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Just inside this enclosure, forming, in fact, the south-western barrier of it, stood the "billabong," then a spreading sheet of water; along its banks flourished the vegetable garden; outside the enclosure, towards the south-east, lay a grassy plain a mile across, and to the north-west were the stock-yards and house paddock a paddock of five square miles, and the only fenced area on the run; while everywhere to the northwards, and all through the paddock, were dotted "white-ant" hills, all shapes and sizes, forming brick-red turrets among the green scrub and timber.
Darwin with its one train, its telegraph offices, two or three stores, banks and public buildings, its Residency, its Chinatown, its lovers' walk, its two or three empty, wide, grass-grown streets bordered with deep-verandahed, iron-built bungalow-houses, with their gardens planted in painted tins a development of the white-ant pest and lastly, its great sea, where ships wander without tracks or made ways!
As the leaders toss them on one side, the rank and file seize them and carry them off. One morning I saw a party going forth on what has been supposed to be a slave-hunting expedition. They came to a stick, which, being inclosed in a white-ant gallery, I knew contained numbers of this insect; but I was surprised to see the black soldiers passing without touching it.
Out-bush we take the good with the bad as we find it; so we sat among towering white-ant hills, drinking as little of the tea as possible and enjoying the damper and "push" with hungry relish.
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