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Updated: June 2, 2025
This, as described by Wells, is a flat, shallow, and, in places, but ill-defined watercourse. In it are one or two good deep pools, of which one is probably permanent. Fringing the banks is a narrow strip of salt-bush and grass; beyond that mulga and coarse grass. This narrow belt of good country continues down to the lake, and as we saw it just after the rain looked fresh and green.
No timber as yet on this side of the range, except a few bushes in the creek. A good deal of rain has fallen here lately, and the vegetation is looking fresh. Monday, 12th July, Large Salt-Bush and Grass Plain. The mare seems a little better this morning, and I shall be able to make a short journey. There was a very heavy white frost during the night, and it was bitterly cold.
We were camped on the edge of a billabong. Barlas was kneading a damper, Drysdale was tenderly packing coals about the billy to make the water boil, and I was cooking the chops. The hobbled horses were picking the grass and the old-man salt-bush near, and Bimbi, the black boy, was gathering twigs and bark for the fire. That is the order of merit Barlas, Drysdale, myself, the horses and Bimbi.
Overhead, the sun blazing wastefully and thanklessly through a rarefied atmosphere; underfoot the hot, black clay, thirsting for spring rain, and bare except for inedible roley-poleys, coarse tussocks, and the woody stubble of close-eaten salt-bush; between sky and earth, a solitary wayfarer, wisely lapt in philosophic torpor.
In silence, as they drew nearer, they watched the low yellow hills lift their naked bulk up from the gray and green patches of salt-bush and greasewood that so thinly carpeted the plain. When even the desert vegetation could find no life in the ever shifting sands and the first of the great drifts loomed huge and forbidding against the sky, seeming to bar their way, Barbara spoke again.
And not a bit stagey or actressy, and rather what you call an uncut diamond a gem in her way, but not fine beur, not exactly. A touch of the karoo, or the prairie, or the salt-bush plains in her, but a good chap altogether; and I'm glad I was in it last night with her. I laughed a lot at breakfast why yes, I stayed to breakfast.
Gypsum, chalk, ironstone, quartz, and other stones, are the chief materials of which it and the other hills are composed. There are also a few of a hard red sandstone. The range is broken, and running nearly east and west. The country round is slightly undulating; numerous small creeks running to the eastward, with a deal of grass and salt-bush. No water in this creek. Camped without. Wind east.
The spring still gives out an abundance of water; we have also found another good spring on the south side of the creek, which is here very broad, nearly two hundred yards wide, with a good feeding country all round, and a small strip of salt-bush on the banks. Splendid gum-trees in the creek. Wind, east; sun, hot. Sunday, 29th July, The Hugh, between McDonnell and Waterhouse Ranges.
We were camped on the edge of a billabong. Barlas was kneading a damper, Drysdale was tenderly packing coals about the billy to make the water boil, and I was cooking the chops. The hobbled horses were picking the grass and the old-man salt-bush near, and Bimbi, the black boy, was gathering twigs and bark for the fire. That is the order of merit Barlas, Drysdale, myself, the horses and Bimbi.
By then we had passed the Red Lily lagoons, and ridden across the salt-bush plain, and through a deep belt of tall, newly sprung green grass, that hugged the river there just then, and having been greeted by smug, smiling old black fellows, were saluting Jack across two or three hundred feet of water, as we stood among our horses. "Slewed!" Jack called in answer, through hollowed hands.
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