CHAPTER XII.
SPRING, SUMMER, AND HARVEST.
Spring Vegetation—The Bush in Spring—Garden Flowers—An Evening Walk—Australian Moonlight—The Hot North Wind—The Plague of Flies—Bush Fires—Summer at Christmas—Australian Fruits—Ascent of Mount Greenock—Australian Wine—Harvest—A Squatter's Farm—Harvest Home Celebration—Aurora Australis—Autumn Rains.
After a heavy rainfall, the ground becomes well soaked with water, and vegetation proceeds with great rapidity. Although there may be an occasional fall of rain at intervals, there is no recurrence of the flood. The days are bright and clear, the air dry, and the weather most enjoyable. It is difficult to determine when one season begins and another ends here; but I should say that spring begins in September. The evenings are then warm enough to enable us to dispense with fires, while at midday it is sometimes positively hot.
Generally speaking, spring time is the most delightful season in Australia. The beautiful young vegetation of the year is then in full progress; the orchards are covered with blossom; the fresh, bright green of the grass makes a glorious carpet in the bush, when the trees put off their faded foliage of the previous year, and assume their bright spring livery. In some places the bush is carpeted with flowers—violet flowers of the pea and vetch species. There is also a beautiful plant, with flowers of vivid scarlet, that runs along the ground; and in some places the sarsaparillas, with their violet flowers, hang in festoons from the gum-tree branches. And when the wattle-bushes (a variety of the acacia tribe) are covered over with their yellow bloom, loading the air with their peculiarly sweet perfume, and the wild flowers are out in their glory, a walk or a ride through the bush is one of the most enjoyable of pleasures.
I must also mention that all kinds of garden flowers, such as we have at home, come to perfection in our gardens here,—such as anemones, ranunculuses, ixias, and gladiolas. All the early spring flowers—violets, lilacs, primroses, hyacinths, and tulips—bloom most freely. Roses also flower splendidly in spring, and even through the summer, when not placed in too exposed situations. At Maryborough our doctor had a grand selection of the best roses—Lord Raglan, John Hopper, Marshal Neil, La Reine Hortense, and such like—which, by careful training and good watering, grew green, thick, and strongly, and gave out a good bloom nearly all the summer through.
By the beginning of November, full summer seems already upon us, it is so hot at midday. Only towards the evening, when the sun goes down—as it does almost suddenly, with very little twilight—it feels a little chilly and even cold. By the middle of the month, however, it has grown very warm indeed, and we begin to have a touch of the hot wind from the north. I shall not soon forget my first experience of walking in the face of that wind. It was like encountering a blast from the mouth of a furnace; it made my cheeks quite tingle, and it was so dry that I felt as if the skin would peel off.
On the 16th of November I found the thermometer was 98° in the shade. Try and remember if you ever had a day in England when it was so hot, and how intolerable it must have been! Here, however, the moisture is absent, and we are able to bear the heat without much inconvenience, though the fine, white dust sometimes blows in at the open door, covering ledger, cash-book, and everything. On the 12th of December I wrote home: "The weather is frightfully hot; the ledger almost scorches my hands as I turn over the leaves." Then again, on the 23rd, I wrote that "the heat has risen to 105°, and even 110°, in the shade; yet, in consequence of the dryness and purity of the atmosphere, I bear it easily, and even go out to walk."