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+Project Gutenberg's Early Days in North Queensland, by Edward Palmer
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Early Days in North Queensland
+
+Author: Edward Palmer
+
+Release Date: January 23, 2012 [EBook #38649]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EARLY DAYS IN NORTH QUEENSLAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Pat McCoy, Nick Wall and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  EARLY DAYS
+  IN
+  NORTH QUEENSLAND
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: (Signature: Edw^d. Palmer.)
+
+_From photo, by "Tosca," Brisbane._]
+
+
+
+
+  EARLY DAYS
+  IN
+  NORTH QUEENSLAND
+
+
+  BY
+  THE LATE
+  EDWARD PALMER
+
+
+
+
+  SYDNEY
+  ANGUS & ROBERTSON
+  MELBOURNE: ANGUS, ROBERTSON & SHENSTONE
+  1903
+
+
+
+
+TO THE NORTH-WEST.
+
+  _I know the land of the far, far away,
+  Where the salt bush glistens in silver-grey;
+  Where the emu stalks with her striped brood,
+  Searching the plains for her daily food.
+
+  I know the land of the far, far west,
+  Where the bower-bird builds her playhouse nest;
+  Where the dusky savage from day to day,
+  Hunts with his tribe in their old wild way.
+
+  'Tis a land of vastness and solitude deep,
+  Where the dry hot winds their revels keep;
+  The land of mirage that cheats the eye,
+  The land of cloudless and burning sky.
+
+  'Tis a land of drought and pastures grey,
+  Where flock-pigeons rise in vast array;
+  Where the "nardoo" spreads its silvery sheen
+  Over the plains where the floods have been.
+
+  'Tis a land of gidya and dark boree,
+  Extended o'er plains like an inland sea,
+  Boundless and vast, where the wild winds pass,
+  O'er the long rollers and billows of grass.
+
+  I made my home in that thirsty land,
+  Where rivers for water are filled with sand;
+  Where glare and heat and storms sweep by,
+  Where the prairie rolls to the western sky._
+
+_Cloncurry, 1897._        --"_Loranthus_."
+
+
+  _W. C. Penfold & Co., Printers, Sydney._
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The writer came to Queensland two years before separation, and shortly
+afterwards took part in the work of outside settlement, or pioneering,
+looking for new country to settle on with stock. Going from Bowen out
+west towards the head of the Flinders River in 1864, he continued his
+connection with this outside life until his death in 1899. Many of the
+original explorers and pioneers were known to him personally; of these
+but few remain. This little work is merely a statement of facts and
+incidents connected with the work of frontier life, and the progress of
+pastoral occupation in the early days. It lays no claim to any literary
+style. Whatever faults are found in it, the indulgence usually accorded
+to a novice is requested. It has been a pleasant task collecting the
+information from many of the early settlers in order to place on record
+a few of the names and incidents connected with the foundation of the
+pastoral industry in the far north, an industry which was the forerunner
+of all other settlement there, and still is the main source of the
+State's export trade.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE BY MR. G. PHILLIPS, C.E.
+
+
+The author of this book, the late Edward Palmer, was himself one of that
+brave band of pioneer squatters who in the early sixties swept across
+North Queensland with their flocks and herds, settling, as if by magic,
+great tracts of hitherto unoccupied country, and thereby opening several
+new ports on the east coast and on the shores of the Gulf of
+Carpentaria, to the commerce of the world. In writing of these stirring
+times in the history of Queensland, Mr. Palmer has dealt with a subject
+for which he was peculiarly qualified as an active participant therein.
+
+Very few of those energetic and indomitable men are now left--veritable
+giants they were--great because they attempted great things, and though
+few of them achieved financial success for themselves individually, they
+added by their self-denying labours a rich province to Queensland, which
+has become the home of thousands, and will yet furnish homes for ten of
+thousands under conditions of settlement and occupation adapted to the
+physical and climatic characteristics of North Queensland.
+
+Mr. Palmer was a native of Wollongong, in New South Wales, and came to
+Queensland in 1857. He took up and formed his well-known station,
+Conobie, on the western bank of the Cloncurry River, situated about
+midway between Normanton and Cloncurry, in 1864, first with sheep, but
+subsequently, like most of the Gulf squatters, he substituted cattle
+therefor, which by the year 1893 had grown into a magnificent herd.
+
+Mr. Palmer also took part in the political life of Queensland,
+representing his district, then known as the Burke, but afterwards as
+Carpentaria, until the general election of 1893, when he retired in
+favour of Mr. G. Phillips, C.E., who held the seat for three years.
+
+In the financial crisis of 1893 and subsequent years when the value of
+cattle stations in North Queensland owing to the ravages of ticks and
+the want of extraneous markets, gradually dwindled almost to the
+vanishing point, Mr. Palmer was a great sufferer, and he was compelled
+to leave his old home at Conobie, which was bound to him by every tie
+dear to the human breast, and most dear to the man who had carved that
+home out of the wilderness by sheer courage and indomitable endurance.
+
+Mr. Palmer's constitution, originally a very good one, was undermined
+partly by a long life of exposure and hardship under a tropical sun, but
+chiefly owing to the misfortunes which latterly overtook him, and after
+a few years of service under the State in connection with the tick
+plague, he died in harness at Rockhampton on the 4th day of May, 1899.
+
+Edward Palmer was essentially a lovable man, kind-hearted and genial, a
+great lover of Nature, as his poems prove, a true comrade, and a right
+loyal citizen of Queensland, which he loved so well, and which, in the
+truest sense of the word, he helped to found.
+
+  GEO. PHILLIPS.
+
+  Brisbane, February 12, 1903.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                        PAGE
+
+  CHAPTER     I--INTRODUCTORY                              1
+
+     "       II--THE NAVIGATORS                           21
+
+     "      III--INLAND EXPLORATION                       32
+
+     "       IV--EXPLORERS IN NORTH QUEENSLAND            61
+
+     "        V--PIONEERING WORK IN QUEENSLAND            85
+
+     "       VI--THE SPREAD OF PASTORAL OCCUPATION       110
+
+     "      VII--THE RISE OF THE NORTHERN TOWNS          144
+
+     "     VIII--THE MINERAL WEALTH                      168
+
+     "       IX--INCIDENTS OF THE EARLY DAYS             177
+
+     "        X--THE MEN OF THE NORTH                    185
+
+     "       XI--ABORIGINALS OF NORTH QUEENSLAND         208
+
+     "      XII--PHYSICAL FEATURES                       226
+
+     "     XIII--SOME LITERARY REMAINS                   260
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.--INTRODUCTORY.
+
+
+The pioneers of Australian civilisation in the territory known as North
+Queensland have mostly passed away; they were too busy with other
+activities and interests and more absorbing local topics to make notes
+of the days that are gone. A record of the work they did, and their
+march of progress through the unknown land, was a matter that no one
+recognised as of any importance to themselves or others. "The daily
+round and common task" took up most of their time, and sufficient for
+the day was the work thereof. If one (however unqualified) should record
+a few of those early steps of settlement, and thus help to preserve the
+remembrance of events connected with the occupation of a prosperous
+country, the facts would remain, and be available for those more
+competent to utilise them in other ways and for other purposes. It is
+well that some one should do it, and one who has experienced the
+vicissitudes of Northern pioneer life, with its calls on active
+endurance and its ceaseless worries would not be altogether unfit to
+note the progress of a great movement, or to place on record some of
+those events that helped to make up the early life of Queensland,
+however unqualified the writer might be, in a literary sense. A
+pioneer is one who prepares the path for others to follow, one who first
+leads the way. The life of the pioneer in the early days of Northern
+settlement, from want of ready communication with seaports, and the lack
+of means of obtaining supplies, was one that called out all the energy,
+resource, and bushmanship of those who had been trained to this life,
+and who had pushed far in the van of civilisation to make a living for
+themselves, and open the way for others who might follow. Though the
+whole country is fitted for settlement and occupation by European races,
+such fitness had to be demonstrated by the residence and work of the
+pioneers, some of whom did good service in the way of exploration and
+discovery. By living their lives in the far outside districts and making
+their homes therein, they proved the adaptability of the soil and
+climate to the wants and civilisation of the European.
+
+That there were more shadows than lights in those early days was not so
+much the fault of the settlers as of their surroundings, but the best
+was made of all circumstances, and the result is satisfactory. Very few
+of the pioneers made wealth for themselves, though they helped to
+convert the wilderness into prospective homes for millions of their own
+race.
+
+The story of North Queensland's childhood is simply one of gradual
+discovery and advancing settlement from the Southern districts, where
+the same severe course of wresting the land from uselessness and
+sterility had been gone through. The source of this movement may be
+traced chiefly to a desire for pastoral extension by squatters, always
+on the move for new pastures, and to the ever roving prospector in
+search of fresh mineral discoveries.
+
+First the navigator outlines the coast with its bays and islands and
+openings for ports; such were Cook, Flinders, Stokes, and others. Then
+the explorer appears on the scene, and discovers its rivers and
+facilities for establishing the occupation of the country, and maps out
+its capabilities. Such were Leichhardt, Mitchell, Gregory, Landsborough,
+and many others. Thus the way is opened up for the pioneer squatter with
+his flocks and herds and the attendant business of forming roads and
+opening ports for his requirements, holding his own against many odds,
+droughts, floods, outrages by blacks, fevers that follow the opening up
+of all new countries, and losses peculiar to life in the wilderness.
+
+Following the pioneer (or Crown lessee, as he is called) in course of
+time comes a closer settlement, when the large runs become divided, and
+the selector or farmer holds the country under a more permanent tenure.
+Cultivation follows, whilst families reside where the pioneer squatter
+strove with nature in a long struggle many years before.
+
+The development of North Queensland has taken place since separation
+from New South Wales; the period of a single generation covers the time
+that it has taken to settle this large extent of country. The
+continuous discovery of natural wealth, the progress of settlement, the
+healthy growth of the great industries, the establishment of a system of
+oversea, coastal, and inland communications, the creation of great
+cities, the founding of social and educational institutions, in fact all
+that makes the colony of to-day, with its potentialities of industrial
+wealth and expansive settlement, have been covered by the span of a
+single life.
+
+In 1824, Lieutenant Oxley discovered and explored the Brisbane River.
+Redcliffe, so named a quarter of a century before by Flinders, but now
+generally known as "Humpy Bong," was the original site selected for the
+first settlement on the shores of Moreton Bay. Some convicts had been
+forwarded there from Sydney to form the settlement, but owing to attacks
+by blacks and the unsuitability of site, it was removed to the present
+one of Brisbane. Up to 1839, the dismal cloud of convictism was over
+this fair land before it was thrown open to free settlers.
+
+Over 12 degrees of latitude, and as many of longitude, through a country
+previously unknown and untested as to climate and soil, the course of
+advancing occupation went on unchecked, until the land was filled with
+the outposts of civilisation, and the potentialities of the colony were
+ascertained. Great indeed are the conquests of peace; much greater than
+those of war; more beneficial and more permanent.
+
+The first sale of Brisbane lands took place in Sydney in 1841, and next
+year a sale was held in Brisbane; the third took place in 1843, and
+there was not enough land surveyed to meet the demand, so small was
+Brisbane in those early days. The upset price was £100 per acre,
+although much more was realised for some lots. Even at those prices,
+many buyers suffered a loss, for a commercial crisis occurred shortly
+afterwards, and much of the property was forfeited, or resold at much
+lower prices.
+
+For the year 1843, the exports consisted of 150 tierces of beef, 450
+hides, 1,998 bales of wool, 3,458 sheepskins, and 3,418 feet of pine
+timber.
+
+The foundations of trade, so modest at the start, have developed in one
+lifetime to a nation's wealth. In 1844, in the territory then forming
+the colony, there were 650 horses, 13,000 cattle, 184,000 sheep, and
+scarcely more than 1,500 of a population, one half of whom were
+domiciled in North and South Brisbane. At the present day, the products
+of the live stock of the State furnishes employment for thousands, and
+forms a volume of trade that employs the finest lines of steamers
+sailing in the Southern Seas.
+
+It is needless to dwell on the history of the dark days of bondage and
+weakly infancy, which has little to do with the early days of settlement
+in North Queensland, except to show the starting point. The North is
+free from the stain and drag of convictism. The real life of the colony
+began with the first days of free settlers, then immigrants poured in
+rapidly, and the occupation of the interior advanced. With this strong
+growth of material progress, came also the desire for self-government,
+and separation from New South Wales. This, however, was not obtained
+without much exertion, self-sacrifice, and display of patriotic energy.
+The history of the separation movement is long, extending over many
+years, but it was finally consummated on 10th December, 1859, when Sir
+George Ferguson Bowen was sworn in as the first Governor of Queensland.
