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Leaving the Kegs I always called this place by that name we travelled another twenty miles by night, the country being still covered with small stones and thickly clothed with the tall triodia. There were thin patches of mulga and mallee scrub occasionally.
Made an early start, steering North-East, and at one mile found a rock water-hole containing fifteen gallons, which we gave the tired, thirsty horses, and, continuing, chiefly through dense mallee thickets, with a few grassy flats intervening, for twenty-two miles, found another rock water-hole holding about ten gallons, which we also gave the horses, and, after travelling one mile from it, camped on a large grassy flat, without water for the horses.
In a few miles we were in desert country undulations of sand and spinifex, with frequent clumps of dense mallee, a species of eucalyptus, with several straggling stems growing from one root, and little foliage except at the ends of the branches, an untidy and melancholy-looking tree.
The camp which Carmichael and Robinson had selected, while I rode over to the other creek, was a most wretched place, in the midst of dense mallee and amidst thick plots of triodia, which we had to cut away before we could sit down. The only direction in which we could see a yard ahead of us was up towards the sky; and as we were not going that way, it gave us no idea of our next line of route.
At eighteen miles halted to give the horses some food, as they were obliged to be tied up all last night, there not being any feed for them, and the scrub very dense. The horse Blower seems to be very unwell; he has lain down twice this morning, and an hour's rest will do him good. After leaving the mount we have a thick mallee and mulga scrub to go through with spinifex.
My next piece of luck was to lose that new Yankee wagon in the Eight-mile Mallee, on Birrawong. Then I could see plain enough that Providence had taken up Charley's case, and was prepared to block me of keeping two teams; so I determined to have one good one. Only vanity and vexation of spirit, as Shakespear says. I get up to a certain point, and then I'm knocked stiff.
A man on foot or a flock of sheep always keeps frightening 'em farther and farther from the old beat till they get back into a bit of back country or mallee scrub and stop there for good. Cattle and horses and men and women are awful like one another in their ways, and the more you watch 'em the more it strikes you.
In 1862, Goyder paid a visit to the much-abused region north of Fowler's Bay, but found nothing to reward him but mallee scrub and spinifex. In this year Delisser and Hardwicke went over the same country, but on a much more attractive route, as they came upon a large, limitless plain, covered with grass and saltbush.
It will be conquered for the use of man just as the American alkali desert is being conquered. Leaving the mallee, the train comes in time to Ballarat, which used to be the great centre of the gold-mining industry. Round here gold was discovered in great lumps lying on the ground or just below the roots of the grass.
We followed the track a mile, when it turned suddenly to the south-west, down a valley with a creek in it that lay in that direction. But as a more leading one ran also in a more westerly direction, I left the dray track almost at right angles, and proceeded along the more westerly line. The valley I now traversed became somewhat scrubby with mallee and triodia.
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