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Updated: June 27, 2025
The leguminous Ironbark, the white-barked tree of the Abel Tasman, the fig tree, and Sterculia in fruit, grew in the forest; and the white water-gum in the hollows, the drooping tea-tree at the level of the freshes, and a species of salt-water Casuarina below it. I called this river the "Macarthur," in acknowledgment of the liberal support my expedition received from Messrs.
We passed a small scrubby creek, and a long tract of stringy-bark forest, mixed with bloodwood and Pandanus, and patches of Cypress pine. Here we again observed the gum-tree with orange blossoms and large ribbed seed-vessels, which we found at the upper Lynd, and had called Melaleuca gum. Sterculia was frequent, and we collected a great quantity of its ripe seeds.
After giving our horses a short rest, during which we refreshed ourselves with a pot of Sterculia coffee, we returned towards our camp; but, wishing to find a more open road, kept more to the eastward, and came sooner than I expected to Sterculia Creek: which name I had given to the creek on which we were encamped, in reference to the groves of Sterculias of both species, rose-coloured as well as heterophylla, which grow on its banks.
We returned to our companions, and by taking a W.N.W. course, we avoided all the ranges and gullies that we had crossed yesterday. At the westerly creek I found a rose-coloured Sterculia, with large campanulate blossoms and tomentose seed-vessels: the tree had lost all its foliage.
On the banks, thickets alternated with scrubs and open country, and, lower down, the country became very fine and open. Early in the morning of the 30th, we started again, and arrived at the camp after a long ride, both hungry and tired. Oct. 1. The camp was moved forward to the river we had found on the 29th, about thirteen miles north by west from our camp at Sterculia Creek.
We now began to descend the northern slope down to the Rovuma, and a glimpse could occasionally be had of the country; it seemed covered with great masses of dark green forest, but the undulations occasionally looked like hills, and here and there a Sterculia had put on yellow foliage in anticipation of the coming winter.
This vale was one of the most picturesque spots we had yet seen. An Ironbark tree, with greyish fissured bark and pale-green foliage, grows here, and Sterculia heterophylla is pretty frequent amongst the box and flooded-gum, on the rising ground between the two creeks.
After riding 17 miles, the first eight through thick scrub, we came into a more open and elevated country where we saw pigeons, as sign that water was not distant on some side of us. The hills were covered with a quartzose soil, containing angular fragments. The Callitris pyramidalis and the Sterculia heterophylla were among the trees.
I soon, therefore, descended; but just as I reached the lower branches, I saw below me an object which made me thankful that I was safe up the tree. I have since ascertained that the tree is called the Sterculia foetida.
A sterculia, the stem of which had served as one of the props of our mess tent, and to which we had nailed a sheet of copper, with an inscription, was considerably grown, and the gum had oozed out in such profusion where the nails had pierced the bark that it had forced one corner of the copper off.
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