+The boundary line of the new colony commenced at Point Danger, near the
+28th parallel of south latitude and ran westward, leaving the rich
+districts watered by the Clarence and Richmond rivers, although much
+nearer to Brisbane than to Sydney, still belonging to New South Wales.
+After separation and self-government, came the commencement, in 1865, of
+the railway from Ipswich towards the interior. The discovery of gold at
+Gympie, near Maryborough, in 1867, and the rapid extension of the
+ever-spreading pastoral industry, laid the foundation of national life
+in Queensland. From this solid basis, the settlement of North Queensland
+commenced in earnest, with a more rapid extension than had been seen in
+any other part of Australia.
+
+Telegraphic communication was established between Brisbane and Sydney on
+November 9th, 1861, and its inauguration had a marked effect on local
+affairs. The immigration induced by Mr. Henry Jordan was an important
+factor in the settling of people on the land in the early days of
+Queensland.
+
+In 1869, Townsville was connected by wire with Brisbane, and in 1872 the
+line was extended to the mouth of the Norman River at Kimberly, now
+known as "Karumba," the intention being that the first cable to connect
+Australia with Europe should be landed at the mouth of the Norman River,
+but, for reasons which have never been made public, South Australia was
+allowed to step in and reap the advantages which should have belonged to
+Queensland, although we carried out our share of the work by
+constructing, at great expense, a special land line across the base of
+the Cape York Peninsula, from Cardwell, across the Sea View Range, to
+Normanton and Kimberly at the mouth of the river.
+
+The last service rendered by Walker, the explorer, was in connection
+with the selection of the route of the telegraph line from Cardwell to
+the Gulf of Carpentaria. Mr. Walker's second in command was a fine young
+man of the name of Herbert Edward Young, who was subsequently telegraph
+master in Townsville in the year 1871. Mr. Young received an injury in
+the service which eventually resulted in his untimely death very shortly
+after his marriage.
+
+Australia was connected with Europe by cable in 1872. Queensland thus
+starting on its career so hopefully was nevertheless subject to periods
+of depression, booms, and crises, prosperity and hard times
+alternated. And then came the "salvation by gold." The discovery of gold
+came as a hope and help to all, as it came to the North a few years
+later. It helped to find markets for stock of all kinds and employment
+for thousands, and also to extend the settlement of the land and open up
+commerce with other countries, introducing immigrants or diggers, many
+of whom remained and settled in the country. But the young country had
+to be opened up and some degree of settlement established before mining
+for gold could be carried on.
+
+In all parts of Queensland, pastoral settlement has preceded all others,
+including mining. Though the squatter is now, in the more settled
+districts, becoming a thing of the past, his work being finished and his
+day gone by, at the first enterprise, bush knowledge and a practical
+life were the most potent factors in making known the possibilities of
+the land of Queensland.
+
+The name "squatter" was given in the early days to the pastoral tenants
+of the Crown, who rented pasture lands in their natural state. The first
+pastoral occupation took place about 1840, and this may be said to have
+commenced the life history of the movement that made Queensland known to
+the world. Large areas were occupied on the banks of rivers and creeks
+where the splendid and nutritive indigenous grasses required no further
+cultivation. All that the squatters did was to turn their stock loose on
+them and exercise some care to prevent them from straying, or being
+killed and scattered by the blacks. No country was ever endowed by
+Nature with a more permanent, healthy, and beneficial pasturage than
+Australia, though heavy stocking and hot dry seasons have somewhat
+diminished the value of this natural wealth in some of the earlier
+settled districts. The chief source of employment in the Colony of
+Queensland, and the leading export, is still derived from the stock
+depastured on the native grasses that were found when the State was
+first explored.
+
+A company or syndicate was formed in February, 1859, for the purpose of
+establishing a new pastoral settlement in North Australia. The project
+was conceived in consequence of the reports of explorers who had passed
+through much of the country to be operated on. These reports were from
+the journals of Sir Thomas Mitchell, Dr. Leichhardt, A. C. Gregory, the
+Rev. W. B. Clarke, and others. The prospectus was of a most ambitious
+and comprehensive nature, and it showed an intention to overcome, or
+make light of, all obstacles, and to march straight on to glory and
+wealth, as well as to start a young nation on its prosperous career. The
+area of the proposed new settlement was comprised within the 22nd
+parallel of S. latitude, the 137th degree of east longitude on the west,
+and on the north and east by the ocean, practically including what is
+now known as North Queensland.
+
+The report of the Rev. W. B. Clarke, which was favourable to the
+probability of auriferous country being discovered, and of rich deposits
+of gold being met with on the northern rivers, was a great factor in
+promoting the project of founding a settlement which was to establish a
+thriving and industrious European and Oriental mercantile and planting
+community. The immediate design was to commence a detailed exploration
+of the country reported on by Dr. Leichhardt. The prospectus dwelt on
+the advantages of thoroughly exploring the rivers and country and making
+known the capabilities of the soil and climate to the capitalists of
+Australia as a field for investment. The programme mapped out was:--To
+proceed from Rockhampton direct to Leichhardt's camp in the bed of the
+Burdekin River at Mount McConnel. To trace the Burdekin down to the sea
+in canoes, taking soundings to establish its navigable capabilities; to
+fix its mouth and its qualifications as a seaport. To fix the probable
+head of navigation, and a favourable site for a goods depôt there. To
+return to Mount McConnel; thence to explore the lower Suttor, lower
+Cape, and Burdekin Valley as far as the Valley of Lagoons, ascending the
+river by its western, and returning by its eastern bank; to fix the most
+favourable position as near as possible to water carriage for the first
+establishment of pastoral stations, and to trace the most accessible
+route from the latter to the former. To return to the settled districts
+by a different route, viz.: to trace up the Cape or Belyando River to
+its head in latitude 24 degrees, to cross the great watershed, and to
+drop down upon the Maranoa, which was to be followed to about latitude
+26 degrees, where the course was to be left and a route made down the
+River Culgoa, arriving in the settled districts by the lower Condamine.
+
+By adopting this route, the whole frontier, from the Valley of Lagoons
+to Gregory's last track down the Victoria (or Barcoo) would be explored;
+thus, without additional outlay, deciding whether Leichhardt pushed
+westward by the Victoria according to Gregory, or what is more probable,
+from some point upon the Belyando or Burdekin, according to the Rev. W.
+B. Clarke. The person in charge of the party was to prepare a full
+report upon the country traversed, while the surveyor of the party was
+to draw out a chart of the region explored, copies of the report and
+chart to be furnished to each of the subscribers, who would then be in a
+position individually or collectively to take measures for tendering for
+and occupying the country, by sending their stock overland, and their
+stores, etc., by water to the depôt at the head of navigation.
+
+The cost of the exploration was estimated at about £1,000, to meet which
+it was proposed to raise that sum by subscription; unless that amount
+were subscribed, the expedition to be abandoned. The leader proposed was
+George Elphinstone Dalrymple. The names of the subscribers of £50 each
+were:--Captain J. C. Wickham, R.N., Messrs. J. C. White, John Douglas,
+Gilbert Davidson, P. N. Selheim, A. D. Broughton, George Perry, W. A.
+Simpson, Ernest Henry, A. H. Palmer, Garland and Bingham, J. B. Rundle,
+Joseph Sharp, D. McDougal, Raymond and Co., R. Towns and Co., Griffith,
+Fanning and Co., How, Walker and Co., Dennison and Rolleston, F.
+Bundock, Edwd. Ogilvie, R. G. Watt, and J. R. Radfort.
+
+It was intended that a committee of these subscribers should be at once
+formed in Sydney. The reasons given for the projection of a party with
+such a comprehensive and magnificent scheme before it were: 1st--Because
+the supply of butchers' meat was even then unequal to the demand, and
+the latter increased more rapidly than the former. 2nd--Because the
+demand for sheep stations as an investment for capital was far beyond
+the capabilities of the settled districts; and the capital available for
+speculation in Melbourne in particular, was seeking new fields for
+employment. 3rd--Because the number of small or moderate capitalists who
+annually immigrate with a view to pastoral pursuits could find no field
+of operations within the settled districts, had to push northwards, and
+in a short time would occupy all available country within practicable
+distance of the most remote existing, or contemplated ports of
+shipment--Port Curtis and Broad Sound.
+
+It was anticipated that other ports equal to Moreton Bay, with its
+highly-favoured back-ground, Darling Downs, would be opened up by
+exploration. The character of the country reported on by Dr. Leichhardt,
+intersected as it was by some very interesting rivers, such as the
+Suttor, Burdekin, Mitchell, and Lynd, warranted such a favourable
+conclusion.
+
+The tablelands were high, and possessed of a cool and healthy climate;
+the soil on the banks of the rivers was of a rich nature, suitable for
+agriculture; the pasturage was unequalled for stock of all kinds; and
+the mineral prospects were favourable towards the settlement of a mining
+community. All this undeveloped natural wealth lay at the disposal of
+any who might enter and bring it under the magic influence of capital
+and enterprise.
+
+In their wildest moments of enthusiasm, none of those enterprising
+colonists could have foreseen what a few years would bring forth. None
+could have expected to see in the short space of less than thirty years
+that, where the mangrove then fringed the shore, jetties and harbours
+would be built, and that great ocean-going steamers and vessels from all
+parts of the world would be found discharging valuable cargoes collected
+from many lands; that great cities would arise adjacent to these
+harbours, that land would be sold by the foot at high prices; that these
+thriving towns would be the termini of many railways reaching far away
+into that unknown interior which they were so anxious to explore,
+bringing in the natural products of the soil valued at many millions of
+pounds annually for shipment to the markets of the world, or that the
+mining prospects so modestly alluded to in their prospectus would be
+developed to such an extent as to produce hundreds of tons weight of
+gold. These men were the pioneers of a new colony; they looked out over
+the wilderness extending northwards to the Indian Ocean, and laid their
+plans to conquer and subdue it to the wants of civilised man. The
+promoters of this pioneering enterprise anticipated the probability of
+the deep indentation of the Gulf of Carpentaria enabling direct oceanic
+communication with the Western world, as well as with India and China,
+to be established, and that the projected telegraphic connection with
+Europe by way of Timor and Java might be extended by way of the level
+bed of the Gulf, and along the valley of the Lynd and Burdekin Rivers
+into the territory of Moreton Bay, thus bringing North Queensland and
+Brisbane nearer to the marts of the world than any of the sister
+colonies. The progress of civilisation has brought all this to pass
+within the memory of those now living.
+
+Our Queensland land policy is a legacy of the old days of New South
+Wales, where the first attempt to confer a right to property in land was
+by way of grant. It dates from the time of Governor Phillip, the first
+Governor of New South Wales; these grants were made to any free
+immigrants on certain conditions.
+
+The system of tenure by occupation began about 1825, and was the origin
+of the squatting system; the production of fine merino wool gave a great
+impetus to the occupation of the waste lands. The licenses were annual,
+the rate of charge rested with the Governor, and they were renewable and
+transferable. But much dissatisfaction arose with the administration by
+the Crown Lands Commissioners who had the disposal of all disputes
+connected with the new system. Hence an agitation was set up for a
+redress of grievances, and this led to the passing of the 9th and 10th
+Victoria c. 104--28th August, 1846. In this act power was granted to the
+Crown to lease for any term of years not exceeding fourteen, to any
+person, any waste lands, etc., or license to occupy; such lease or
+license to be subject to the regulations thereafter mentioned. On the
+9th of March, 1847, the celebrated orders in Council, framed under the
+authority of this act, were issued. The lands in the Colony of New South
+Wales were divided into three classes, "settled," "intermediate," and
+"unsettled." As respects Queensland, the settled districts were confined
+to very limited areas within ten miles of the town of Ipswich, and
+within three miles of any part of the sea coast. All the rest of the
+territory now comprised in the boundaries of the State was left in the
+unsettled districts; but power was given to the Governor to proclaim any
+portion as within the intermediate districts when necessary. The lease
+gave the right to purchase part of the land within the lease to the
+lessee and to him only; other acts dealing with the sale of land had
+been passed, and land had been alienated under them; but the leases and
+regulations under the orders in Council forbade the sale of any waste
+land to anyone except the lessee. When a run was forfeited, tenders
+might be given, stating the term of years for which the tenderer was
+willing to take it, the rent he would give in addition to the minimum
+fixed by the act, and the amount of premium he would pay. In the event
+of competition, the run was to be knocked down to the highest bidder.
+
+Where new runs were tendered for, the tenderer was to set forth in his
+tender a clear description of the run and its boundaries, and also
+whether he was willing to give any premium beyond the rent. The rent was
+to be proportioned to the number of sheep or equivalent number of cattle
+which the run was estimated to be capable of carrying according to a
+scale to be established by the Governor; but no run was to be capable of
+carrying less than 4,000 sheep, or to be let for less than £10 per
+annum, to which £2 10s. was added for every additional 1,000 sheep. The
+estimated number of sheep or cattle was decided by a valuator named by
+the intended lessee and approved by the Commissioner of Crown Lands,
+who, with an umpire chosen by the two, acted as a small court of
+arbitration. The scheme was fitted in its simplicity to encourage
+exploration on the largest possible scale.
