- This morning I sent the overseer back to the depot with the
cart and two horses, whilst I and the native boy proceeded on our route
on horseback, taking also a man leading a pack-horse to carry water for
us the first day. Following down the watercourse, we passed through some
imposing scenery, consisting of cliffs from six to eight hundred feet in
height, rising perpendicularly from their bases, below which were
recesses, into which the sun never shone, and whose gloomy grandeur
imparted a melancholy cast to the thoughts and feelings, in unison with
the sublimity of the scene around.
After travelling twelve miles from the camp, we got clear of the hills,
and found an open country before us to the north; through this we
proceeded for ten miles further, still following the direction of the
watercourse, and halting upon it for the night, after having made a stage
of twenty-two miles. We had tolerable grass for the horses, but were
obliged to give them water from the kegs.
At this place I was much astonished to see four white cockatoos, flying
about among the gum-trees in the watercourse, and immediately commenced a
narrow search for water, as I knew those birds did not frequently go far
away from it: there was not, however, a drop to be found anywhere, nor
the least sign of there having been any for a long time. What made the
circumstance of finding cockatoos here so surprising and unusual was,
that for the last two hundred miles we had never seen one at all. Where
then had these four birds come from? could it be that they had followed
under Flinders range from the south, and had strayed so far away from all
others of their kind, or had they come from some better country beyond
the desert by which I was surrounded, or how was that country to be
attained, supposing it to exist? Time only may reply to these queries,
but the occasion which prompted them was, to say the least,
extraordinary.
Towards night the sky became overcast with clouds, and as I saw that we
should have rain, I set to work with the boy and made a house of boughs
for our protection, but the man who accompanied us was too indolent to
take the same precaution, thinking probably that the rain would pass away
as it had often done before. In this, however, he was disappointed, for
the rain came down in torrents [Note 7 at end para.] - in an hour or two
the whole country was inundated, and he was taught a lesson of industry at
the expense of a thorough and unmitigated drenching.
[Note 7: This will not appear surprising, when the great amount of rain
which falls annually in some parts of Australia, is taken into account.
The Count Strzelecki gives 62.68 inches, as the average annual fall for
upwards of twenty years, at Port Macquarie.
