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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Outside The Town We Were Met By A Number
Of Gentlemen On Horseback, And Were Escorted Into It By Them.
On arrival we were invited to a lunch.
Champion Bay, or rather
Geraldton, is the thriving centre of what is, for Western Australia, a
large agricultural and pastoral district. It is the most busy and
bustling place I have seen on this side of the continent. It is
situated upon the western coast of Australia, in latitude 28 degrees
40' and longitude 114 degrees 42' 30", lying about north-north-west
from Perth, and distant 250 miles in a straight line, although to
reach it by land more than 300 miles have to be traversed. I delayed
in the neighbourhood of Geraldton for the arrival of the English and
Colonial mails, at the hospitable encampment of Mr. James Palmer, a
gentleman from Melbourne, who was contractor for the first line of
railway, from Champion Bay to Northampton, ever undertaken in Western
Australia.
While we delayed here, Mr. Tietkens's fine young riding bull got
poisoned, and though we did everything we possibly could for him, he
first went cranky, and subsequently died. I was very much grieved; he
was such a splendid hack, and so quiet and kind; I greatly deplored
his loss. The only substance I could find that he had eaten was
Gyrostemon, there being plenty of it here. Upon leaving Mr. Palmer's
camp we next visited a station called the Bowes - being on the Bowes
Creek, and belonging to Mr. Thomas Burgess, whose father entertained
us so well at Tipperary, near York.
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