+
+Proclamations issued by the Government of New South Wales to give
+further effect to the "orders," authorised an assessment on stock
+pastured beyond the settled districts, which was levied at the rate of a
+halfpenny for each sheep, three halfpence for every head of cattle, and
+threepence for every horse; and returns were directed to be made by
+every pastoral lessee under severe penalties. Under these several acts
+and orders, the Executive and the squatters came into collision, and
+disputes arose as to the meaning of many clauses in the various Land
+Acts; but no material alteration had been made at the time when
+Queensland was separated from New South Wales, although the Constitution
+Act of New South Wales, July, 1855, vested in the local legislature the
+entire management and control of the waste lands of the colony. In 1859,
+when the Colony of Queensland was separated from New South Wales, the
+pastoral interest was in the ascendant, and this is considered to have
+been made evident by the first land legislation of the new colony. The
+first consideration of the new Government was legislation for leasing
+and selling the land. A very large number of tenders for Crown Lands had
+been accepted by the New South Wales Government, or had been applied for
+and were in abeyance, and until a decision was given on these
+applications, the land was lying idle and waste. One-fourth of the
+entire unoccupied territory had been applied for, the result of the
+energy of pioneering pastoralists, and the prospects opening up for new
+pastoral settlements. The first bill presented to the new Parliament on
+11th July, 1860, was introduced by the Colonial Treasurer, an old
+squatter, Mr.--afterwards Sir R. R.--Mackenzie. Some of the provisions
+of the old orders in Council were followed; they accepted the unsettled
+districts as declared in them. The intermediate were abolished.
+Applications for licenses for a year were to be accompanied by a clear
+description of runs, to be not less than 25 nor more than 100 square
+miles, with a fee of 10s. per square mile. These entitled the lessee to
+a lease of 14 years. The land to be stocked at the time of application
+to be one-fourth of its grazing capabilities.
+
+This was fixed by the act at 100 sheep or 20 head of cattle to the
+square mile; the rent to be appraised after four years for the second
+and third remaining periods of five years each, at the commencement of
+each period. As to the runs tendered for and still unstocked, the
+provisions were extended, but lessees were compelled to stock their land
+to one-fourth of the extent fixed by the act. The tide of speculation in
+unoccupied land was stayed, there arose a great demand for stock of all
+kinds, and those pastoralists in the south, who had flocks and herds to
+dispose of, realised great prices. Afterwards the colony passed through
+some troublesome years, and a Relief Act was required; and as a vast
+area of the young colony had still to be occupied, encouragement was
+held out to settlers to take up runs. The Pastoral Leases Act of 1869,
+gave another impetus to the settlement of outside districts, and acted
+as a relief to many who had taken up runs under the previous acts. The
+new leases were to be for a term of 21 years, and the new Act also dealt
+with leases under existing acts. Where new country was applied for, a
+license had to be taken out, and a declaration made that the country was
+stocked to one-fourth of its grazing capabilities, the rent being 5s.
+per square mile for the first 7 years; 10s. for the second term, and
+15s. for the third term. Every succeeding Government tried a new Land
+Bill, some dealing with selection, land orders to new arrivals being
+part of the system; but the tendency of all succeeding land legislation
+down to the present day has been to allow more liberal terms to the
+prospective selector. The conditions were made so restrictive in the
+first days as to lead one to conclude that land selection was almost a
+crime; whereas the genuine selector in remote districts has enough to
+contend with in opening his land for some kind of cultivation and facing
+the seasons, etc., without being forced to make improvements he will not
+require. The grazing selector is a coming power in the land; a grade
+between the old squatter and the small selector. The discovery of
+artesian water will be a factor of the utmost importance to him as
+tending to assure his position from loss by drought. The grazing
+selector is spreading over the interior rapidly; and before the
+expiration of the leases now in existence, more land legislation is
+sure to be introduced to liberalise the terms and initiate a system for
+obtaining the freehold of parts of these large grazing farms. The
+history of our land laws shows them to have been simply experimental at
+every stage, hence the need for repeated alterations.
+
+It would have been a good thing for Queensland, I might say for
+Australia, if a similar policy to that of the United States of America
+had been followed, namely the throwing open of the public estate on the
+most liberal terms and the encouragement of private enterprise in
+railways.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE NAVIGATORS.
+
+
+According to historical record, the first part of Australia discovered
+by Europeans, was the northern part of Queensland, and it also bears the
+mournful distinction of being the first scene of their death at the
+hands of the natives. Nearly three hundred years ago, in the Gulf of
+Carpentaria, a boat's crew belonging to the "Duyfken," one of the early
+Dutch vessels exploring there, was cut off and killed. The knowledge of
+the country obtained in those days produced no results as regards
+settlement, and very little addition was made to geographical knowledge
+until Captain Cook discovered and made known the eastern seaboard of
+North Queensland. The occupation and settlement of this large territory
+was initiated by the enterprise of pastoralists from the southern
+districts in search of new runs for their stock. Thus the first record
+of Queensland is of the North; her growth and settlement comes from the
+South.
+
+The Dutch yacht "Duyfken," despatched from Bantam in November, 1605, to
+explore the island of New Guinea, sailed along what was thought to be
+the west side of that country, as far as 14 deg. South latitude. The
+furthest point reached was marked on their maps Cape Keer Weer, or
+Turnagain, and the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria were supposed to be
+a part of New Guinea. Torres was the first to sail between New Guinea
+and the mainland of Australia; he commanded the second vessel of an
+expedition fitted out by the Spaniards for the purpose of discovery in
+1606. He sailed through from the eastern side, and he describes the
+numerous islands lying between New Guinea and Cape York. It is probable
+he passed in view of the mainland, and his name is perpetuated in that
+of the Straits. The Gulf of Carpentaria is supposed to have been named
+by Tasman after the Governor of the East India Company; and so little by
+little the coast was explored, and the outline of Australia mapped out,
+until Captain Cook's memorable discoveries of the east coast completed
+the chart of Australia and its history commenced. The west coast had
+been visited frequently by many Dutch ships, as it lay in their line of
+route in sailing to Batavia. Dampier, in 1688, was the first Englishman
+to land there, and his description of the country and the natives was
+far from encouraging. He spoke of them as the worst people he had ever
+met, and the country as the meanest. It was not until 1770, when Captain
+Cook ran the east coast up from Cape Everard to Cape York, and took
+possession of the whole territory in the name of King George the Third,
+that the veil began to lift from this land of silence and profound
+mystery. His voyage furnished the most reliable and scientific
+information about the coast line of Australia hitherto published.
+Captain Cook had been commissioned by the English Government to make a
+scientific expedition to the island of Otaheite, as it was then called,
+to witness the transit of Venus, on June 3rd, 1769. He was accompanied
+by Dr. Solander as a botanist, and Mr. Banks (afterwards Sir Joseph
+Banks), as a naturalist. After carrying out his commission, he sailed in
+search of the southern continent. He circumnavigated New Zealand, and
+thence steered westward till he sighted the shores of Australia on April
+19th, 1770. After landing at Botany Bay on the 28th of the same month,
+he sailed north along the east coast to Torres Straits. He passed and
+named Moreton Bay and Wide Bay, and rounded Breaksea Spit on the north
+of Great Sandy Island, named Cape Capricorn, and Keppel Bay, Whitsunday
+Passage, Cleveland Bay, and Endeavour River, where he stayed some time
+to repair his vessel, the "Endeavour." The spot where he beached his
+ship is now Cooktown, and a monument stands where his vessel was
+careened under Grassy Hill. Many of the principal headlands, bays, and
+islands, along the coast were named by him. Finally, he passed through
+Torres Straits, naming Prince of Wales Island, and Booby Island, and
+then sailed homeward by Timor and Sumatra.
+
+Captain Matthew Flinders, navigator and discoverer, gave up his whole
+life to the cause of discovery, having as a young man in company with
+Bass, made trips along the southern coast of Australia in an open boat,
+soon after the settlement of Sydney. In 1799, he sailed from Sydney to
+explore Moreton and Hervey Bays in the "Norfolk," and went as far as
+Port Curtis, landing at several places and examining the country. He was
+appointed to the command of the "Investigator" in 1801, and arrived in
+Sydney in May, 1802; thence he proceeded up what is now the Queensland
+coast, which he examined from Sandy Cape northwards. He named Mount
+Larcombe, near Gladstone; surveyed Keppel Bay and other places,
+correcting and adding to Cook's charts; he sailed into the open ocean
+through the Great Barrier Reef in latitude 19 degs. 9 mins., longitude
+148 degs., after many narrow escapes among the shoals and reefs. His
+destination was the Gulf of Carpentaria, and on his way he sighted
+Murray Island, where he saw large numbers of natives using
+well-constructed canoes with sails; from thence he steered west,
+anchoring close to one of the Prince of Wales Islands, where he and his
+crew mistook the large anthills for native habitations; then steering
+southwards, he found himself in the Gulf of Carpentaria, of which very
+little was then known. Flinders was the first English navigator to sail
+along its coasts, where such shallow waters prevail that they were at
+times afraid to go within three miles of the low shores, and had to be
+content with merely viewing the tops of the distant mangroves showing
+above the water.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is only one tide in the twenty-four hours; it takes twelve hours
+for the tide to flow in, and twelve hours for it to flow out again; and
+very uninteresting is the aspect of the coast line sailing down the
+Gulf. Flinders anchored near Sweer's Island, which he named, and
+examined Bentinck, Mornington, and Bountiful Islands adjacent thereto,
+the whole group being called Wellesley's Islands. An inspection made
+here of the "Investigator" showed that there was scarcely a sound timber
+left in her, and the wonder was that she had kept afloat so long;
+however, Flinders determined to go on with his explorations. One island
+was called Bountiful Island from the immense number of turtles and
+turtles' eggs which were there procured, and when leaving on the
+continuation of their course, they took forty-six turtles with them
+averaging 300 lbs. each.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is at the present day on Sweer's Island, a well containing pure
+fresh water called Flinders' well, supposed to have been sunk by him,
+and near to it was a tree marked by him. This tree was standing in
+1866-8, but as it showed signs of decay, it was removed in 1888 by Pilot
+Jones, and sent to the Brisbane Museum, where it now is. This tree
+(which is generally known as the "Investigator" tree) has a number of
+dates and names carved thereon, as follows:--
+
+     1.--1781, "Lowy," name of early Dutch exploring vessel,
+         commanded by Captain Tasman, after whom the Island
+         of Tasmania is named.
+
+     2.--1798, and some Chinese characters.
+
+     3.--1802, "Investigator." "Robert Devine." (Devine
+         was the first lieutenant of Flinders' ship
+         "Investigator.")
+
+     4.--1841, "Stokes." (Captain Stokes commanded the
+         "Beagle," surveying ship, which visited the Gulf
+         in 1841.)
+
+     5.--1856, "Chimmo." (Lieutenant Chimmo commanded the
+         "Sandfly," surveying vessel.)
+
+     6.--"Norman." (Captain Norman of the "Victoria," visited
+         the Gulf in 1861 with Landsborough's party in search
+         of Burke and Wills. The Norman River is named after
+         Captain Norman.)
+
+In skirting the western shores of the Gulf, Flinders identified many
+leading features which were marked in Tasman's chart, and which were
+found quite correct. On the last day of 1802, the "Investigator" was in
+sight of Cape Maria, which was found to be on an island. To the west was
+a large bay or bight, called by the Dutch Limmen's Bight; and the whole
+coastal line seemed to be thickly inhabited by natives. Flinders
+mentions seeing many traces of Malay occupation along the shores of the
+islands of the Gulf--temporary occupation for the purpose of collecting
+_beche de mer_. Blue Mud Bay was so named by him on account of the
+nature of the bottom. This bay was surveyed. The country beyond was
+found to be higher and more interesting than the almost uniformly low
+shores of the Gulf they had been skirting for so many hundreds of miles.
+Melville Bay completed the examination of the Gulf of Carpentaria, which
+had taken one hundred and five days; the circuit being twelve hundred
+miles. Shortly afterwards they fell in with six Malay proas, held
+intercourse with the crews, and learned that the object of their
+expedition was to find trepang, or _beche de mer_; and as they had been
+trading for many years on the northern coasts of Australia, it is
+evident that they must have been well acquainted with the seas and
+shores of the Gulf. Flinders sailed for Timor, and thence to Sydney, as
+his vessel was now utterly unseaworthy, and reached the harbour in June,
+1803.
