Niagara, The Next
City, We Avoided, And Turned Up The Old Lake Darlot Road, Some Fifteen
Miles To The West Of It.
Between Menzies and Sandy Creek, close to where
we turned, the open, saltbush plain which fringes the salt lake, Lake
Prinsep, was looking quite charming, dotted all over with patches of
splendid green and yellow herbage, plants like our clover and dandelion,
and thousands of pink and white everlastings.
There can be no doubt that
with a better rainfall or with some means of irrigation, could artesian
water be found, a great part of the goldfields would be excellent pastoral
land. As it is, however, a few weeks suffice to again alter the face of
the country to useless aridity. We camped a day on Sandy Creek, to allow
our beasts to enjoy, while they could, the luscious green feed; I embraced
the opportunity of taking theodolite observations for practice. The pool,
some eighty yards long, and twenty wide, fringed with overhanging bushes
and weeping willow with its orange-red berries, made a pretty picture;
turkeys evidently came there to water, but we had not the luck to
shoot any.
The northern track from Sandy Creek deviated so much on account of
watering-places, thick scrub, and broken rocks, that we left it and cut
through the bush to some clay-pans south of Cutmore's Well; and
successfully negotiated on our way the lake that had given me so much
trouble when I and the fever were travelling together. All through the
scrub every open spot was covered with grass, that horrible spear-grass
(ARISTIDI), the seeds of which are so troublesome to sheep and horses.
I have seen sores in a horse's mouth into which one could put two
fingers, the flesh eaten away by these vicious little seeds. When turned
out on this kind of grass, horses' mouths should be cleaned every day.
Camels do not suffer, as they seldom eat grass unless long, young, and
specially succulent. We, however, were rather annoyed by the persistent
way in which the seeds worked through our clothes and blankets; and before
much walking, our trousers were fringed with a mass of yellow seeds, like
those of a carter who has wound wisps of straw round his ankles. Truly
rain is a marvellous transformer; not only vegetable but animal life is
affected by it; the bush is enlivened by the twittering of small birds,
which come from nobody knows where, build their nests, hatch out their
young, and disappear! Almost every bush held a nest, usually occupied by a
diamond-sparrow. Her nest is round, like a wren's, with one small entrance
and is built roughly of grass, lined with soft, small feathers. The eggs,
numbering four to five in the few nests we disturbed, are white and of the
size and shape of our hedge-sparrow's. I am pretty sure that the nesting
season depends entirely on the rain. After rain, the birds nest, however
irregular the seasons.
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