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Updated: June 29, 2025
After passing several miles of tea-tree forest, intermixed with box, and alternating with belts of grassy forest land, with bloodwood and Nonda, we entered upon a series of plains increasing in size, and extending to the westward as far as the eye could reach, and separated from each other by narrow strips of forest; they were well-grassed, but the grasses were stiff.
Tom accomplished the feat in a strong breeze and with a turtle diving and tugging, when he might have cut the line at any moment and paddled home comfortably. He is as much at home on the top of a bloodwood tree, hanging round a swaying limb while cutting out a "bee nest," as in a frail bark canoe among the sharks on the skirts of a shoal of bonito.
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.
I consider this river to be the "Abel Tasman" of the Dutch navigators: and that it is probably joined by the Calvert. Its flats were well-grassed, and very openly timbered with bloodwood, stringy-bark, leguminous Ironbark, then in blossom, and a large tree with white smooth bark, spreading branches, and pinnate leaves.
The ground on which the party encamped was supposed at first to be dry, being on a bloodwood ridge, with six or eight inches of gravel on the surface, but the heavy rain of the previous night caused the water to run through the tents to a depth of three inches. It was only necessary to scratch a handful of gravel off the crust to get clear running water for drinking.
Its course is extremely winding, whilst the numberless creeks and gulleys which join it, all with scrubby banks, make travelling along its banks, a work of great labor and difficulty. The country on this day's march slightly improved, being more open and better grassed, the best being on the river banks, but coarse and sparse at best. The timber chiefly bloodwood and black tea-tree.
But the stolid tree a bloodwood, all bone, toughened by death, a few ruby crystals in sparse antra all that remained significant of past life afforded but meagre hospitality to the, soft lead. "Ah!" exclaimed one of my chums, "the old tree foreswears him! The Island refuses him!" But the homely back gate swings over the charred stump of the boorish tree burnt flush with the ground.
Having passed a rather open forest of bloodwood, apple-gum, and leguminous Ironbark, with isolated patches of scrub, and some dry teat-ree swamps with heaps of calcined mussel-shells, we came to a thick stringy-bark forest, on a sandy soil, with a hard sandstone cropping out frequently.
The horses backs too, were getting sore from the use of wet saddles, and themselves tired. The course was north, over stringy-bark and bloodwood ridges for 5 miles, to a large running creek named Micketeeboomulgeiai,* from the north-east, on which a crossing had to be cut; a mile-and-a-half further on, an ana-branch was crossed, and the party camped. 'January' 5. Still raining and wet to-day.
The same strip of soft sandy flat about half-a-mile wide continued, but better grassed, although the spear grass was far too common. Bloodwood, stringy-bark, applegum and acacia timbered the north bank; whilst on the south, tea-tree flats, covered with spinifex, ran close down to the bed, the bank itself being of red clay.
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