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Updated: June 28, 2025
We were up and after the camels and horses long before daylight, tracking them by the light of burning torches of great bunches and boughs of the mallee trees these burn almost as well green as dry, from the quantity of aromatic eucalyptic oil contained in them and enormous plots of spinifex which we lighted as we passed.
A stately beefwood, sixty feet high, with swarthy column furrowed a hand-breadth deep, and heavy tufts of foliage like bundles of long leeks in colour and configuration the first beefwood I had seen since leaving the homestead stood close to the water, making a fine landmark; but Dan's sense of proportion had selected the adjacent bit of yarran; and as I told the breakfast-party he had never concerned himself to know the difference between yarran and mallee.
I do not know how far this lake runs east, and fancy its limits have never been laid down on the map; not that there is anything sufficiently inviting in its appearance the usual flat expanse of mud, with banks of sand fringed with low straggling mallee and spinifex to warrant further investigation.
He breaks the root into sections about a foot long, ties them into bundles, and stands them up on end in a receptacle, when they drain out a quantity of beautifully sweet, pure water. A very long root such as I have mentioned might give nearly a bucketful of water; but woe to the white man who fancies he can get water out of mallee.
Then the roots are dug up for firewood, and the land is sown with wheat. Quite good crops are now being got from the mallee when the rains are favourable, but in dry seasons the wheat scorches off, and the farmer's labour is wasted. It is proposed now to carry irrigation channels through this and similar country. When that is done there will be no more talk of desert in most parts of Australia.
For the first three miles the grassy plains are very good, and seem to run a considerable distance between belts of large mallee, in some places wider than in others, and seem to be connected by small gaips; I think water could be easily obtained by digging. The last three miles to the coast is very dense small mallee. Actual distance, twelve miles. I intend to give the horses a rest to-morrow.
"Speaking of Dan, as you call him," said I; "by the foot we recognise the Hercules; and if he knows as much about all other historical subjects as he does about Cawnpore and the American Presidents, he must have ripened into an extraordinary man. But then, an extraordinary man should have learned the difference between mallee and yarran in five years of solid scrub observation."
The scrub we now entered had been recently burnt near the edge of the plain; but the further we got into it, the worse it became. At seven miles we came to stones, triodia, and mallee, a low eucalyptus of the gumtree family, growing generally in thick clumps from one root: its being rooted close together makes it difficult travelling to force one's way through. It grows about twenty feet high.
Dip of the country to the east, sand hills to the west; afterwards it became alternate sand hills and grassy plains, mulga, mallee, and black oak. From the top of one of the sand hills, I can see a range which our line will cut; I shall make to the foot of that to-night, and I expect I shall find a creek with water there.
The country that we have come through yesterday and to-day resembles the scrub between Franklin Harbour and Port Lincoln mallee with grassy plains occasionally only the mallee is larger, and the plains are met with at shorter intervals, more numerous and of larger extent. The soil is good but light, being produced by decomposed limestone, of which the low range to the north-west is composed.
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