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Updated: June 1, 2025
The only horizon to be seen was about fifteen miles away, and was simply the rim of an undulation in the dreary scrubs covered with the usual timber that is to say, a mixture of the Eucalyptus dumosa or mallee, casuarinas or black oaks, a few Grevilleas, hakea bushes, with leguminous trees and shrubs, such as mulga, and a kind of harsh-, silver wattle, looking bush.
By the fifth night of our travels we had met no water or any places that could hold it, and apparently we had left all the salt basins behind. Up to this point we had been continually in dense scrubs, but here the country became a little more open; myal timber, acacia, generally took the places of the mallee and the casuarinas; the spinifex disappeared, and real grass grew in its place.
The camps stood a pace or two above high-water mark in the meagre shelter of sighing casuarinas, and were often changed, for there were six miles of gently curving, ripple-embroidered shore on which to rest. To this day most of the traffic is regulated by the tide.
As to the birds, they swarmed among the scanty branches of the eucalypti and casuarinas, which did not hinder the display of their wings. Black, white, or gray cockatoos, paroquets, with plumage of all colors, kingfishers of a sparkling green and crowned with red, blue lories, and various other birds appeared on all sides, as through a prism, fluttering about and producing a deafening clamor.
Some casuarinas in the Mysore mine camp have grown to about twenty feet in height, but these have now struck the rock, and most of them are dying. "We have occasional visitors, many of them being shareholders in the various mines, bringing with them introductions from England, and wishing to inspect all the works, stamps, etc., on the surface, and very often going underground.
Thick high reeds covered the approaches of the river, and the lower parts of the gullies; and noble Casuarinas rivalled the drooping tea-tree in beauty. A species of native tobacco, with smaller blossoms than that of the Hunter, and with its radical leaves spreading close over the ground, was growing on the open spaces round the water-holes.
"Unless I am much mistaken," pursued he, "there is a shed or building of some kind among the trees, on the other side of the lake, where he has alighted." By leaping from stone to stone, and wading occasionally for short distances, they picked their way to the other side, and presently disappeared among the casuarinas.
Notwithstanding the exposed and barren character of the locality, and the scantiness of the soil, which was not anywhere a foot in depth. It was covered with a thrifty vegetation, among which were several well-grown-palms, a group of young casuarinas, and some ferns and tournefortias. Nor was this embryo islet destitute of inhabitants.
On the eleventh day the plains died off, and we re-entered a new bed of scrubs again consisting of mallee, casuarinas, desert sandal-wood, and quandong-trees of the same family; the ground was overgrown with spinifex.
The forest here was composed for the most part of trees which had already been met with near the lake and on Prospect Heights. There were deodars, Douglas firs, casuarinas, gum trees, eucalypti, hibiscus, cedars, and other trees, generally of a moderate size, for their number prevented their growth.
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