast glittering clay pans in summer. The level of several of these extensive depressions is believed to be below that of the sea, and the cutting of a canal to unite them to Spencer's Gulf, the deepest indentation on the southern coast, has been suggested, and will probably some day be carried into effect, and then there may be changes worked in the climate.
A Murray River Boat.
At present, however, South Australia is decidedly hot during its summer months of December, January and February. The thermometer runs up to 110 and 112 and 116 degrees. 'But then,' says the typical South Australian, taking you by the buttonhole, 'it is a dry heat, and really you do not feel it; there is no enervating aqueous vapour about;' and there certainly is not. No complaints of wet and sloppy weather are ever to be heard. On the contrary, when the south-easter brings a heavy bursting bank of cloud with it, there is a general rubbing of hands and utterance of congratulatory remarks. 'Splendid rain to-day,' is the usual phrase; and 'How far north does it extend?' is the current query. But, admitting that the South Australian summer is hot, it must be added that the climate during the other eight months is delightful. One enthusiast declares that the pure soft balmy air is such as one would expect to blow over 'the plains of heaven;' and at any rate there is first-class medical testimony that for people with weak lungs there are few more hopeful resorts. The 'far north' is subject to droughts and to floods, and the Northern Territory has a weather system of its own. As the description of its climate suggests, South Australia is a grand fruit country. Grapes, peaches, apricots and oranges, grow practically without cultivation, and attain perfection in the open air. In the season there are few tables in Adelaide on which piles of grapes and plates of apricots and peaches are not to be regularly found. The fruit can be purchased in the market at a penny a pound, so that at current wages there is no occasion for the poorest of the working classes to stint in these luscious products of the soil.
