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Only soon after a heavy rainfall could much riding be done in those sandy districts. Two-inch tyres should be used; inch and three-quarters are too narrow. Mine, as well as being one and three-quarter inches only, were "tandem"—altogether too heavy (or "dead") for cycling over sand. I deflated them slightly, so that a wider surface might be availed of.
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Picked up a bush culinary wrinkle here. An Afghan, whom I watched kneading up flour preparatory to shaping out a camp-oven damper, made a sodden centre, the curse of many a "bush cake," impossible by the simple expedient of pressing the middle part down until scarcely any centre remained—nothing more than a thin layer, which must necessarily result in a central crust.
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It is a twenty mile stage from the Depot Well to Alice Well, through much sand. The Hugh River crosses the track in half-a-dozen places.
In the afternoon, when within a few miles of this Well, I came unexpectedly upon a loaded waggon stuck in one of the last crossings of the Hugh. A very steep bank rose at the farther side, up which the horses had been unable to pull their load. The harness was lying on the ground, piled up; but there was no sign, except tracks, of the horses or their drivers. I coo-eed and mounted on top of the load to look around—and then, in the midst of this desert, from the interior of a coverless box, embedded between two flour bags, smiled up at me seductively a dozen or more beautiful, although quite rotten and shrivelled, apples! I lifted one out, and to ease my conscience, remembering having heard that there was a blacks' mission station to the east, stood, and, naturally assuming that the loading was missionaries' property, put down a shilling in the apple's place. But tasting one only was worse than not having any at all; so, coward-like, I sprang from the waggon, mounted Diamond, and hurried away before the temptation to appropriate a down-south shilling's-worth of the luscious (because so rotten) fruit became irresistible.
At the Alice is another "accommodation house," which, however, I did not need to visit; for the horse drivers, from whose waggon I had been tempted to take the shilling's-worth of apples, were here giving the horses a "spell." They fed me liberally; but I said nothing to them about the apple.
The Hugh is a very large, sandy-bedded creek. The banks are heavily timbered with massive gum trees. Good camel and horse feed grows in this part of the country—a species of acacia, and a succulent sage-bush-like herb.