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The following morning, the 17th, much to my distress, one of our young bull camels was found to be poisoned, and could not move. We made him sick with hot butter and gave him a strong clyster. Both operations produced the same substance, namely, a quantity of the chewed and digested Gyrostemon; indeed, the animal apparently had nothing else in his inside.
He was a trifle better by night, but the following morning, my best bull, Mustara, that had brought me through this region before, was poisoned, and couldn't move. I was now very sorry I had camped at this horrid place. We dosed Mustara with butter as an emetic, and he also threw up nothing but the chewed Gyrostemon; the clyster produced the same.
The native poplar is a favourite and harmless food for camels, and as it is of the same family as the Gyrostemon, my friend Baron von Mueller argues that I must be mistaken in the poison plant which affected the camels.
They seemed particularly partial to a low pale-green-foliaged tree with fringelike leaves, something like fennel or asparagus. I have often gathered specimens of this in former journeys, generally in the most desert places. The botanical name of this tree is Gyrostemon ramulosus. After hobbling out the camels, and sitting down to dinner, we became aware of the absence of Mr.
It was of course still covered with scrubs, which consisted here, as all over this region, mostly of the Eucalyptus dumosa, or mallee-trees, of a very stunted habit; occasionally some patches of black oaks as we call them, properly casuarinas, with clumps of mulga in the hollows, here and there a stunted cypress pine, callitris, some prickly hakea bushes, and an occasional so called native poplar, Codonocarpus cotinifolius, a brother or sister tree to the poisonous Gyrostemon.
So we quietly remained and tended our sick and dying ones so well, that by night one of the worst was got on his legs again. We made them sick with hot water, butter, and mustard, and gave them injections with the clyster pipe as well; the only substance we could get out of them was the chewed-up Gyrostemon ramulosus, which, it being nearly dark, we had not observed when we camped.
A very profitable trade for many years was carried on in this article; the supply is now very limited. There was a great deal of the poison-plant all over this country, not the Gyrostemon, but a sheep-poisoning plant of the Gastrolobium family; and I was always in a state of anxiety for fear the camels should eat any of it.
I was very much grieved; he was such a splendid hack, and so quiet and kind; I greatly deplored his loss. The only substance I could find that he had eaten was Gyrostemon, there being plenty of it here. Upon leaving Mr. Palmer's camp we next visited a station called the Bowes being on the Bowes Creek, and belonging to Mr. Thomas Burgess, whose father entertained us so well at Tipperary, near York.
The wretched country seems smothered with the poisonous plant. I dread the reappearance of every morning, for fear of fresh and fatal cases. This plant, the Gyrostemon, does not seem a certain deadly poison, but as I lost one camel by death from it, at Mr.
The only vegetation besides the ever-abounding spinifex was a few blood-wood-trees on the tops of some of the red heaps of sand, with an occasional desert oak, an odd patch or clump of mallee-trees, standing desolately alone, and perhaps having a stunted specimen or two of the quandong or native peach-tree, and the dreaded Gyrostemon growing among them.
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