I put the water-bag to my lips, and, I think, almost drained it.
All was plain sailing back to the waterhole now, and there the existence of the several creeks was explained away—the water was in a billabong, or a short creek-arm, which had been mistaken by me for a separate watercourse. But the last hour or so had taken more out of me than a day's hard work could do.
* * * *
Three parts of a mile up the pad, a dozen dingoes were scampering over a short patch of heavy sand through which I had walked when coming down. I stopped short to observe them. They were as confounded as those niggers were whom I had before watched examining the tracks of the machine. A man had passed over that patch; of that those dingoes certainly had no doubt. But whence had he come, and whither gone? They scented up and down on either side in vain. The trail of the bicycle they disregarded—that was no man's marks. And there they were excitedly scampering up and down when a revolver shot led them to slink into the scrub, each taking a way of his own.
* * * *
Nearly the whole of the 30 miles and the next mile (Kelly's) is bad red sand, unrideable in places, the pads being filled in with loose drift stuff; while tussocks of grass and porcupine, low scrub and fallen jagged timber, await one at the sides.
Riding over telegraph poles is a feat which the cyclist here is called on frequently to perform. In many places the track runs alongside the old line of wooden telegraph poles; in other places, again, the modern galvanised-iron rods stand just where stood those wooden poles of older days. In each case the old poles, in various stages of decomposition, lie often right across the track; and the rider cannot always see them until after he has felt the bump.
Against the continued use of the wooden poles there had been many grave objections. Four of the most pregnant sources of trouble were white ants, lightning, bush fires, and the rapidity with which that part of the wood below ground rotted away.
* * * *