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Updated: May 20, 2025
The camp was pitched at a puddle, without a blade of grass, although its appearance was beautifully green, caused by a small sort of tea-tree growing in great abundance, about 10 inches high, with seven or eight large leaves on it.
The trend of the creek was nearly from the east-north-east. At six miles the gum-timber disappeared from the creek, and the channel being confined by hills, we were in a kind of glen, with plenty of running water to splash through. A great quantity of tea-tree Melaleuca grew in the creek bed. There we saw another large snake, but not of such dimensions as Nicholls's victim.
We travelled about nine miles west by north, through an open tea-tree forest skirting the heads of those scrubby creeks which went down to the salt water, the dark mangrove line of which we had seen yesterday. But we crossed four good sized dry creeks, lined with drooping tea-trees and white-gum trees.
"Sir, I have the honour to report that on the afternoon of the 24th instant, two aboriginal natives, named Pwe-bin-gan-nai, Calangamite, returned to this encampment, which they had left with their families on the 22nd, and reported 'that late on the previous evening, while they with their wives, two other females, and two children, were asleep at a tea-tree scrub, called One-one-derang, a party of eight white people on horseback surrounded them, dismounted, and fired upon them with pistols; that three women and a child had been thus killed, and the other female so severely wounded as to be unable to stand or be removed by them; they had saved themselves and the child, named 'Uni bicqui-ang, by flight, who was brought to this place upon their shoulders.
These creeks were too boggy to be forded in any part where the tide reached, and we had to follow them up for several miles, until their beds divided into lagoons. Here the drooping tea-tree re-appeared, which I considered to indicate the presence of fresh water, at least for a part of the year.
The creek that we crossed at seven miles was running; it had salt tea-tree on its banks, and seems likely to have some permanent water either above or below. I did not examine it, because, the surrounding country being so sandy and scrubby, it will be of little use. Distance to-day, twenty-five miles. Sunday, 18th July, Dense Scrubby Plain. Rain Water.
I had often seen these hills before, but did not know that they were nests, and that they contained so valuable a prize to a traveller in the desert. The eggs were presented to me by the natives, and when cooked were of a very rich and delicate flavour. Our road to-day was through a heavy sandy country, covered for the most part densely with the eucalyptus and tea-tree.
At each running stream the packs had to be taken off and carried over. The country traversed was similar to that of yesterday, undulating blood-wood red soil ridges, sufficiently well-grassed, with the everlasting black soil, tea-tree flats, and gullies running between them, some being very wide.
My poor father was alluding at the time to one of the grievances which the American colonies had already begun to feel very severely. We hunted in vain, however, for any shrub whose leaves were at all to be compared with those of the tea-tree of China, though we made several decoctions which afforded us refreshing beverages.
The Melaleuca gum was very frequent in the stringy-bark forest: the Cypress-pine formed either small thickets or occurred scattered. Sterculia, which at the time was particularly valuable to us, was rare. Red ironstone cropped out every where, and formed large shallow basins, surrounded by tea-tree thickets; like those swamps I have mentioned on several occasions.
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