+
+His vessel after arrival was condemned, and Flinders determined to go to
+England to procure another ship to continue his surveys of the coast. On
+his way home, he was wrecked on a reef, and, returning to Sydney,
+obtained a small craft, in which he made another start, but, touching at
+Mauritius, was detained a prisoner for six years by the French,
+notwithstanding his passport as an explorer. After his release, he set
+about editing his journals and preparing an account of his researches.
+He completed this work, but died on the very day his book was published.
+No navigator or explorer has done more than Flinders in the matter of
+accurate surveys, or in the boldness of his undertakings, and his great
+work for Australia was entirely unrewarded. He spent his life in
+voyaging and discovery, and suffered many hardships, besides
+imprisonment.
+
+One of the largest and most important rivers flowing into the Gulf of
+Carpentaria has been named after him "The Flinders."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In 1823, an expedition was sent out from Sydney under the command of
+Lieutenant Oxley to survey Port Curtis, Moreton Bay, and Port Bowen, and
+to report upon a site for a penal establishment. The party went up the
+Tweed River some miles, and then went northward to Port Curtis harbour.
+After landing in several places, a river was discovered which was named
+the Boyne. The vessel employed on this service was the "Mermaid," and
+finding nothing about Port Curtis suitable for a settlement, Oxley
+returned south, and anchored at the mouth of the Bribie Island passage,
+which had not been visited by Europeans since Flinders landed there in
+1799, and called it Pumicestone River. Here they were joined by two
+white men, Pamphlet and Finnegan by name, who had, with one other, been
+cast away on Moreton Island a short time previously, and had since been
+living with the blacks. These men piloted Oxley into the Brisbane
+River, which was named by him after Sir Thomas Brisbane, Governor of New
+South Wales. They pulled up the river a long way above the present site
+of the city, and admired the beautiful scenery along its banks. This
+discovery led to the occupation of Moreton Bay as a penal settlement,
+and the foundation of the town of Brisbane.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Captain Wickham and Lieutenant Stokes of the "Beagle" were surveying the
+coast in that vessel, from 1838 to 1843, and Lieutenant Stokes
+afterwards wrote an account of their journeying. They named the Adelaide
+and Victoria Rivers on the north-west coast, both of which they located
+and explored. In 1841, the "Beagle" was on the east coast. She passed
+Magnetic Island, and sailed through Torres Straits into the Gulf of
+Carpentaria on an exploring cruise. In latitude 17 deg. 36 min., they
+entered a large river, which was followed up a long way in the boats,
+and was called the Flinders; it is one of the principal rivers entering
+the Gulf. Further west, in 1840, they had discovered and pulled the
+boats up the Albert River. Stokes was astonished at the open country
+found on the Albert. As far as the eye could reach, nothing was to be
+seen but open extensive plains, which he named "The Plains of Promise."
+The fine stream of the Albert was followed until the boats were checked
+by dead timber about fifty miles from the entrance. The geography of
+northern tropical Australia owes a great deal to Stokes, who wrote most
+interesting accounts of his journeys.
+
+Stokes surveyed and charted the estuaries of the Albert and Flinders
+Rivers, and he named Disaster Inlet, Morning Inlet, Bynoe Inlet,
+Accident Inlet, and the Van Diemen River, the latter he also examined
+and charted for some miles up from its mouth.
+
+Mr. G. Phillips, in 1866-8, made the first examinations and surveys of
+Morning Inlet, Bynoe Inlet, (which he found to be a delta of the
+Flinders), Norman River, Accident Inlet, and the Gilbert River. Mr.
+Phillips was accompanied by the late Mr. W. Landsborough, the work being
+done in an open boat belonging to the Customs Department.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+H.M.S. "Rattlesnake" left Portsmouth in 1846, under Captain Stanley, on
+a surveying and scientific cruise. She reached Queensland waters in
+1847, and visited the Molle Passage, inside of Whitsunday Passage, where
+some of the most striking and charming scenery on the north coast of
+Queensland is to be found. They went as far as Cape Upstart, and failing
+to find water ashore, returned to Sydney. In 1848, they returned to the
+northern coasts, bringing the "Tam o' Shanter," barque, on board of
+which were all the members and outfit of Kennedy's exploring party.
+Captain Stanley assisted Kennedy to land at Rockingham Bay and make a
+start on his ill-fated trip to Cape York.
+
+They found cocoanut trees growing on the Frankland Islands, the only
+instance known of their indigenous growth on the coast of Australia.
+
+They rescued from Prince of Wales Island a white woman who had been four
+and a half years among the blacks. She was the sole survivor of the crew
+of a whaling cutter, the "American," wrecked on Brampton Shoal; she had
+been adopted by the tribe, and spoke the language fluently; she returned
+to her parents in Sydney when the "Rattlesnake" reached port. Professor
+Huxley, the scientist, was one of the party of the "Rattlesnake."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+INLAND EXPLORATION.
+
+
+The cause of exploration and discovery in Australia has never lacked
+enthusiastic volunteers, whether on sea or land. Like the North Pole,
+the hidden secrets of the continent have always attracted men of
+enterprise and energy anxious to penetrate the veil of mystery and
+silence that has hung over this vast territory since Creation's dawn.
+Little by little has the land been explored and opened up for
+occupation; and those geographical secrets so long sought after have
+been unfolded as an open page for all to study and make use of. The
+records of some of the early pioneers, the motives which promoted their
+search, their hardships, and their journeyings, their failures and their
+endurance, will always remain an interesting portion of colonial
+history.
+
+The explorers were types of the men of a generation now gone by; they
+were men who endured a thousand perils and hardships to solve the
+mystery of Australian geography. By their enterprise and discoveries,
+they became the forerunners of the early pastoral pioneers who opened up
+the vast plains of the interior to occupation, and settled the towns
+and ports of the coast. The navigators were the first to make known the
+outlines of the country, then the explorers followed, starting from
+various points to trace its geographical features, follow the courses of
+its rivers, and investigate the suitability of the soil and herbage for
+the sustenance of stock. In this manner was the path opened for the
+pioneer squatter or pastoralist with his flocks and herds to settle on
+and portion out the land, and turn the wilderness to profit and
+occupation. The skeleton map of the country being traced out, the
+details were worked in gradually by the spirit of enterprise and
+adventure that has always been ready in these lands for such work.
+
+The first land explorer of the territory now called Queensland, was, in
+point of time, Allan Cunningham, botanist, explorer, and collector for
+the Royal Gardens at Kew, who arrived in New South Wales in 1816. After
+many journeyings on sea along the coasts of Australia, and inland to the
+Liverpool Plains through the Blue Mountains, he left the Hunter River in
+1827 with a party of six men and eleven horses, discovering the Darling
+Downs, and thus opening the way to settlement in Queensland. He named
+Canning Downs on this trip, and returned the same year. In the following
+year, 1828, he went by sea to Brisbane, and connected that port with the
+Darling Downs by discovering a gap in the coast range, still known as
+Cunningham's Gap. He spent most of his life collecting and exploring,
+and died at the early age of 48 in Sydney. His brother, Richard
+Cunningham, also botanist and collector, accompanied Sir Thomas Mitchell
+in one of his early trips; while camped on the Bogan, he wandered away,
+lost himself, and was killed by the blacks.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of all the explorers who have taken a prominent part in discovering the
+inland territory of Australia in general, and Queensland in particular,
+Dr. Leichhardt occupies the most conspicuous position, and his
+discoveries have been followed by the most extensive and advantageous
+results. He explored all the country on the east coast inland as far as
+the Mitchell River, and on the northern coast as far as Port Essington.
+He was a man of considerable scientific attainments, and his travels had
+a marked effect in inducing settlement along his line of march. His
+memorable trip from Brisbane to Port Essington reflects great honour on
+his memory, and his name will last as long as colonial history.
+
+Leichhardt left Sydney in 1844 in the steamer "Sovereign" for Brisbane;
+he had with him Calvert, Roper, Murphy, Phillips, and Harry Broome, an
+aboriginal. The party later on was joined by Gilbert, a naturalist, and
+one coloured man, a native. They left Jimbour on the Darling Downs, on
+October 1st, 1844, crossed the Dawson on November 6th, and on the 27th
+Leichhardt named the Expedition Range. Two days after that they came to
+the Comet River, so named because a comet was seen there. On December
+31st, the party came across the remains of a camp evidently made by a
+white man, consisting of a ridge pole and forks cut with a sharp iron
+instrument, probably the halting place of some adventurous pioneers who
+travelled on the outside fringe of all settlement, and who frequently
+made long journeys into the unknown land.
+
+On January 10th, they reached the Mackenzie River, and on February 13th
+were on the Isaacs River, coming from the north-west, which they named
+after F. Isaacs of Darling Downs. Leichhardt's account of his journey is
+very interesting. It gives a description of the geological formations,
+of the mountains and peaks, and also a botanical description of the
+flora of the country through which he passed. He describes the game,
+some of which they turned to account to supplement their already scanty
+fare. The expedition passed on March 7th from the heads of the Isaacs to
+another creek, which they called Suttor Creek, after Mr. Suttor of New
+South Wales, who had contributed four bullocks to the expedition. The
+stream enlarging with the additions of other creeks, eventually merged
+into the Suttor River, which they continued to follow down, passing a
+great number of native encampments on the way, and observing large
+numbers of water fowl and other game. The junction of the Cape River was
+passed, and they camped close to a mount which they called Mount
+McConnel, after Fred McConnel, who had contributed to the expedition.
+Near here they discovered the junction of the Suttor with a large river
+coming from the north, called the Burdekin, after Mr. Burdekin of
+Sydney, who had also liberally contributed to the expedition. The river
+is described by Leichhardt as being here about a mile wide, with traces
+of very high floods coming down its channel; the junction of the two
+rivers is in latitude 20 deg. 37 min. 13 sec. On April 22nd, after
+following up the Burdekin through fine open country well grassed, they
+discovered the Clarke River coming in from the south-west, called after
+the Rev. W. B. Clarke, of Sydney.
+
+The course of the Burdekin River, which was closely traced, served the
+little party through more than two degrees of latitude and the same of
+longitude, with a never failing supply of pure water and good grass, and
+then passing over some large fields of basalt towards the north-west,
+they arrived on another watershed, the first river of which they called
+the Lynd, after Mr. R. Lynd, a gentleman to whom the explorer was much
+indebted. The first camp on the Lynd was in latitude 17 deg. 58 min.;
+the country throughout its course was very rough, consisting mostly of
+large granite boulders; its course was generally north-west, and the
+adventurous party were now on waters flowing into the Gulf of
+Carpentaria. The Lynd was followed to its junction with the Mitchell in
+latitude 16 deg. 30 sec., and a marked tree of Leichhardt's is still
+visible at the junction of the two streams. Although they were so far
+from the termination of their journey, their flour had already been
+exhausted for several weeks, their sugar bags were empty as well, they
+were also without salt, and had scarcely any clothes. However, the
+explorer speaks in great praise of the congenial climate they were
+experiencing, the weather being almost perfect (this in June). Having
+followed the course of the Mitchell River till it took them past the
+latitude of the head of the Gulf, it was decided to leave it, and their
+first camp thereafter was in latitude 15 deg. 52 min. 38 sec. Three days
+after leaving the Mitchell, the party was attacked by the natives early
+in the night; Gilbert was killed at once, Calvert and Roper were badly
+wounded, and the whole party had a narrow escape from total destruction.
+After burying their companion, they continued their journey towards the
+Gulf, where the finding of salt water in the rivers gave them great
+encouragement.
+
+One river they named the Gilbert after their late companion, and after
+crossing all the rivers flowing into the Gulf within tidal influence,
+the party steered north-west, naming Beame's Brook and the Nicholson
+River after two of Leichhardt's benefactors. They had now crossed
+Captain Stokes' Plains of Promise, and were making their way along the
+coast to Port Essington. They travelled through poor, scrubby, rough
+country, crossing many rivers and creeks, and enduring a thousand
+hardships, till on September 21st they reached the largest salt water
+river they had seen, with islands in it; this they called the Macarthur,
+after the Macarthurs of Camden, who had given liberal support to
+Leichhardt. Continuing north-west through poor, scrubby country, on
+October 9th they encamped on what was named the Limmen Bight River on
+account of its debouching into Limmen Bight, and about the 19th, the
+Roper was discovered and named after a member of the expedition. Here
+they had the misfortune to have three of their horses drowned, and
+Leichhardt was compelled to leave behind much of his valuable collection
+of plants and stones; a matter that grieved him sorely. A great quantity
+of game was obtained here, ducks, geese, and emus were killed every day,
+and made a welcome addition to their fare of dried or jerked bullock
+meat. They thickened their soup with green hide, which was considered a
+treat; they made coffee from a bean found growing along the river banks,
+which Leichhardt called the "River Bean" of the Mackenzie; and they were
+constantly making experiments, sometimes rather dangerous, as to the
+value as food of the seeds and fruits they found on their line of march.
