Australia Twice Traversed - The Romance Of Exploration, Through Central South Australia, And Western Australia, From 1872 To 1876 By Ernest Giles
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In Ten Miles We Passed A Low Bluff Hill, And
Camped Near It, Without Any Water.
On the road we saw several quandong
trees, and got some of the ripe fruit.
The day was warm and sultry;
but the night set in cool, if not cold. Mr. Carmichael went to the top
of the low bluff, and informed me of the existence of low ridges,
bounding the horizon in every direction except to the
south-south-east, and that the intervening country appeared to be
composed of sandhills, with casuarinas, or mulga scrubs.
In Baron von Mueller's extraordinary work on Select Extra-tropical
Plants, with indications of their native countries, and some of their
uses, these remarks occur: - "Acacia aneura, Ferd. v. Mueller. Arid
desert - interior of extra tropic Australia. A tree never more than
twenty-five feet high. The principal 'mulga' tree. Mr. S. Dixon
praises it particularly as valuable for fodder of pasture animals;
hence it might locally serve for ensilage. Mr. W. Johnson found in the
foliage a considerable quantity of starch and gum, rendering it
nutritious. Cattle and sheep browse on the twigs of this, and some
allied species, even in the presence of plentiful grass; and are much
sustained by such acacias in seasons of protracted drought.
Dromedaries in Australia crave for the mulga as food. Wood excessively
hard, dark-brown; used, preferentially, by the natives for boomerangs,
sticks with which to lift edible roots, and shafts of phragmites,
spears, wommerahs, nulla-nullas, and jagged spear ends.
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