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Updated: June 12, 2025
Ernest Henry, and camped the sheep where the town of Hughenden now stands. We then had a long stage of fifteen miles to the bend of the river without water. The remainder of our trip down the river was uneventful. At Clifton, our destination, there was a fine water-hole two and a-half miles long, trees on the banks were crowded with cockatoos, corellas, with galahs in flocks on the plains.
On a ride with Mr. Gilbert up the river, we observed several large reedy holes in its bed, in which the Blackfellows had dug wells; they were still moist, and swarms of hornets were buzzing about them. About eight miles north-west from the junction of North Creek with the river, a large flight of cockatoos again invited us to some good water-holes extending along a scrubby rise.
Towards the end of the south-west monsoon, little native open boats arrive from the islands 1,500 to 3,000 miles to the southward of Singapore. Each has one little tripod mast. The whole family live on board. The sides of the boat cannot be seen for the multitudes of cockatoos, parrots, parrakeets, and birds of all sorts, fastened on little perches, with very short strings attached to them.
From kindred feelings I soon brought Egypt and all her gods under the same law. I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at by monkeys, by paroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed for centuries at the summit or in secret rooms: I was the idol; I was the priest; I was worshiped; I was sacrificed.
My father had always held to the idea that the problem of flight would be finally solved by a study of the birds; this gave me an idea, and I took to visiting Spatola in his lodgings in Christie Place. He'd have the cockatoos fly slowly round and round the big attic, and I'd watch them and make notes.
I turned, however, the opposite way, to rising Belfast and Port Fairy, and wandered about through the Alison and Knight, and Rutledge and other acres; amongst cockatoos, as the small farmers were there called, observing a soil of unsurpassable richness, the potatoes and other products, the former particularly, being the finest in the world.
Two blue and yellow cockatoos and several parrots swung screaming in brass hoops before the open window, and Coello's coal-black negro crept about, cleaning the floor of the spacious apartment, though it was already noon.
The native throws aside his cloak so that he may not even have this slight covering to impede his motions, draws his kiley from his belt, and with a noiseless, elastic step approaches the lagoon, creeping from tree to tree, from bush to bush, and disturbing the birds as little as possible; their sentinels however take the alarm, the cockatoos farthest from the water fly to the trees near its edge, and thus they keep concentrating their forces as the native advances; they are aware that danger is at hand but are ignorant of its nature.
No canoes appeared. There were no signs of human life. Save for the occasional splash of a fish or the screaming of cockatoos, there seemed no other life. Once, however, a huge butterfly, twelve inches from tip to tip, fluttered high over their mastheads and drifted across to the opposing jungle. "There's no use in sending a boat in to be cut up," Grief said.
Excepting the partial post-and-rail barricade of my friend William Robertson's 5,000 acres of purchased land, there was nothing all around but free and open squatting. On every side was the hardly yet disturbed indigenous aspect. Pelicans flew aloft, tall "adjutants" stalked about here and there, and cockatoos screeched everywhere.
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