+
+The South Alligator River was reached, and the same north-west course,
+continued through rocky country, which lamed their two remaining
+bullocks, and when they reached what Leichhardt considered the East
+Alligator River over some extensive plain country in which large numbers
+of geese and ducks were seen, they were full of hope on meeting some
+friendly natives, who could speak a few words of English, evidently
+visitors to the settlement towards which our way-worn explorers were
+trying to find their road. Many tracks of buffaloes were seen, and one
+was shot, and made a welcome change from their usual fare. Eventually
+they reached Port Essington, where Captain Macarthur gave them a kindly
+welcome, and after a month's rest they left in the "Heroine," arriving
+in Sydney March 29th, 1846. Their arrival created great astonishment and
+delight, as they had been mourned as dead for a long time. The
+Legislative Council granted £1,000, and the public subscribed £1,578 to
+the party, which was presented to them by the Speaker of the Legislative
+Council at a large public gathering in the School of Arts in Sydney.
+
+Leichhardt's journey from Moreton Bay to Port Essington furnished the
+first knowledge we had of the capabilities of North Queensland. It was
+the turning of its first leaf of history, for his journey was for the
+greater part through the territory now comprised within its boundaries.
+The record of his trials, hardships, and endurance, will stand
+unequalled among all histories of explorations in any part of Australia.
+
+Mr. John Roper, who was badly speared in the night attack by blacks and
+lost the use of one eye afterwards, died a few years ago at Merriwa,
+New South Wales, and was the last survivor of Leichhardt's first trip to
+Port Essington.
+
+On a subsequent exploring trip, in which he intended to cross Australia
+from east to west, Leichhardt and his party disappeared, and no definite
+information has ever been forthcoming as to the fate that overtook them.
+On this occasion he started from the Darling Downs, and his companions
+were Hentig, Classan, Donald Stuart, Kelly, and two natives, Womai and
+Billy. His last letter is dated April 4th, 1848, from Macpherson's
+station--Coogoon, beyond Mount Abundance, situated about six miles west
+of the present town of Roma.
+
+Traces have been discovered of their journey through a part of the
+Flinders River country. Two horses found by Duncan Macintyre on the
+Dugald, a branch of the Cloncurry, about 1860, were identified as having
+belonged to Leichhardt's expedition, and some traces were discovered by
+A. C. Gregory in latitude 24 deg. south, consisting of a marked tree at
+one of his old camps. These form the only records we possess of the
+ill-fated travellers. Drought may have split his party up in the desert
+interior, and, disorganised and scattered, they would fall an easy prey
+to thirst and delirium, for so soon does extreme thirst in a hot and dry
+climate demoralise the strongest men, that hope is lost even in a few
+hours, and delirium sets in. People thus distracted, lie down under the
+nearest bush to die, after having wandered to every point of the
+compass in search of water until their strength fails. On the other
+hand, the party may have been destroyed by flood, by hunger, or by the
+attacks of hostile natives, a mutiny may have broken out and the party,
+split up into fragments, may have wandered by devious paths and perished
+in detail.
+
+Many expeditions were sent out in search of the lost explorers, and
+although not able to find any definite traces of his route, or to
+account for his disappearance, they were instrumental in opening up vast
+tracts of hitherto unknown territory, and adding largely to the
+knowledge of the geography of the interior.
+
+The following beautiful verses were written by Lynd, a friend of
+Leichhardt's, and have been set to music:--
+
+  "Ye who prepare with pilgrim feet
+    Your long and doubtful path to wend.
+  If whitening on the waste ye meet
+    The relics of my martyred friend.
+
+  "His bones with reverence ye shall bear.
+    To where some crystal streamlet flows:
+  There by its mossy banks prepare
+    The pillow of his long repose.
+
+  "It shall be by a stream whose tides
+    Are drank by birds of every wing,
+  Where Nature resting but abides
+    The earliest awakening touch of spring.
+
+  "But raise no stone to mark the place.
+    For faithful to the hopes of man.
+  The Being he so loved to trace,
+    Shall breathe upon his bones again.
+
+  "Oh meet that he who so carest,
+    All bounteous Nature's varied charms,
+  That he her martyred son should rest
+    Within his mother's fondest arms.
+
+  "And there upon the path he trod,
+    And bravely led his desert band,
+  Shall science like the smile of God
+    Come brightening o'er the promised land.
+
+  "How will her pilgrims hail the power,
+    Beneath the drooping Myall's gloom.
+  To sit at eve and muse an hour,
+    And pluck a leaf from Leichhardt's tomb."
+
+  --Lynd.
+
+The following descriptions are taken from a journal of an expedition
+into the interior of tropical Australia in search of a route from Sydney
+to the Gulf of Carpentaria by Lieut.-Colonel Sir T. L. Mitchell,
+Surveyor-General of New South Wales, in 1845.
+
+The money for this attempt was found by the Legislative Council of New
+South Wales. The Secretary for the Colonies sanctioned the expedition,
+which had been suggested by the leader himself, during a slack time in
+his department. This trip, though it never approached the Gulf, or even
+its watershed--which was its main object at starting--nevertheless
+discovered such an extent of available country as to make it one of the
+most valuable and interesting expeditions that were ever carried out in
+North Queensland. This was Mitchell's third exploring trip, and it is
+referred to now, as it relates to the discovery and opening up of a
+large part of western, as well as a part of North Queensland. There is
+no doubt that Mitchell would have reached the Gulf waters if his
+equipment had not been so cumbersome and altogether dependent on good
+seasons. An account of his outfit will be interesting reading in these
+times when people think little of moving from the South to the North of
+Australia with any kind of a party, and his departure must have looked
+like the start of a small army on the move to conquer a new country. Sir
+Thomas Mitchell took with him eight drays drawn by eighty bullocks, two
+iron boats, seventeen horses (four being private property), and three
+light carts; these were the modes of conveyance. There were 250 sheep to
+travel with the party as a meat supply. Other stores consisted of
+gelatine and a small quantity of pork. The party consisted of thirty
+persons, most of whom were prisoners of the Crown in different stages of
+probation, whose only incentive to obedience and fidelity was the
+prospect of liberty at the end of the journey. According to the
+testimony of their leader, they performed their work throughout
+creditably; they were volunteers from among the convicts of Cockatoo
+Island, and were eager to be employed on the expedition. Some of those
+engaged on a previous trip were included in this expedition.
+
+The whole party left Parramatta on November 17th, 1845, and crossed the
+Bogan on December 23rd, that country being then settled with stations,
+the result of discoveries made in previous years by the same intrepid
+explorer. Their journey led them by St. George's Bridge, the present
+site of the town of St. George, on to the Maranoa River, then entirely
+unsettled, and this river was followed up towards its source. Touching
+on the Warrego, discovering Lake Salvator, and passing the present site
+of Mantuan Downs, they reached the head of Belyando. This was thought at
+first to be a river likely to lead to the Gulf country, but after
+following it down nearly to the latitude where a river was described by
+Leichhardt as joining the Suttor from the westward, Mitchell decided it
+was a coast river, and so the party returned on their tracks to a depôt
+camp which had been established on the Maranoa, coming to the conclusion
+that the rivers of Carpentaria must be sought for much further to the
+westward. Therefore, continuing their travels in this direction, the
+Nive River was discovered, and this was thought for a time to be a water
+leading to the Gulf, but after following it towards the south-east, the
+party turned northwards, and thus discovered the far-famed Barcoo River,
+which they thought was the Victoria of Wickham and Stokes. Again high
+hopes were entertained that at last a river was found that would lead
+them to the desired end, and that this was a Gulf River. They followed
+the course through all the splendid downs country, below where the Alice
+joins it, and found it was going much too far to the south to be a Gulf
+river, being thus again disappointed in their expectations. Mitchell
+speaks in glowing terms of the country through which they passed, and
+named Mount Northampton and Mount Enniskillen, two prominent landmarks.
+Returning to his party, he took the route home by the Barwon and Namoi,
+and so back to Sydney, which all reached in safety after an absence of
+over twelve months. Mitchell's discovery of the Barcoo River was due to
+a division of his party, and a light equipment, by which he could
+advance as much as twenty or twenty-five miles a day, and still keep a
+record of his latitude and progress.
+
+This trip of Mitchell's led to the appointment of his second in command,
+Mr. E. Kennedy, to return and discover where the Victoria or Barcoo
+really went to, and to obtain further information of the mysterious
+interior of the great Australian continent, and its peculiar river
+system. Mitchell was famous for his exploring trips in the southern part
+of Australia, and his two volumes of explorations remain a classic in
+literature. His account of Australia Felix and the Werribee are most
+interesting. Mitchell invariably traversed his route with compass and
+chain, so that his positions can always be verified.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Edward Kennedy, who was second in command under Sir T. L. Mitchell when
+the Barcoo was discovered, was appointed to lead a party to the same
+districts in 1847. He followed down the Barcoo to where a large river
+came in from the north, which he named the Thomson, after Sir E. Deas
+Thomson, of Sydney. The Barcoo he identified with Mitchell's Victoria,
+which at a lower stage is called Cooper's Creek. Kennedy intended to go
+to the Gulf of Carpentaria, but the blacks removed his stock of rations
+left at the Barcoo, and so he decided to return to Sydney by way of the
+Warrego, Maranoa, Culgoa, and Barwon Rivers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Gregory brothers had successfully conducted several exploring
+expeditions in West Australia before entering on those journeys in North
+Queensland that have helped to make known its north-eastern parts. A
+letter from the Secretary of State for the Colonies, the Duke of
+Newcastle, to the Governors in Australia, was received, in which it was
+recommended that an expedition should be organised for the exploration
+of the unknown interior of Australia, stating that a sum of £5,000 had
+been voted by the Imperial Government for the purpose, and suggesting
+that Mr. A. C. Gregory should be appointed to the command, and Brisbane
+be the point of departure. The expedition was to be conveyed by sea to
+the mouth of the Victoria River, on the northern coast of Australia. It
+was to be an Imperial expedition, paid for by the Imperial Government,
+for the purpose of developing the vast and unknown resources of the
+continent. It was called the North Australian Exploring Expedition. The
+preliminary arrangements having been completed, the stores, equipment,
+and a portion of the party were embarked at Sydney on the barque
+"Monarch," and the schooner "Tom Tough," and sailed for Moreton Bay on
+July 18th, 1855, arriving at the bar of the Brisbane River on the 22nd.
+The horses and sheep were collected at Eagle Farm by Mr. H. C. Gregory,
+and shipped on board the "Monarch" on July 31st. After some difficulties
+in getting over the bar and obtaining the necessary supply of water at
+Moreton Island, the expedition may be said to have started on its
+responsible task on August 12th, 1855.
+
+The party consisted of eighteen persons, the principal members
+being:--Commander, A. C. Gregory; Assistant Commander, H. C. Gregory;
+Geologist, J. S. Wilson; Artist and Storekeeper, J. Baines; Surveyor and
+Naturalist, J. R. Elsey; Botanist, F. von Muller; Collector and
+Preserver, J. Flood. The stock consisted of fifty horses and two hundred
+sheep; and eighteen months' supply of rations were taken.
+
+They sighted Port Essington on September 1st, but the next day the
+"Monarch" grounded at high water on a reef, and was not worked off for
+eight days, during which time the vessel lay on her side, and the horses
+suffered very much in consequence, indeed, the subsequent loss of
+numbers of them is attributed to the hardships endured during the
+period. The horses were landed at Treachery Bay under great
+difficulties, having to swim two miles before reaching the shore. Three
+were drowned, one lost in mud, and one went mad and rushed away into
+the bush and was lost. The "Monarch" sailed for Singapore, while the
+"Tom Tough" proceeded up the Victoria River, where Mr. Gregory and some
+of the party took the horses by easy stages to meet them, as they were
+so weak from the knocking about on the voyage that they had frequently
+to be lifted up. This little trip occupied three weeks before they
+joined the party on the schooner. When they met, it was to learn that
+mishaps had again occurred, the vessel had grounded on the rocks, and
+much of the provisions had been damaged by salt water; the vessel had
+also suffered injury; some of the sheep had died from want of water, and
+the rest were too poor to kill. The record is one continuous struggle
+with misfortune, but owing to good general-ship and patience, progress
+was made, and the main objects of the expedition being constantly kept
+in view, each step taken was one in advance.
