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Updated: June 29, 2025
We also crossed chains of water-holes surrounded by a coarse stargrass; these now changed into creeks with deep and irregular beds, lined with Melaleucas, and now again dwindled into shallow channels, scarcely to be recognised amidst the surrounding scrub.
We crossed a creek running eastward, overhung by Melaleucas and arborescent callistemons, with plenty of grass on both sides; the soil appeared to become more sandy than that over which we had hitherto passed. September 23.
No; the bin-gum of the bay was unique. Afar off its flowers assumed a bricky shade, which contrasted with the sage-green background of huge and overtopping melaleucas, while but a strip of creamy sand intervened between its low and spreading branches and the shallow sea, with its varying tints of pale green and blue. So lovely and conspicuous a feature is not to be reconstituted under a century.
We pursued our northern course, the ground becoming very rotten; by the sides of small creeks in sandy flats were belts of broad-leafed Melaleucas and Grevilleas. We met with scrubs of Leptospermum, Fabricia, and Dodonaea.
Calvert and the black, Charley, who had been sent back to one of our last camping places, had, on returning, kept a little more to the north-east, and had seen a river flowing to the northward, and a large creek; both of which, probably, join the Dawson lower down. At that part of the river where it commences to run, its bed was more confined, and was fringed by Melaleucas and drooping Acacias.
The flood-marks on the trees were fifteen feet high; it has a north-easterly course; its bed was composed in places of large blocks of granite and trap-rock, which was very difficult to walk upon, being very slippery. Fine melaleucas were growing on each side, which with their long pendulous shoots and narrow silvery leaves, afforded a fine shade from the heat of the sun.
At present, the river is narrower, and I have chosen my camp twice on its dry sandy bed, under the shade of Casuarinas and Melaleucas, the stream being there comparatively easy of access, and not ten yards off.
A little above the mangroves the river divides into several small creeks, in swampy ground, covered with small melaleucas so thickly, that although they are not at all bushy below, but have straight trunks of from three to five inches in diameter, and from ten to twenty feet high, a man can scarcely walk between them.
At noon we were at some distance from the creek, but then went towards it. The gum-trees were no longer visible, but melaleucas, from fifteen to twenty feet high, lined its banks like a copse of young birch. We now observed a long but somewhat narrow sheet of water, to which we rode; our suspicions as to its quality being roused by its colour, and the appearance of the melaleuca.
At night we made a fire to smoke the meat, and to destroy the maggots, which were very numerous in it; we packed the meat in empty flour bags. October 4. We proceeded northward over small sandy plains, covered with annual grass, which was now very much withered, and through belts of dwarf bushy Melaleucas and Banksias.
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