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The country traversed, consisted of scrubby flats, and low sandy ridges, timbered with bloodwood, messmate, mimosa, melaleuca, grevillea, and two or three species of the sterculia or curriijong, then in full blossom.
From the landing-place rather more up towards the north-east cusp than the exact middle of the crescent bay extends a flat of black sand on which grows a dense bush of wattles, cockatoo apple-trees, pandanus palms, Moreton Bay ash and other eucalypts, and the shapely melaleuca.
We travelled about ten miles south 55 degrees west over an almost uninterrupted box and Melaleuca flat, free from melon-holes and grassy swamps, but full of holes, into which our horses and bullocks sank at every step, which sadly incommoded our wounded companions. Its sandy and occasionally rocky bed, was dry; but parallel lines of Nymphaea lagoons extended on both sides.
Whilst these Melaleuca channels keep at a distance varying from one to three miles from the creek, winding between the slight elevations of a generally flat country long shallow hollows and a series of lagoons exist near the creek, from which they are separated by a berg, and are bounded on the other side by a slight rise of the ground.
The stringy-bark grew to a fine size on the hills, and would yield, together with Ironbark and the drooping tea-tree, the necessary timber for building. A new species of Melaleuca and also of Boronia were found, when entering upon the sandstone formation.
When the melaleuca blossoms, bees seem to work with quite feverish haste; but the honey gained is dark in colour and has a certain pungent, almost acid, flavour. Holding a frame of comb to the light, you see the clear gold of the bloodwood and the tawny tints of the melaleuca as erratically defined as geographical distinctions in a tinted map.
The mosquitoes at this camp have been most annoying; scarcely one of us has been able to close his eyes in sleep during the whole night: I never found them so bad anywhere night and day they are at us. The grass in, and on the banks of, this creek is six feet high; to the westward there are long reaches of water, and the creek very thickly timbered with melaleuca, gum, stringy-bark, and palms.
I proceeded along the edge of a mangrove swamp for a short distance, and entered a freshwater swamp about a mile from the beach, covered with very thick scrub, composed of large trees of the genus Melaleuca, running for the most part from forty to fifty feet high. They lay hold of the surrounding bushes and branches of trees, often covering the tops of the tallest, and turning in all directions.
The first part of the stage was more hilly, and intersected by a greater number of creeks, going down to west and north-west, than the latter part, which was a sandy, level forest of stringy-bark and Melaleuca gum. Livistona inermis, R. Br. grew from twenty to thirty feet high, with a very slender stem and small crown, and formed large groves in the stringy-bark forest.
When he comes to dart among the eddying insects, glorying in the first cool gleams of the sunshine, he will take his ease on a mango branch, make jerky bows and flick the fine feathers of his tail, and "cheep" in timorous accents. He is sober then, quite parsonified in demeanour; his speech "all in the set phrase of peace," and would be scandalised by the mere mention of melaleuca nectar.
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