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To these houseless strangers I gladly offer hospitality, and acknowledge with thankfulness their cheerful presence. Grateful acknowledgments are due to Mr F. Manson Bailey, F.L.S., the official botanist of Queensland, for the scientific nomenclature of trees and plants referred to in a general way. E. J. BANFIELD. BRAMMO BAY, DUNK ISLAND, November, 1906.
E. long., 72 1/2 miles in a direct line from the port of Townsville, and about 200 miles from Dunk Island. She broke up, after a11 the cargo had been salvaged, early in January 1901, and on Tuesday, 5th February, at 10 a.m., the seas landed the first of the broken planks in Brammo Bay. Then for a few days the arrivals were continuous.
In the clear water of Brammo Bay, a greenish black object, a yard across by about a yard and a half long, moved slowly along, swaying this way and that, but maintaining a fairly accurate course consistent with the shore. As the boat drifted, it seemed as if an unsophisticated sting-ray had lapsed into the blissfulness of ease, careless alike of mankind and of its enemies in the water.
While my three-garment costume is it not convenient and fashionable enough? A smart cutter appeared in Brammo Bay. A man, apparently in a pale red shirt, let down the sails and anchor, and by-and-by one in a black coat buttoned to the throat paddled himself ashore in a dinghy. Like a great many worn on state occasions in country parts here, the coat had seen better days.
Past the rocky horn of Brammo Bay, another crescent indents the base of the hill. Exposed to the north-east breeze, the turmoil of innumerable gales has torn tons upon tons of coral from the out-lying reef, and cast up the debris, with tinkling chips and fragments of shells, on the sand for the sun and the tepid rains to bleach into dazzling whiteness.
Not once but several times has the libertine Neptune scandalously seduced punts and dinghies from the respectable precincts of Brammo Bay, and having philandered with them for a while, cynically abandoned them with a bump on the mainland beach, and only once has he sent a punt in return a poor, soiled, tar-besmirched, disorderly waif that was reported to the police and reluctantly claimed.
A camp-out on the shore of then unnamed Brammo Bay a holiday-making party and the result of the first day's exploration decided a revolutionary change in the lives of two seriously-minded persons. A year after, a lease of the best portion of the island having been obtained in the meanwhile, we came for good.
Possessed of this information, which proved in the long run to be trustworthy, several exploratory trips were undertaken. To reach the locality from Brammo Bay, one must cross the middle of the backbone of the island, and descend some little distance on the Pacific slope.
Brammo Bay is but three or four minutes' steam from the track of vessels which make weekly trips up and down the coast, and by arrangements with the proprietary of one of the lines we have the boon of a regular weekly mail and of cheap carriage of supplies. Without this connecting link, life on the island would have been very different.
Is there not excuse in this flattery for just a little vainglory? Brammo Bay has its garden of coral a border of pretty, quaint and varied growth springing up along the verge of deep water. It is not as it used to be no less lovely than a flower-garden of the land. Terrestrial storms work as much if not greater havoc in the shallow places of the sea as on the land.
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