+
+After the horses had recovered a little from their journey, Mr. Gregory
+and a small party made an exploring trip towards the interior, and to
+the south to latitude 20 deg. 16 min. 22 sec., passing through some
+inferior country, and touching the Great Sandy Desert seen by Sturt, red
+ridges of sand running east and west, covered with the inhospitable
+Triodia or Spinifex grass. As his object was to visit the Gulf country,
+he retraced his steps to the camp on the Victoria River; and after
+adjusting matters there, dividing his party and sending the vessel to
+Coepang for supplies, with directions to come to the Albert River, he
+started on his journey to the Gulf of Carpentaria on June 21st, 1856.
+His party comprised the two Gregorys, Dr. Mueller, Elsey, Bowman, Dean,
+and Melville, seven saddle and twenty-seven pack-horses, with five
+months' provisions.
+
+They followed down the Elsey River to the Roper, so called by
+Leichhardt, and passed a camp of some explorers some six or seven years
+old, where trees had been cut with sharp axes. They reached the
+Macarthur River on August 4th, after passing through much poor country
+covered with inferior grasses. Their track skirted the tableland, and as
+the journal states, the country was barren and inhospitable in the
+extreme. The Albert River was reached on August 30th, 1856, and not
+finding any traces of the "Tom Tough" having been there, the explorer
+started from that point to Moreton Bay. Coming to a large river, which
+Leichhardt thought to be the Albert, Mr. Gregory named it after the
+great explorer, and it is now known as the Leichhardt. This river they
+crossed, and travelled east-south-east. After crossing the Flinders
+River, where the country consisted of open plains, the party travelled
+east-north-east through a flat ti-tree country, north of what is now the
+Croydon goldfield, a barren, flat, and dismal prospect. Gregory says in
+his journal, that had the season been earlier, he would have preferred
+travelling up the Flinders, and turning to the Clarke from its upper
+branches. However, they moved on to the Gilbert River, and followed it
+up through rocky defiles and rough granite country till they reached the
+Burdekin River on October 16th; the next day they passed one of
+Leichhardt's stopping places, where he camped on April 26th, 1845, in
+latitude 19 deg. 37 min. S. They were living on horseflesh at this time,
+and mention is made of a horse that had not carried a pack since leaving
+the Gilbert, being killed for food, and its flesh dried in the sun,
+forming what is called jerked meat, an article well known to early
+pioneers when salt was absent. They frequently saw the blacks, who
+mostly ran away at the sight of the horses, probably the first they had
+ever seen; but no casualty happened during the whole trip, owing to the
+good management of the leader, and the caution always shown where danger
+was likely. On October 30th they camped near the Suttor River, with
+Mount McConnell in view. After the junction of the Suttor and Burdekin
+Rivers had been passed, the Suttor was followed up past the latitude of
+Sir Thomas Mitchell's camp on the Belyando, and thus his route connected
+up with Dr. Leichhardt's. They left the Belyando, and on November 8th,
+killed the eleven months' old filly, born on the Victoria River after
+landing, the flesh was cured by drying, and the hair scraped off the
+hide, which was made into soup. They passed the Mackenzie River, went on
+to the Comet, below the junction, and found a camp of Leichhardt's party
+on their second journey. They reached the Dawson River, and following a
+dray track, they came again in contact with civilisation at Connor and
+Fitz's station, where they were hospitably received. They then travelled
+past Rannes (Hay's station), Rawbelle, Boondooma, Tabinga, Nanango,
+Kilcoy, Durundur, reaching Brisbane on December 16th, 1856.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. A. C. Gregory's expedition in search of Leichhardt was equipped by
+the New South Wales Government. The objects of this expedition were
+primarily to search for traces of Leichhardt and his party, and secondly
+the examination of the country in the intervening spaces between the
+tracks of previous explorers. The expedition was organised in Sydney,
+and made a start from Juandah, on the Dawson River, on March 24th, 1857.
+They crossed the dense scrubs and basaltic ridge dividing the Dawson
+waters from those trending to the west, flowing into the basin of the
+Maranoa River. The Maranoa was reached in latitude 25 deg. 45 min., and
+they followed it up to Mount Owen, advanced to the Warrego River,
+westward from there to the Nive, and pursued a north-north-west course
+to the Barcoo River, then called the Victoria. As the captain of the
+"Beagle" had discovered and named the Victoria River on the north-west
+coast first, the name of Sir T. Mitchell's river was changed to the
+Barcoo, a native name. When Mr. Gregory traversed this fine country, one
+of those devastating periodical droughts that visit this inland
+territory now and again, must have been prevailing for many months, and
+had left the land a wilderness. That land Mitchell had described in 1846
+in glowing language as the fairest that the sun shone on, with pastures
+and herbage equal to all the wants of man, and water in abundance
+covered with wild fowl. When Gregory passed through it in 1857, it was
+bare of all vegetation, there was scarcely any water in the bed of the
+river, and that only at long intervals, nothing but the bare brown earth
+visible.
+
+In latitude 24 deg. 35 min. S., longitude 136 deg. 6 min., a Moreton Bay
+ash tree was discovered with the letter [Symbol: L] cut in, and the
+stumps of some small trees cut with an axe, evidently one of
+Leichhardt's camps, but no further traces could be discovered, though
+both sides of the river were followed down. The Thomson River was
+reached and followed up to latitude 23 deg. 47 sec., and here they were
+compelled to retrace their steps owing to the terrible state of the
+country through drought; it being impossible to travel either north or
+west, although at that time the country was not stocked. The
+far-reaching plains were devoid of all vegetation except for
+drought-resisting herbage. The principal object of their journey had to
+be abandoned and a southerly course taken, as it was considered madness
+to travel into the sandy desert bordering on the river during such a
+season. So, with horses weakened by hard living, they followed down the
+Thomson, over dry mud plains that wearied both man and beast, and across
+stony desert ridges to Cooper's Creek and to Lake Torrens. Before
+reaching the branch of Cooper's Creek called Strezlecki Creek by Captain
+Sturt, they saw the tracks of two horses lost by that explorer in this
+locality years before. Their course was continued south-south-west
+towards Mount Hopeless at the northern extremity of the high ranges of
+South Australia, which had been visible across the level country at a
+distance of sixty miles. Eight miles beyond Mount Hopeless, they came to
+a cattle station, recently established by Mr. Baker. After that they
+proceeded by easy stages to Adelaide.
+
+It is, perhaps, with reference to the physical geography of Australia
+that the results of the expedition are most important, as by connecting
+the explorations of Sir T. Mitchell, Kennedy, Captain Sturt, and Eyre,
+the waters of the tropical interior of the eastern portion of the
+continent were proved to flow towards Spencer's Gulf, if not actually
+into it, the barometrical observations showing that Lake Torrens, the
+lowest part of the interior, is decidedly below sea level.[A]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As the people of Victoria were desirous of taking part in the
+explorations of Northern Australia, a most elaborate and expensive
+expedition was organised to travel across Australia from Melbourne to
+the Gulf of Carpentaria. Great credit is due to the enterprise of the
+people and the Government of Victoria for this display of public spirit,
+for, apparently, Victoria had less to gain than any of the other
+colonies by geographical discoveries in the interior. Robert O'Hara
+Burke was appointed leader, G. J. Landells second, and W. J. Wills third
+in command. Burke and Wills and two others reached the Gulf, and named
+the Cloncurry River; but the notes of the trip do not give much
+information as to the journey or the country travelled through. The
+expedition left Melbourne on August 20th, 1860, fifteen men in all,
+provided with twelve months' provisions, making twenty-one tons of
+goods. The party was too large and cumbersome, and the time of year was
+badly chosen for a start; there were no bushmen with them, and the
+leader was a man unfamiliar with bush life, though full of devotion to
+the cause he had taken in hand. The record of the trip is one full of
+disaster, arising from mistakes that could have been avoided had men
+competent for the task been chosen. They started from Cooper's Creek,
+where Brahe was left with a depôt store, while Burke, Wills, King, and
+Grey with three months' provisions set out for the Gulf on December
+16th, 1860. The party that had been so well equipped in every way on
+leaving Melbourne, was reduced to too small a compass when the critical
+time for action arrived. They followed the edge of the stony desert to
+the point reached by Sturt on October 21st, 1845, and then steered for
+the Gulf of Carpentaria, at the mouth of the Flinders. After passing
+through the Cloncurry Ranges, the little party followed one of the
+tributaries of that river, one that had numerous palm trees on its
+banks, which must have been either the Corella or Dugald, to the west of
+the Cloncurry River, and on February 11th, 1861, in the middle of the
+wet season, Burke and Wills reached tidal water in the Gulf, on the
+right bank of the Bynoe River, which is a delta of the Flinders River.
+Thus the object of the expedition was attained. On the return journey,
+Grey died through exhaustion and weakness. The ground was very heavy for
+walking owing to the rains, and the only horse had to be abandoned,
+while the camel was almost too weak to travel, even without any load.
+Burke, Wills, and King arrived at Cooper's Creek on April 21st, having
+been absent four and a half months on their trip. They found the depôt
+had been deserted that morning by Brahe; he, however, had remained
+several weeks beyond the time he was instructed to stay. Instead of
+following on his tracks, Burke decided on starting via Mount Hopeless to
+Adelaide, but not finding water, they returned to Cooper's Creek,
+growing weaker every day. Their last camel died, and they were forced to
+live on the seeds of the Nardoo (Marsilea quadrifida), which, however,
+gave them no strength. The blacks treated them kindly, but they left
+the creek, and then came the mournful end. Burke and Wills died, and
+Howitt's search party found King, the only survivor of the little band,
+wasted to a shadow in a camp of the blacks. As no proper record of the
+journey, or description of the country was made, and in the diary many
+gaps occur of several days together, the expedition was barren of
+scientific results. There is merely the fact of visiting the shores of
+the Gulf, and returning to Cooper's Creek, under the most distressing
+circumstances and hardships. Although successful in the main, it is a
+record of sorrow, despondency, and a sacrifice of life. On this
+expedition camels were used for the first time in Australia. Until the
+fate of Burke became known, many efforts were made to discover what had
+become of him, and to this end, there were five exploring parties sent
+out in search of him. They were Howitt's, Walker's, Landsborough's,
+Norman's, and McKinlay's, and their discoveries led to an important
+increase in the knowledge of Australia.
+
+[Footnote A: There is reason to believe from later and more detailed
+surveys that Lake Torrens is not below the level of the sea.]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. A. W. Howitt's party proceeded to the spot where Brahe had kept the
+depôt, and seeing no traces there of the missing party (although they
+had dug up the stores left), he searched down the river, and they came
+on King sitting in a hut which the blacks had made for him. He presented
+a melancholy appearance, wasted to a shadow, and hardly to be recognised
+as a civilised being except by the remnants of clothes on him; this was
+on September 15th, 1861. As soon as King was a little restored, they
+looked for Wills' remains, and having found them, gave them burial,
+marking a tree close by; a few days afterwards Burke's bones were found
+and interred. They called all the blacks around, and presented them with
+articles such as tomahawks, knives, necklaces, looking glasses, combs,
+etc., and made them very happy indeed. When the sad story was revealed
+there was much sorrow and grief throughout Victoria; and it was agreed
+that Mr. Howitt should go back and bring down the bodies for a public
+funeral in Melbourne. A large sum of money was voted to the nearest
+relatives of Burke and Wills, and a grant made to King sufficient to
+keep him in comfort for life. A searching inquiry was made into the
+circumstances relative to the conduct of some of the officers of the
+expedition, and a few of them were severely censured for neglect of duty
+in not properly supporting the leader.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One of the expeditions in search of Burke and Wills was led by John
+McKinlay, who travelled through a great part of North Queensland, and
+reported favourably on its capacity for settlement. He started from
+Adelaide in August, 1861, and arrived at the Albert River in May, 1862,
+thus crossing the continent a second time. He was a bushman well fitted
+for such an enterprise by experience, endurance, and decision. The
+second in command was W. O. Hodgkinson, subsequently Minister for Mines
+in Queensland. McKinlay found a grave near Cooper's Creek which he
+examined, and found a European buried there, which he understood from
+the natives to be a white man killed by them, but afterwards it was
+known to have been Gray's burial place. The party made an excursion into
+the melancholy desert country described by Sturt many years before,
+consisting of dry lakes, red sand hills, and stones. They travelled
+through to the Cloncurry district, and onwards to the Gulf, passing
+through country now under occupation, Fort Constantine, Clonagh, and
+Conobie being the principal stations there, and thence over the
+Leichhardt River to the Albert, which was reached on May 13th. McKinlay
+expected to receive supplies from the "Victoria," but she had sailed
+three months before, and thus short of provisions and generally hard up,
+he had to tackle a long overland journey to the settlements on the
+eastern side of North Queensland, a most trying and harassing
+undertaking, which, however, he accomplished successfully. He had first
+to eat the cattle, then the horses, then the camels. They killed their
+last camel for food--it was called "Siva"--and it proved a saviour, as
+they arrived at Harvey and Somer's station, on the Bowen, with their
+last piece of camel meat, and one horse each left. They had a hard rough
+trip from the Gulf, travelling in by the Burdekin, and McKinlay proved
+himself a daring and most persevering and experienced explorer. The
+McKinlay River--a branch of the Cloncurry--and the township of McKinlay
+are named after him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Though not pertaining to any exploration or discovery connected with
+North Queensland, it will be interesting to refer shortly to the Horn
+Exploring Expedition which was carried out on a scientific basis to make
+known the country in the more central part of the Australian continent.
