The homestead buildings at Elsey Cattle Station (100 miles from Daly Waters) were, I thought, the most prettily situated group I had seen anywhere since—oh, years ago. The Elsey river winds its billabonged way in front and between the homestead. This is a garden in which anything that might be planted should be proud to grow.
A beautiful reach of fresh water is a permanency in the river at this point, with the sweetly scented flowers of many water lilies ever floating gracefully upon its surface—a surface ruffled, as I at calm evening time gazed with admiration on the fair picture, by sharp splash and undulating widening circle, as a fish jumped now close to one bank now over at the other; or, again, where one had risen high up to a fly, or for amusement, in the centre.
Little forests of pandannus palms overtopped by stately paperbarks or gum trees line the sides; and massive climber-laden trunks, or towering branches of giant tree growths, meet the eye wherever it be turned.
Here also, along the chain of ponds and billabongs up and down the Elsey, is some of the most delightful scenery one could desire to look upon. Here, too, cotton grows naturally, making a brave show—bunches of pure white dotting the landscape, and touching off the vivid green of tropic bush, or thickly grouping in some wide space by themselves.
The Paper-bark at once attracts the eye. A very large tree this. On the wettest day one has but to prize off a piece of the trunk's soft outer covering, and there is to his hand compressed—laminated, as mica—a hundred sheets of dry and easily-lighted coarse straw paper.
The mimosa tree and the cabbage tree, as well as many other palms, likewise flourish in the favoured neighbourhood of the Elsey. In fact, Elsey, as it appeared to me, was a vast botanical garden; and at supper time, such a feast of sweet potatoes and other dainties were spread that sleep but tardily drove out the thoughts of them.
A Chinaman cook had been speared here, in the manager's absence, about a fortnight before, and I thought the Chinaman who had replaced him, and who was now in charge (the manager being again absent) must be a fairly lucky man—for a Chinaman. And, above all, he cooked the sweet potatoes deliciously, and baked—oh! lovely cake.
* * * *
From the Elsey a stretch of 18 miles of sand (the timber is mostly gum trees) runs northwards; but this is to be avoided by taking the "new road," which bears in a more easterly direction. The track for part of the way to the Katherine was freshly marked, as a party of black trackers and a police trooper, having in charge two or three prisoners—natives, who had speared the Chinaman—had left the vicinity of the station only the day before my arrival there.