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We were obliged to shoot hawks and crows, and boil them into a mess, which served, at least, to keep these poor animals alive. January 29. The cart was sent back about twelve miles for some of the callitris trees required for planking, none having been seen nearer to our camp.
We saw little of the callitris tribe, after we had crossed the first hill beyond our last camp on the Namoi. On the contrary, these casuarinae scrubs and grassy plains seemed to characterise the country to the westward and northward of the Nundewar range, as far, at least, as we had yet penetrated.
Low sandstone hills, broken and split into most extraordinary shapes, forming huge caves and caverns, that once no doubt had been some of the cavernous depths of the ocean, were to be seen in every direction; little runnels, with a few gum-trees upon them, constituted the creeks. Callitris or cypress pines, ornamented the landscape, and a few blood-wood or red gum-trees also enlivened the scene.
We ascended by a gorge having eucalyptus and callitris pines halfway up. We found water running from one little basin to another, and high up, near the summit, was a bare rock over which water was gushing. To us, as we climbed towards it, it appeared like a monstrous diamond hung in mid-air, flashing back the rays of the morning sun.
The height and girt of some of the callitris trees were very considerable. The Acacia pendula adorned the immediate banks of the Bogan, but the grass was old and dry, being a crop of two years' growth; the cattle consequently did not feed well on it, and at last grew so weak that they could not be worked more than four hours, and thus our progress was limited to about eight miles a day.
Leaving the river, we turned north-west, and had occasionally fair travelling over stiff soil, intersected by many creeks, most of them dry, but were everywhere able to find water at intervals of a few miles. We passed over some ironstone ridges, and rocky hills, covered with Callitris, Cochlospermum, and Sterculias.
We next penetrated through two scrubs of dwarf eucalypti; and some trees of the callitris were also seen. At six miles the woods assumed a grander character; masses of casuarinae enclosed open spaces covered with rich grass; and, being in some directions extensive, afforded park-like vistas, which had a pleasing effect from the rich combination of verdure and shade in a season of excessive heat.
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.
During this day's journey we also met with the Callitris pyramidalis, a tree which in external appearance closely resembles some kinds of pine-tree. The wood is of a rich yellow hue, very compact, and possesses a very agreeable perfume; it grows on the drier parts of the country. We encamped on the river at the foot of a small hill named Perimbungay.
On the northern side of that ridge I observed at some distance an isolated clump of trees resembling pines or cypresses, growing very thick, and the foliage was of a brighter green than that of the callitris trees which they most resemble; unlike them however they had no dead lower branches but were thick and green to the ground.
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