To the Blanche Springs and the Coward (a trifle over 500 miles) should be an interesting holiday cycle-journey for Adelaideans. They could time themselves to rail it back.
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Procured a fly-veil here. Should have had one before this; my eyes are already sore from the persistent attentions of swarming, irritating flies. Dinner; and then still northwards.
The Coward track, speaking generally, proved bad. Sand, loose stones; very rough, and ill defined. Terribly trying on the bicycle; but Diamond is staunch. We are fast friends already; and in the oppressive silence I find myself familiarly addressing the steel-ribbed skeleton with words of comfort and encouragement.
By the time I arrived at some cottages (The Beresford or Strangways Springs) it wanted only a couple of hours or so to sundown. Beyond loomed up sandhills, continuing, according to local accounts, in "an unbroken chain for fully five miles." As William Creek was my proposed destination for the day—or, rather, night—I went on, after having enjoyed the proverbial hospitality of another "travelling gang" of navvies.
When the railway cuttings were being put through these rolling hills, it was prophesied that in a very short time the loose sand would blow in again, and that its removal would be a constant source of expense. But by fencing off three chains or so on either side, cattle and horses were prevented from cutting up the surface; herbage grew, and the sand now shifts but little.
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Here snakes breed unmolested. I saw several as I dragged myself and Diamond along. On coming to a particularly steep hill, I resolved to keep on the railway metal, rather than go up. To my pleased surprise the ballast was of the gravelly sort for a few hundred yards, and I was able to mount and ride through the cutting between the rails.
Outside the cutting began a steep embankment, with a culvert so close to me that I was just about to dismount and lead the machine across, when a dark streak, stretching at right angles to the front wheel, filled my eye.
It seemed to me in the shadow (the sun was low down in the horizon, and out of sight behind the sandhills) that a rabbit had from the centre kicked the loose pebbly material over the rails on either side; and not till I was within a foot of the thing did I make it out to be what it really was—a long snake.