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Updated: June 12, 2025
The flooded-gum occupied the hollows and slopes of the river banks, which were covered with a high stiff grass to the water's edge, and the stream was fringed with a thicket of drooping tea trees, which were comparatively small, and much bent by the force of floods, the probable frequency of which may account for the reduced size of the tree.
This stream formed the outlet of some fine lagoons, which extended along the steep slopes of the basaltic table land. I crossed the creek and its flat to the opposite hills. The flat was one level sheet or floor of basalt, here and there covered with a very shallow soil, but sometimes bare, though clothed with a fair supply of grass and with scattered flooded-gum trees.
In the morning, loose clouds spread over the whole sky: this was the first cloudy day we had experienced for the last three weeks. Nature looks quite refreshed; the grass is so green, and the modest blue Ruellia so plentiful; whole fields of Crinum are in full blossom; and the Ironbark and flooded-gum with a denser and richer foliage than usual, afford us a most agreeable shade.
From the hill on which the hut stands, it runs away westward, almost in a direct line, for three miles, so that the position commands a view of both the reaches, which are overhung by the casuarina and flooded-gum. Rich alluvial flats lie to the right of the stream, backed by moderate hills, that were lightly studded with trees, and clothed with verdure to their summits.
The valley into which I entered was very different from these barriers; gentle slopes, covered with open forest of silver-leaved Ironbark, and most beautifully grassed, facilitated my gradual descent to the bottom of the valley, which was broad, flat, thinly timbered with flooded-gum and apple-trees, densely covered with grass, and, in the bed of the creek which passed through it, well provided with reedy water-holes.
The creek had flooded-gum growing upon its banks, and, on places apparently subject to flood, a number of tall straight saplings were observed by us. We returned to the camp, after a vain search for water, and were really at a loss what direction next to pursue.
The neighbourhood of the creek was well clothed with vegetation, and the cattle found good feed; but the only trees near it were rough-gum and casuarinae; the flooded-gum had again disappeared. The soil of the forest land over which we journeyed was a light sandy loam; and its timber consisted chiefly of eucalypti, acacia pendula, and the angophora.
The flooded-gum trees on the banks of the latter, were of beautiful growth, but in the brushes dividing the plains, box and other eucalypti, with cypresses and many minor shrubs, prevailed. We slept on the river side, and calculated our distance from the camp at about twenty-six or twenty-eight miles.
As we approached the wood, two columns of smoke rose from it, considerably apart, evidently the fires of natives near water. We made for the central space between them, having a dead acacia scrub upon our right. On entering the wood, we found that it contained for the most part, flooded-gum, under which bulrushes and reeds were mixed together.
They seemed to be covered with cypresses and beef-wood, but dwarf-box and the acacia pendula prevailed along the plains; while flooded-gum alone occupied the lands in the immediate neighbourhood of the stream, which was evidently fast diminishing, both in volume and rapidity; its bed, however, still continuing to be a mixture of sand and clay.
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