"Lee-tle bit big pella."
It is fellow, fella, pfellow, pfeller, pfella, pella according to the pliancy of the talker's tongue.
Renner Springs is the name of a cattle station situated on the edge of a wide belt of table lands (and downs country as it is called), which stretches away eastward with hardly a break to Queensland. It is about 20 miles south of Powell's Creek. One white man only resided there. A chinaman cook is employed, and blacks do all the station work. Although not good for cycling over, most of the land between Tennants Creek and here seemed to me to be well suited for pastoral purposes.
Near the small homestead are several springs—circular ponds of clear drinkable water, occurring out on the flat; but along the line of an adjacent quartzite and—sandstone ridge, one overflows, is fenced in, and serves to irrigate a garden by means of the trenches in which the water is continually running. On leaving the garden what remains unabsorbed of the water (which on coming to the surface has a temperature of 95°), is soon lost again in the sand.
At Renner's there was the usual cordial invitation to eat, and the equally usual "Thanks—many thanks, yes." The blacks, the manager said, had during the past few days been gathering from all quarters for the purpose of holding a big corroboree, and the number in camp was being added to hourly.
The first part of the twenty miles or thereabouts to Powell's Creek consisted of sandy flats between the usual low hills; and for the rest the track kept on fairly hard ground between and over the hills of various small ranges.
Natives must have been about in great numbers, yet I saw none for some time after leaving Renner Springs. Stopping to make a note of something, and looking back, I was surprised to see a thin column of smoke ascending from a hillock which I had passed within the last quarter of a mile. Stopping again, further on, I observed the same thing had "again" occurred, and wondered if there was any truth in the smoke-signalling theory, and, if so, what did these present signals convey.
I missed a turn-off track at about 15 miles from Renner Springs, and, keeping close to the telegraph line, did some very rough hill-climbing. An hour or two's slow travelling, however, brought me first to Powell's Creek itself, and then, all safe but more clothes-torn, out through a gap in the ranges, immediately behind the telegraph station.
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The main buildings at Powell's Creek are of stone, with galvanized iron roofing; and, when taken together, form two sides of a square. The operating room, with two other rooms (officer's dwelling) are under the one roof; a wide verandah, bedecked with potted flowering-shrubs and faced with lattice-work, overgrown with evergreen climbing plants, runs along the front and at each end. At a right-angle, but separated from the more imposing structure by a distance of about one chain is a row of stone-walled cottages—stores and sleeping apartments, and other necessary offices; and a vegetable garden.