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Updated: May 9, 2025
In ascending the range, our poor bullocks suffered severely, and, when we reached the summit, they stood panting with their tongues hanging out of their mouths; I therefore halted a short time, to allow them to recover. The east slopes of all these ranges were steep, but to the north-west they were very gentle, and covered with stringy-bark forest.
Their 'impedimenta' were thus safely transported to the opposite bank, the whole process occupying about an hour. They were well re-paid for their long patience, for immediately on attaining the other side, the country changed into good sound well-grassed stringy-bark ridges, which continued throughout the whole stage, with the exception of a few broad tea-tree gullies.
But the refreshing breeze was little felt in the close stringy-bark forest, which, with the dust rising under our bullocks' feet, rendered the heat almost suffocating. Sept. 21. Our journey to-day was in a N. 50 degrees W. direction for about eleven miles, through stringy-bark forest, in which the Melaleuca and the Cypress pine were either scattered, or formed small patches of forest.
The cattle party at No. 13 Camp were left with instructions to follow slowly along the marked-tree line, to camp at the lagoon, and there await the return of the advance party. 'October' 31. An early start was made this morning at a quarter after 6, and 20 or 22 miles were accomplished on the same bearing as that of yesterday, N. by W., over the same heavy barren stringy-bark country.
We travelled about eleven or twelve miles to the northward, for the greater part through forest land, large tracts of which were occupied solely by Livistona. A species of Acacia and stringy-bark saplings formed a thick underwood.
Charley had been at the upper part of the creek on which we were encamped, and found it running and fresh; which made me believe, that those pools of very brackish water we had previously seen, belonged to a different watercourse. I rode with Brown to the westward, over a succession of ironstone ridges covered with stringy-bark scrub.
As regards the general appearance of the wooded portion of the province, I would remark, that excepting on the tops of the ranges where the stringy-bark grows; in the pine forests, and where there are belts of scrub on barren or sandy ground, its character is that of open forest without the slightest undergrowth save grass.
Timber-merchants, therefore, who confound all the Australian colonies together, as most other people in England do, are willing to believe that the Jarra of Western Australia is the same as the Stringy-bark of New South Wales, and therefore worth little or nothing for ship-building purposes. The experience of seventeen years has proved the contrary.
Continued on my course through granite and quartz country, splendidly grassed, and timbered with stringy-bark and gums, pines, palms, nut-trees, and a wattle bush, which in some places was rather thick, but not at all difficult to get through. At ten miles again struck the river; it is now apparently running to the north. Changed to that course, but it soon left me.
The Melaleuca-gum, the Cypress-pine, Fusanus and Banksia abounded in the stringy-bark forest, and along the creeks; and the flats round the water-holes were covered with a dark green sedge, which, however, our cattle did not relish so much as, from its inviting verdure, I had anticipated would have been the case.
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