Thirty Years in Tropical Australia Author:Gilbert White Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE WESTERN PLAINS (1898-1900) About two hundred miles west of Townsville lies a vast plain, for the most part bare and treeless, but covered wit... more »h a fine volcanic dust from the long-extinct volcano of Mount Emu, and producing in good seasons great quantities of the beautiful Flinders grass. Unfortunately the seasons are not always good and then the grass turns to powder and blows away, the rare creeks dry up and all is desolation save where a line of rushes marks the course of an artesian bore. The ground is so level that on starting in the morning it is often possible to see the house where one is to stay the night, twenty-five miles away, but apparently within an easy walk. Mirages are of daily occurrence. One sees a pool of water on the road only a hundred yards away, but it ever retreats as one advances. Sometimes one sees great lakes on the horizon with trees and cattle standing in the water, but there is nothing there but the dried-up plain. A few stations dot the wide expanse of the surrounding country, but they are twenty or thirty miles apart, and it sometimes happens that travellers never reach their destination. One such case occurred some years ago. A stockman from Wando Vale Station, in the mountainous country north of the great plain, came upon an old tent, within a few feet of which was the skeleton of a man. In the tent was a map of New South Wales and on the back a letter written in pencil. The letter is so interesting that I gladly avail myself of permission to make an extract from it. There is a quiet heroismabout this poor old swagman, with his patient struggle for five weeks with three days' food, his simple complaint that it takes a long time to die of starvation, and his dim yet real faith in God. He relates how he travelled from Sydney to...« less