+The scientific exploration of central Australia, or that part known as
+the Macdonnell Ranges, had long been desired by the leading scientific
+men of Australia. The party consisted of sixteen in all, with twenty-six
+camels, and two horses, and made a final start from Oodnadatta (which is
+the northern terminal point of the railway from Adelaide), on May 6th,
+1894.
+
+In the very centre of the continent there exists an elevated tract of
+country known as the Macdonnell Ranges. These mountains, barren and
+rugged in the extreme, rise to an altitude of nearly 5,000 feet above
+sea level, while the country surrounding them has an elevation of about
+2,000 feet above the sea level, and slopes away towards the coast on
+every side, which at no point is nearer than 1,000 miles. The mountains
+are at the head of the Finke River; the region is called Larapintine
+from the native name of the river. The existence of these ranges saves
+that portion of the continent from being an absolute desert, as they
+catch the tropical showers, which flow down the sides of the mountains,
+and cause inundations in the low country, and a spring of grass, which,
+however, is not permanent, the rainfall being from five to twelve inches
+annually. These ranges measure, from east to west, about 400 miles, with
+a width of from twenty to fifty miles, the entire area covering more
+than 10,000 square miles of country. Apart from these ranges, there are
+several remarkable isolated masses, about 32 miles S.S.W. from Lake
+Amadeus. Rising like an enormous water-worn boulder, half buried in the
+surrounding sea of sand hills, is that remarkable monolith known as
+"Ayers' Rock." Its summit can be seen more than forty miles away, as it
+rises about 1,100 feet above the surrounding plain. The circumference at
+its base is nearly five miles, and its sides are so steep as to be
+practically inaccessible, although Mr. W. C. Gosse, the explorer,
+succeeded with great difficulty in ascending it. It is quite bare of
+vegetation, except a few fig trees growing in the crevices. Fifteen
+miles west of Ayers' Rock is another remarkable mountain mass called
+Mount Olga, rising to 1,500 feet from the plain. The Finke River flows
+south from these Macdonnell Ranges towards Lake Eyre, and water is only
+found after floods. Both alluvial gold and quartz reefs are found in the
+ranges. Professor Ralph Tate, of the University of Adelaide, and Mr. J.
+A. Watt, of the Sydney University, assisted in drawing up the report.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+EXPLORERS IN NORTH QUEENSLAND.
+
+
+The second journey of Edmund Kennedy, in 1848, was confined to the east
+coast of North Queensland, and is one of the most mournful narratives of
+disaster and death; only three of the party returning out of the
+thirteen that started.
+
+The party was hampered with an unsuitable outfit of drays, as well as
+some undesirable men, unused to the bush and out of accord with the
+objects of an exploring expedition.
+
+The members of a party going into an unknown country have to depend on
+the fidelity of each to all, and according to the devotion displayed by
+each, so will success or failure attend the expedition. Kennedy had men
+in his party he had better have left behind.
+
+His troubles and trials commenced after landing at Rockingham Bay, near
+the site of the present town of Cardwell, in trying to pass over swamps,
+and then cutting his way through tangled, dark, vine-scrubs to the
+summit of the steepest ranges in North Queensland. They were obliged to
+leave their carts and harness behind, and wasted much time in looking
+for a place to ascend the ranges. They quarrelled with the blacks soon
+after starting, and some of the men took fever. They reached the
+Herbert, and went into the heads of the Mitchell and Palmer Rivers,
+passing over the site of the Palmer goldfield. Here the strength of the
+party began to fail, and horse flesh was their main dependence for food.
+At Weymouth Bay, Carron and seven men were left, all sick with
+disappointment and hardship, and in a low state of health. Kennedy and
+Jacky, with three men, pushed on along the coast northwards to Cape
+York. One man was wounded by a gun accident, and he and the other two
+were left at Pudding Pan Hill, and were never heard of again. The leader
+and Jacky went on, intending to return to the scattered party. They were
+followed by hostile blacks, who speared the horses, and afterwards
+mortally wounded Kennedy himself, who died in Jacky's arms. Jacky
+himself was also speared, but he buried his leader in a grave dug with a
+tomahawk, and after many hairbreadth escapes and much privation, he
+reached the northern shore, where the "Ariel" was waiting for the
+arrival of the party. Only one man, and he an aboriginal, endured to the
+end, and but for his keen bush knowledge, courage, and splendid
+devotion, neither of the two other survivors would have been rescued,
+nor any tidings of the mournful fate of the party have been made known
+to the world. The "Ariel" sailed to Weymouth Bay, and found the two
+men, Carron and Goddard, barely alive, the only survivors of the eight
+left there by Kennedy.
+
+Kennedy's papers planted in a tree by Jacky, were afterwards recovered
+by him. When the nature of the country through which Kennedy travelled
+is understood and its difficulties known, it is no wonder that mishaps
+occurred to him. Stony mountainous country, thick dark scrubs, long
+dense grass, with tribes of fierce blacks ready to throw a spear on
+every occasion, were enough to tax the capacity of any leader, without
+the accompaniment of sickness, want of rations and disorganisation.
+
+
+  E. KENNEDY.
+
+  His task is ended, his journeying o'er.
+  He rests in the scrub, by that far northern shore;
+  By the long wash of the Coral Sea,
+  Brave Kennedy sleeps now quietly.
+
+  Not lonely he lies in his last bed,
+  For loving memories o'erbrood his head;
+  Kindly to him, the tall ferns lean,
+  In love, their fellowship of green.
+
+  Sweetly for him, the bird's deep song,
+  Is sung when summer days are long;
+  Soft drips the dew in the morning sun,
+  Rest harassed one, thy task is done.
+
+  His native friend, faithful to death,
+  Stayed by him to his latest breath;
+  Nor thought he had himself to save,
+  Till he had made his leader's grave.
+
+Mr. W. Landsborough left Brisbane in the brig "Firefly" on August 24th,
+1861, in company with the colonial warship "Victoria," taking the outer
+passage. Rough weather on the voyage caused distress and a loss of seven
+horses out of thirty, and they were compelled to seek refuge inside the
+Barrier Reef at Hardy's Island. The brig grounded broadside on the reef;
+the masts had to be cut away to save the vessel; and the horses were
+landed through a large hole cut in the side of the ship. After some
+delay, the "Victoria" appeared in sight, towed the crippled craft off,
+and proceeded with her in tow in order to carry out the objects of the
+expedition. Passing through Torres Straits, they called at Bountiful
+Island and obtained a good supply of turtles, anchoring in Investigator
+Roads, situated between Bentinck and Sweer's Islands. Landing on Sweer's
+Island, they found the wells left by Flinders in 1802, also the
+"Investigator" tree. After clearing the sand out of the wells, the water
+was found fresh and good. Mr. Landsborough made a preliminary survey of
+the Albert River to find a site for landing his horses and for starting
+on his overland journey.
+
+The Albert had not been surveyed since Captain Stokes had ascended it as
+far as Beame's Brook in 1842, but being known, it was appointed a
+rendezvous for exploring parties. They found no traces of Burke having
+visited this spot. The hulk of the "Firefly" was towed up the Albert,
+and used as a depôt for the expedition, and this was her last voyage.
+The writer saw her early in 1865; she was then in an upright position,
+close to the left bank of the river, with the tide flowing in and out
+where the side had been cut open for the horses to land on the reef. The
+horses soon recruited after landing, the grass round the depôt being
+excellent. They now got ready for a start to Central Mount Stuart,
+leaving the "Victoria" to wait ninety days for their return. The party
+consisted of Mr. Landsborough, Messrs. Campbell and Allison, and two
+blackboys, Jimmy and Fisherman. Their horses had improved so much that
+they gave a lot of trouble at first, throwing their packs and scattering
+the gear over the plains, but they soon quietened down to work. The
+little expedition followed mainly the Gregory River towards its source,
+and were much surprised to find a beautiful river with a strongly
+flowing stream and long reaches of deep water, overhung by pandanus,
+cabbage-palm, and much tropical foliage. They soon discovered the use of
+the heart of the palm as a vegetable, though it can only be obtained by
+the destruction of the tree. Blacks were frequently seen, observing
+their movements, looking on at a distance, as they usually do at the
+first sight of a white man; but they did not attempt to interfere with
+them. The Gregory River is distinct from most of the Gulf rivers. The
+luxuriant foliage along its banks, cabbage-palms, Leichhardt trees,
+cedar and pandanus, denote the permanency of the running water, while
+level plains, covered with fine pasture grasses, extend on either side
+for scores of miles. They named the Macdam, an anabranch of the Gregory,
+and observing a river joining on the right side of the Gregory, called
+it the O'Shannassey; the source of the flowing stream that made the
+river so useful and picturesque was shortly afterwards found, where a
+large body of clear water fell over some basaltic rocks, showing that
+springs caused the flow, and not summer rains in the interior as was
+thought at first. This is not the only instance in North Queensland
+where running streams flow from springs bursting forth from the basaltic
+table lands. Above the source of the water, the Gregory partook of the
+character of other Gulf rivers, dry sandy channels, dependent for their
+supply of water on tropical rains. They followed up the now dry river,
+and reached a fine tableland over 1,000 feet above sea level, which was
+called Barkly's Tableland, after Sir Henry Barkly, late Governor of
+Victoria. Open basaltic plains, covered with the very finest pastures
+now met them everywhere, though water was scarce. After journeying
+across the open country southwards, a river was found, which was called
+the Herbert; it flowed in the opposite direction to the tributaries of
+the Gregory. Following down the Herbert, they spent Christmas Day on a
+sheet of water called Many's Lake, and lower down Francis Lake was seen;
+still lower down grass and water both became so scarce as to induce the
+leader, much against his will, to abandon the project of reaching
+Central Mount Stuart. In latitude 20 deg. 17 min., and longitude 138
+deg. 20 min., he was compelled to retrace his steps. It was a season of
+drought, no water having come down the Herbert, and being limited to
+time to meet Captain Norman at the Gulf in ninety days, forty-three of
+which had already passed, no resource was left but to return by the
+route they had come. They followed the right bank of the Gregory River,
+and met a large number of natives, who threatened them on several
+occasions, but the little party of five passed through without any
+mishap, owing in a great measure to the care taken by the leader, who
+was well aware of the good old bush maxim of always being prepared and
+never giving a chance away. In following the Gregory, they ran Beame's
+Brook, which forms the head of the Albert, down on the right bank. This
+is an effluent from the Gregory, and is one of the most remarkable
+streams in Queensland. It is very little below the level of the
+adjoining plains, and is a clear stream of pure water, overshadowed by
+cabbage-palms, pandanus, and ti-trees; it traverses the plains some
+fifty or sixty miles before it flows into the Albert. It is said the
+blacks can turn the water out of this channel by blocking up the exit
+from the main stream with stiff mud, and thus catch fish that may be
+left in the holes. The little channel is boggy in its course, and the
+country is subject to great floods in the wet season. The party came to
+the depôt, and found all well, and there learnt that Mr. F. Walker,
+another explorer, had been there and reported finding Burke's tracks on
+the Flinders, about seventy miles distant; and having restocked himself
+with some provisions, had left to follow up the traces. After three
+weeks' detention, and arranging matters with Captain Norman,
+Landsborough took his departure with his party, intending to go right
+through to Melbourne. Their supply of rations was of the most miserable
+kind, not even as good as prison fare. The stores provided for the
+expedition were ample for all requirements, but they were refused tea,
+sugar, and rum. Starting on a long hazardous overland journey of unknown
+duration, the inadequate outfit accorded to these enterprising men from
+a steam vessel within a fortnight's sail of a commercial port, was
+unjustifiable, and must be condemned.
+
+The expedition left the Albert on February 8th, 1862, a party of six,
+Mr. Landsborough, Mr. Bourne, and Mr. Gleeson, with three blackboys,
+Jimmy, Fisherman, and Jacky, and twenty-one horses, whilst there was a
+continent to cross before they could reach their destination. The tracks
+of Walker's party were just discernible, as they followed a course that
+took them to the Leichhardt River, over level plains covered with
+flooded box and excæcaria, commonly called "gutta percha," one of the
+Euphorbia family; these plains are subject to floods, and are very much
+water-logged during the rainy seasons on account of their being so
+level. The grass grows in great tussocks, showing only the tops above
+the water for many miles, and these were the "Plains of Promise" of
+which so much was expected from the reports of the early explorers! They
+crossed at the bar of rocks at what is now Floraville, and directed
+their course to the Flinders River, eastward through Newmayer Valley,
+and on past Donor's Hills, so named in honor of an anonymous
+contributor, a Melbourne gentleman, who gave £1,000 to the exploration
+fund. In following the right bank of the Flinders, they passed Fort
+Bowen, a small mount rising abruptly from the plains near the right bank
+of the river, which was called after the first Governor of Queensland.
