What beneficent phenomena are the early and the latter rain! As we look downwards we can see thousands of tiny clover leaflets, none of your Medicago sativa, with its yellow flower and deadly burr, but the true, sweet-scented English meadow plant, fragrant in spring, harmless, fattening, and sustaining to a wonderful degree, whenever it can command the moisture which is its fundamental necessity of growth. In days to come, every yard of this grand primeval woodland will be matted with it and the best English grasses, not forgetting that prime exotic the prairie grass (Bromus unioloides).
We are not aware whether there has been an extensive forest reserve proclaimed hereabouts, but in the interests of the State there should be. These grand, pillar-like timber trees, straight as gun-barrels, a hundred feet to the lowest branch, the growth of centuries, should not be abandoned to the bark-stripper, the ring-barker, the indiscriminate feller of good and bad timber alike. There is material here—gum, messmate, mountain ash, every variety of eucalyptus—to serve for the sawpits, the railway bridges, and sleepers of centuries to come, if properly guarded and supervised. And it behoves the elected guardians of the public rights to permit no private monopoly or forestalling; to see to the matter in time. For many an unremembered year have these glorious groves been slowly maturing. The carelessness of a comparatively short period may permit their destruction.
The eucalypts, as a family, have been subjected to undeserved contumely and scorn as trees which produce leaves but do not furnish shade, which are 'withered and wild in their attire' as regards umbrageous covering. All depends upon the locality, the altitude, the consequent rainfall. Here the frondage is thick yet delicate in the older trees, while among the younger growth the habit is almost as dense and drooping as that of the Acmena pendula, which many of them resemble in the mass of pink-grey leafage. I notice, too, the beautiful blackwood or hickory of the colonists (Acacia melanoxylon), though not in great abundance nor of unusual size. Nothing, for instance, like the specimens near Colac, Western Victoria, or between Port Fairy and Portland. And scrutinising closely the different genera, we discovered a tree which bore a curious resemblance to a hybrid between the eucalyptus and the said blackwood. The leaves were thick, blunt-edged, and singularly like the blackwood. The bark was like that of the mimosa on the stem and branches, but roughened towards the butt. The blossom—for it was just out—was unmistakably that of the eucalyptus tribe. We had never met with the specimen before and it puzzled us. It is locally known as the 'water gum.' The true mimosa and the wild cherry (Exocarpus cupressiformis) were common—this last of no great size; the wild hop occasionally. The English briar was not absent—as to which we foresee, for this rich soil, trouble in the future.
Lonely and hushed—in a sense awful—is this elevated region. The solitude becomes oppressive as one rides mile after mile along the silent highway, nor sees nor hears a sign of life save the note of the infrequent wood-thrush or the cry of the soaring eagle. But lo! the ruins of an ancient stock-yard! Easily recognised as belonging to the hoar antiquity of a purely pastoral régime. The selector-farmers do not put up such massive corner posts or cyclopean gateways. Not for them and their slight enclosures is the rush of a hundred wild six-year-old bullocks, with a due complement of 'ragers,' given every now and again to carry a whole side of the yard away. This was the station stock-yard, doubtless, what time 'Bago Jemmy' and other stock-riders of the period acquired a colony-wide reputation for desperate riding (and equally hard drinking) amid these break-neck gullies and hillsides. They are gone; the wild riders, the wild cattle. Even the rails of the stock-yard have been utilised for purposes wide of their original intention. 'Their memorial is perished with them,' all save the huge corner and gate-posts, which, embedded four feet in the ground, are regarded as difficult and expensive to remove, and of no particular use, ornament, or value when uprooted. So they remain, possibly to puzzle future antiquarians, like the round towers of the Green Isle.
IN THE THROES OF A DROUGHT
This is my last ramble for a while through the plains and forests of the North-West; would that it had been made under more pleasing circumstances. 'How shall I endure to behold the destruction of my kindred?' The quotation is apposite. All pastoralists are akin to me by reason of old memories; and if Rain comes not in this month of March, or even in April, their destruction, financially, seems imminent.
What a weary time it is in the 'plains dry country,' whither my wandering steps have strayed at present. Far as eye can see, there is no herb nor grass nor living plant amid the death-stricken waste; not even the hard-visaged shrub—the attenuated, closely-pruned twigs of the salsolaceous plant. Earlier in the season a large proportion of the stock were removed, and were agisted at a high cost. The remainder were left to live or die as the season may turn out. The station-holders have at length become reckless, and have ceased to take trouble about the matter.
How hard it seems! For years the energetic, sanguine pastoralist shall invest every pound he has made, and more besides, in stud animals of high value, in judicious improvements, from which he is reasonably certain in a few years to receive splendid interest for the capital invested. When his plans are matured, when the improvement of his stock is demonstrated, will not his fame redound to the furthest limits of Australia? Eventually he will be able to revisit or for the first time behold Europe. All imaginable triumphs will be his. Rich, fortunate, envied, he will be amply repaid for the toils, the sacrifices, the privations of his earlier years.
'Then comes a frost, a killing frost.' Well, not exactly that, though frosts of considerable severity do occur, hot as is the climate; but it 'sets in dry.' No rain comes after spring; none during summer; none in autumn; curious to remark, none even in winter—except, of course, insignificant or partial showers. That seems strange, does it not? Instead of from sixteen to twenty-six inches of rain in twelve months, there fall but six—even less perhaps. What is the consequence of all this? The creeks, the dams, the rivers dry up; the grass perishes; what little pasturage there may be, is eaten up by the famishing flocks.
During the summer it does not appear that the evil will be of such magnitude. The stock look pretty well. There is water; and the diet of dust, leaves, and sticks, with unlimited range, and no shepherds to bother, does not seem to disagree with them. Then the autumn comes, with shorter days; longer, colder nights. Still no rain! The sheep, the cattle, even the wild horses, begin now to feel the cruel pinch of famine. The weakest perish; the strong become weak; day by day numbers of the enfeebled victims are unable to rise after the weakening influences of the chilly night. The water-holes become muddy; defiled and poisoned with the carcases of animals which have had barely strength to drag themselves to the tempting water, over many a weary mile, have drunk their fill, and then lacked power to ascend the steep bank or extricate themselves from the clinging mud.