26TH DECEMBER.—Proceeded to Graddle, a cattle station belonging to Mr. Coss, 2½ miles. Thermometer, 109°.
27TH DECEMBER.—The bullock-drivers having allowed twenty-two of the bullocks to stray, it was impossible to proceed.
At early morning the sky was overcast, the weather calm, a slight wind from the west carried off these clouds, and at about eleven a very hot wind set in. The thermometer in my tent stood at 117°, and when exposed to the wind rose rapidly to 129°, when I feared the thermometer would break as it only reached to 132°.
28TH DECEMBER.—All the cattle having been recovered, we set off early, accompanied by a stockman from Graddle, Mr. Coss's station. The day was excessively warm, a hot wind blowing from the west. We finally encamped on the Bogan, at a very muddy water-hole, after travelling eleven miles. Thermometer in tent, 115°. At half past five, the sky became overcast, and the hot wind increased to a violent gust, and suddenly fell. I found that tartaric acid would precipitate the mud, leaving a jug of the water tolerably clear, but then the acid remained. Towards evening the sky was overcast, and a few drops of rain fell. The night was uncommonly hot. At ten the thermometer stood at 102°, and at day-break at 90°.
29TH DECEMBER.—The remaining water was so muddy that the cattle would no longer drink it. The sky was overcast, with the wind from south. Finding a cart road near our camp, I lost no time in conducting the lighter portion of our equipment to Mr. Kerr's station at Derribong. In the hollows I saw, for the first time on this journey, the Polygonum junceum, reminding me of the river Darling, and on the plains a Solanum in flower, of which I had only seen the apple formerly. At length, greener grass indicated that the late rains had fallen more heavily there, and at about twelve miles I reached the station situated on a rather clear and elevated part of the right bank of the Bogan. Here the stock of water had been augmented by a small dam, and a channel cut from a hollow part of the clay surface conducted any rain water into the principal pool, where the water was very good. We had now arrived at the lowest station on the Bogan. The line of demarcation between the squatter and the savage had been once much lower down, at Mudà, and even at Nyingan (see infra), but the incursions of the blacks had rendered these lower stations untenable, without more support than the Colonial government was able to afford. There, at least, the squatter is not only not the real discoverer of the country, but not even the occupier of what had been discovered. The map will illustrate how it happens that the colonists cannot keep their ground here from the marauding disposition of the savage tribes. [* See map of Eastern Australia—infra.] The Darling is peopled more permanently by these natives, than perhaps any other part of Australia: affording as it does a more certain supply of food. It is only in seasons of very high flood that this food, the fish, cannot be got at, and that they are obliged to resort to the higher country at such seasons, between the Darling, the Lachlan, and the Bogan. It also happens that the cattle of the squatter are most accessible from the soft state of the ground; the stockmen cannot even ride to protect them. The tribes from the Lachlan and Macquarie meet on these higher lands, and when tribes assemble they are generally ready for any mischief. The Bogan is particularly within their reach, and when wet seasons do occur the cattle of squatters must be very much at the mercy of the savages. The tribes from the Darling are extremely hostile, even to the more peaceably disposed hilltribes near the colony, and several stations have already been abandoned in consequence of the outrages of the aborigines from the Darling and Lachlan. Nothing is so likely to increase these evils as the precarious or temporary occupation of such a country. The supply of water must continue uncertain so long as there is no inducement from actual possession to form dams, and by means of art to secure the full benefit of the natural supply. Hence it is that half a million of acres, covered with the finest grass, have been abandoned, and even savages smile at the want of generalship by which they have been allowed to burn the white man's dairy station and stockyards on the banks of the Bogan. The establishment of a police station near the junction of the Bogan with the Darling, or the formation of an inland township about Fort Bourke, had been sufficient to have secured the stations along the Bogan and Macquarie, and to have protected the Bogan natives as well as our own countrymen from frequent robbery, murder, and insult. Such are the results where squatting has been permitted to supersede settling. With possession, deficiency of water in dry seasons had been remedied, and no such debateable land had remained on the borders of a British colony.
The part of the Bogan where least water can be found, has always been that between our present camp and Mudà, a very large lagoon about 50 miles lower down. I found by the barometer that there is a fall of 206 feet in that distance of 50 miles; whereas the fall in the bed of the Bogan is only 50 feet between Mudà and New Year's Range, in a distance of upwards of 100 miles. The general course of the Bogan changes at Mudà from N.W. to north, the former being nearly in the direction of the general declination of the country, the latter rather across it, of which the overflowings of the parallel river Macquarie into Duck Creek, and other channels to the westward, seemed to afford sufficient proofs. Where the declination is least, the water is most likely to remain in ponds in the channel of the river after floods, the water of which can neither flow with so much velocity, nor bear down any of the obstructions by which ponds are formed. Mr. Dixon found the velocity of the Bogan at this part, during a flood in 1833, to be four miles in an hour; which is about double the average rate of the larger rivers of Australia.
I had an order from Mr. Kerr, the proprietor of this station of Derribong, to his superintendant, for such fat cattle as I might require to take with me as live stock. Finding that the sheep answered very well, having lost none, and that they rather improved in travelling, whereas the working oxen had been much jaded and impoverished by the long journey, heavy loads, and warm weather; I determined to take as many young bullocks as might suffice to relieve and assist the others, and break them in as we proceeded.
30TH DECEMBER.—The wind changed to S.E., and brought a cool morning. Thermometer, 68°. This day we selected from the herds of Mr. Kerr 32 young bullocks, and they were immediately yoked up in the stockyard.
Received letters from Sydney, by Corporal Graham.
31ST DECEMBER, 1845.—Thermometer at 5 a.m., 62°: at noon, 109°. Wind S.E. At noon a whirlwind passed over the camp, fortunately avoiding the tents in its course; but it carried a heavy tarpaulin into the air, also some of the men's hats, and broke a half-hour sand-glass, much wanted for the men on watch at night. The sky overcast from the west in the evening.