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The officer in charge at Daly Waters showed me many kindnesses; and as his business took him up the track I rode on and camped with him at some iron tanks near a dried-up waterhole known as The Ironstone, about 33 miles beyond the station. Between those tanks and the Elsey cattle station—77 miles—there are on the road two wells (from one of which, by the way, a man walked out to look up some horses about a year ago and has never been heard of since); and as the cattle station is approached several billy-bongs in or near the Elsey creek are met with.
The country from the Daly to Elsey Station is nearly all low-lying and subjected to annual heavy floodings. The dangerous "Bay of Biscay" is come upon within a mile or two of the telegraph station, and extends northwards through Stewart's Swamp for about 30 miles. Thence the riding varies. There is a good deal of sand, with many long and short stretches of harder "crab-hole" ground, "gilguy," and "devil-devil."
This last name is applied to clay, pure and simple, or silty soil similar to "Biscay," but with this difference, that in contracting after rains, in the quick-drying rays of fierce tropical suns it cracks, while the "Biscay" becomes distressingly bumpy. These cracks are as so many ever-set traps lying in wait for wheeled vehicles. The jaws of many of them would easily admit a waggon wheel. They run in all directions across the track and with it. To go slow is the cyclist's sure way of getting through without accident.
"Gilguy" denotes small patches of mixed "Biscay" and "devil-devil" ground—possibly dried up clay pans. And "crab-holes" are roundish openings, like rabbit barrows, but going straight down in the soil. These "crab-holes" are the more dangerous ones for horsemen. Here and there one is warned to sheer off the pad by an uprising roughly-trimmed branch of tree or length of dry wood which some traveller has shoved in to mark a bad spot.
The vegetation along the track is distinctly tropical. So also is the climate. And so both continue all the way to Palmerston.
But I confess to disappointment with the arrangements in the forestry department. From Elsey upwards there were altogether too many trees of the Eucalyptus family.
From Daly Waters to the Katherine (190 miles) are many and fine specimens of Ironwood, Ebony, Bloodwood and Currajong; but the prevailing tree—the one, at least, which from the track the passer-by will see most of—is the familiar Gum.
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