So far as "tucker" was concerned, before my own good stock had quite run out I was so lucky as to come upon a traveller (whose business was his own), with his two black-boys, somewhere between the Burt and Tea-tree well. He re-loaded me with all the eatables I desired, and made me welcome to them with the magnificent generosity of the bush.
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Flat, almost level country extends to a Government well—Connor's—about 23 miles northward from the Burt watercourse. Covering this well, as also those others to be seen still further north, very fine-meshed nettings are hinged to one side, preventing wild dogs, iguanas, and birds from falling in. It is, as all the others are, walled round substantially with upright hardwood posts, sunk touching one another; and it is of course, equipped with windlass, buckets, and a line of troughs. The water is as good as anybody could desire.
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The feelings of surprise engendered by the sight of such good grazing country, the interest and curiosity excited by the ever-present countless ant-hills, the mild astonishment as I looked through the straight and level avenues lined sharply through the mulga (avenues extending so far that their turning points were lost in the haze of distance)—these were the deeper impressions.
But after the first day out from the ranges these feelings in part gave place to intermittently-recurring sensations of a kind entirely new to me. The high hills behind had, as it seemed, shut me off from the whole world of animation. Up to the MacDonnell, if one doesn't get bushed, one expects to meet with people every other day or so; but here, amid the myriads of ant hills and the thick, impenetrable scrub, it is as if one had strayed into a wonderland whose every inhabitant had died and had had erected to him or her a lasting monument.
And I was cycling through the silent burial-ground!
A ghostly suggestiveness, a little creeping of the flesh, an uneasy expectation of meeting with—one seldom questions at such moments what—urged me quickly on a little way, or, again, would prompt me suddenly to stop, dismount, lean over on the bicycle, and with craned neck peer into the gloomy scrub and rather hoarsely invite what might be therein to "come out." Then, recollecting it to be rather early for that sort of "business" yet awhile, I'd laugh shamefacedly, then philosophise a little, as, sitting beneath a shady bush or mulga tree, if not short of water, I'd smoke a quiet pipe. For I was in no hurry, and by no means did I dislike these new sensations.
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