+Many springs were met with surrounding the base of the little mountain
+forming mounds on the top of which water may be found. The nature of the
+ground in places is very treacherous; the water has a strong taste of
+soda, and is quite undrinkable in some of the springs. About twenty
+miles south-east from Fort Bowen are two similar small mountains, Mount
+Browne, and Mount Little (now forming part of Taldora run), at which
+springs similar to those at Fort Bowen are also to be met with. These
+small mountains, the highest of which is only seventy-five feet above
+the surrounding plain, were named by Mr. Landsborough after a firm of
+solicitors in Brisbane, the Hon. E. I. C. Browne, and Robert Little. The
+latter subsequently became the first Crown Solicitor of Queensland, but
+both gentlemen are now dead. The ground in places is dangerous, for
+under the light crust, that shakes and bends beneath the weight of a
+horse, are depths of soft mud, sometimes of a bluish colour, that would
+engulf both horse and rider. One spring is hot, the water at the surface
+being 120 deg., evidently a natural artesian well. Heavy tall ti-trees
+surround all these mud springs, and also innumerable small mounds that
+are the result of the pressure of water from the great depths below. The
+whole extent of country travelled through consists of open treeless
+plains, covered with good pasture grass, and occasionally some small
+white wood trees (atalaya hemiglauca). As the river ran in the direction
+they were travelling, they followed it up, and about where Richmond now
+stands, they saw the fresh tracks of a steer or cow making south,
+supposed to have wandered from some of the newly-formed stations towards
+the Burdekin. After this, the river trending too much to the east, they
+crossed the divide, thus leaving the Gulf waters behind them. The change
+occurs in an open downs country without any ranges to cross. A
+watercourse called Cornish Creek took them to the Landsborough, and
+following it down to the Thomson River, they passed Tower Hill, where
+Mr. Landsborough had been exploring before, and had left his marked
+trees. Travelling southwards, they made for the Barcoo, and thence to
+the Warrego, and on May 21st they came to a station of the Messrs.
+Williams where they were received in a most cordial manner. They were
+now about eight hundred miles from Melbourne, and seven hundred from
+Brisbane, and it was decided to make for Melbourne by following the
+Darling.
+
+McKinlay and Landsborough on their return were the recipients of a
+public demonstration by three thousand people in the Melbourne
+Exhibition Building, and had a splendid reception.
+
+Landsborough died on March 16th, 1886, from an accident caused by his
+horse falling with him, and he is buried close to the north end of
+Bribie Passage at Caloundra, where he had resided with his family for
+some years previously. Landsborough was a very honorable and lovable
+man, of simple tastes, fond of reading and indefatigable in his love for
+travelling about the country.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+F. Walker led a party from Rockhampton in search of Burke and Wills in
+1861. He was a bushman of varied experience, and he has the credit of
+originating the system of native police in Queensland. He performed the
+task of exploration with which he was entrusted creditably and ably.
+Starting from C. B. Dutton's station, Bauhinia Downs, on the Dawson
+River, he and his small party went through the Nogoa country to the
+Barcoo, where he saw traces of Gregory and Leichhardt. They then went
+north-west to the Alice and on to the Thomson River, and from there on
+to the head of the Flinders, which was called the Barkly. A marked tree
+of Walker's exists near the town of Hughenden. Instead of following down
+the river, he struck across the basaltic ranges and tableland northwards
+till he came to the heads of a river which he called the Norman, but
+which is more likely the head of the Saxby River; however, he followed
+it down to its junction with the Flinders, where he saw the tracks of
+Burke and Wills going down with four camels and one horse; crossing the
+river he found the same traces returning. Walker now went to the Albert
+River, where he met Captain Norman of the colonial warship "Victoria" at
+the depôt there, and obtaining fresh supplies, he returned to the
+Flinders. And now commenced a painful march through the ranges and
+tableland, so hard on the horses' feet that they could be traced along
+the stones by the tracks of blood from their hoofs. The men suffered
+from the seeds of the speargrass, which penetrated the skin and caused
+irritation. The Burdekin was reached, and some fresh supplies were
+obtained at Bowen; and then passing through the settled districts to the
+south of that town, Walker arrived at Rockhampton early in June, having
+been absent about nine months.
+
+He had several encounters with the blacks during his journey--attacks
+and reprisals. About 1865, Walker was sent out by the Queensland
+Government to report on the best route for an overland telegraph line
+to connect the Gulf with Brisbane. On his recommendation, the line was
+taken up the Carron Creek by way of the Etheridge to the east coast at
+Cardwell, through some very poor country. He selected this route on
+account of there being timber suitable for poles; but as the white ants
+soon destroyed them, the line had to be rebuilt with iron poles.
+
+Poor Walker died of Gulf fever in 1866 at a miserable shanty on the
+Leichhardt River, close to Floraville, and is buried there. His second
+in command on the telegraph expedition was a Mr. Young, who was
+subsequently telegraph master at Townsville in 1870. Young was a fine
+honorable man, but, unfortunately, he received an injury whilst in the
+execution of his duty repairing the telegraph line between Bowen and
+Townsville, from the effects of which he subsequently died, only a few
+days after his marriage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A small private expedition, under the charge of J. G. Macdonald, started
+from Bowen, on the east coast of North Queensland, in 1864, for the
+purpose of discovering a practicable route for several mobs of cattle
+then being sent towards the Flinders or westward for the occupation of
+new country. The party consisted of Mr. Macdonald, G. Robertson, Robert
+Bowman, and Charlie, a native of Brisbane, with seventeen horses, and
+two months rations. The starting point was from Carpentaria Downs, on
+the Einasleigh River, then the farthest out settlement, the latitude
+being 18 deg. 37 min. 10 sec. S., long. 144 deg. 3 min. 30 sec. E. The
+course generally was westward, following down the Gilbert River, and
+thence to the Flinders and Leichhardt Rivers. These they crossed, and
+then travelled on to the Gregory, which was followed down to the Albert.
+The object of the expedition having been achieved, and the country
+deemed suitable for stocking, the party commenced their return journey,
+crossing the Leichhardt River at a rocky ford, where the scenery was
+beautiful and the site admirably adapted for a head station. Eventually
+one was formed there, but was swept away in the disastrous flood of
+1870, when the waters covered all the surrounding country to a great
+depth. The journey home was uneventful, the only occurrence being the
+finding of the skeleton of a horse they had left on their outward
+journey at the Gilbert River, and which had been killed by the blacks
+and eaten. The stages made were somewhat astonishing for an exploring
+party. The time taken by the journey outwards and the return was
+fifty-three days to Carpentaria Downs, and to Bowen seventy-one days in
+all; this trip proves what can be done with a lightly-equipped party, in
+contrast to many of the unwieldy expeditions fitted out in the south.
+Mr. Macdonald's favourable report of the country was the direct means of
+a good deal of settlement on the Gulf. Mr. Macdonald, in conjunction
+with Mr., afterwards Sir, John Robertson, and Captain Towns, of Sydney,
+took up many stations on the Gulf waters and expended large sums of
+money in stocking them. They also despatched the first vessel with
+loading to the Albert, bringing consigned goods to settlers, as well as
+supplies for their own consumption. This vessel was the "Jacmel Packet,"
+which arrived in the Albert River from Sydney in 1865, thus leading to
+the establishment of Burketown. Sir John Robertson personally visited
+the Gulf in 1868, travelling overland from the east coast as far as
+Normanton and Burketown, and returning the same way.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Hann, one of the pioneers of the Burdekin country, was the leader of
+a small expedition sent out by the Queensland Government for exploring
+and prospecting purposes through the peninsula to Cape York. The party
+started from Fossilbrook station, in 1872; they named the Tate and Walsh
+Rivers, and then went on to the Palmer River, after crossing the
+Mitchell, which they found a strong running stream. On the Palmer gold
+was discovered, and the place was called Warner's Gully, after Frederick
+Warner, the surveyor to the party; this being the first discovery of
+gold in that country. Travelling still north, they reached the Coleman
+River, and visited Princess Charlotte Bay. They discovered the Kennedy
+and Normanby Rivers, taking a few sheep with them as far as this. They
+then travelled to the present site of Cooktown, and followed up the
+Endeavour River for thirty miles, striking south to the Bloomfield
+River, where the dense vine scrubs greatly impeded their progress. On
+their way back they passed through some very rough country. So
+successful an expedition, made in so short a time, reflects credit on
+the leader of the party, who was a thorough bushman, and well acquainted
+with the dangers from hostile blacks in such a country. This expedition
+resulted in the development of one of the richest goldfields in
+Australia; bands of prospectors soon followed on their tracks and opened
+up the great alluvial diggings of the famous Palmer Goldfields, from
+which nearly £5,000,000 worth of alluvial gold was won.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+W. O. Hodgkinson had been a member of the Burke and Wills expedition in
+1860, and crossed Australia as second in command of McKinlay's party in
+1862.
+
+In 1876, he led an expedition sent out by the Queensland Government to
+explore the north-west country from the Cloncurry to the South
+Australian boundary. The party was only a small one, but the work was
+well carried out, and the results were satisfactory and justified the
+expenditure incurred. They started from Cloncurry, which at that time,
+1876, was already a settled mining township, but the country west and
+south was not well mapped out. They crossed the rolling plains on the
+Diamantina River, and in their reports describe life in the far west in
+its natural aspect, the game of the country, the vegetation, the
+spinifex, the awful sand ridges, and all the details of a journey made
+at the cold time of the year. The country, according to the vicissitudes
+of the season, may be either a desert or a meadow, for the rainfall is
+very uncertain. They followed up the Mulligan River in well-watered
+country, reaching Mary Lake, on the Georgina, and then on to Lake Coongi
+in South Australia. Mr. Hodgkinson's expedition was described in a
+diction not much used by the old explorers, whose records were made in a
+matter-of-fact style, with little attention to effect. Nevertheless, his
+descriptions are eminently interesting and life-like, and have a charm
+for all who like to read a traveller's report of an unknown land.
+Hodgkinson's name is commemorated by the goldfield named after him, as
+well as the river upon which it is situated.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+G. E. Dalrymple led the north-east coast expedition fitted out by the
+Queensland Government in 1872. This was altogether a coasting trip by
+boats, and led to much information about the high values of the rich
+alluvial lands fringing the banks of the rivers which run into the sea
+on the east coast of the northern part of Queensland. The Johnstone, the
+Russell, and Mulgrave Rivers were named by him, as well as the Mossman
+and Daintree. Here was found most magnificent scenery, and on the
+Johnstone they discovered some fine cedar (one tree measuring ten feet
+in diameter), besides a vast extent of rich land fit for sugar growing.
+All these rivers have since been opened up for cultivation, and
+sugar-cane, with other tropical products, has taken the place of dense
+scrubs that then lined the banks of these comparatively unknown
+rivers--although the boats of the "Rattlesnake" had been into the
+Russell and Mulgrave Rivers in 1848. The country appeared to Dalrymple
+to be inhabited by very large numbers of blacks, and game was to be
+found in abundance. The name of Dalrymple is perpetuated in many places
+on the map of Queensland. A township on the Burdekin River, as well as
+several mountains and other remarkable features, have been named after
+George Elphinstone Dalrymple, who was a splendid type of man in every
+sense of the word. He was at one time treasurer of the Colony.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A search expedition for Leichhardt was promoted by the ladies of
+Melbourne, and although very little is recorded of its work, it has a
+melancholy interest from the fact that the leader, a man of great
+promise and energy, lost his life in endeavouring to carry out the task
+entrusted to him, and he now lies in an unmarked grave on the bank of a
+lonely billabong near the Cloncurry River, a few miles from his
+brother's station, Dalgonally.
+
+The expedition was entrusted to Duncan McIntyre, who had found on the
+Dugald River, during a private expedition in 1861, two horses that
+belonged to Leichhardt's last expedition. Mr. McIntyre went out with
+camels and horses, and formed a depôt camp at Dalgonally station on
+Julia Creek in 1865. He went on to Burketown, then just opened, for the
+purpose of buying stores; at the time of his visit the Gulf fever was at
+its worst, and he took ill and died on his return to the camp. He is
+spoken of as a man of high attainments and of large experience in
+bushmanship, and his untimely death was fatal to the objects of the
+expedition, the leadership of which was assumed by Mr. W. F. Barnett. A
+short trip was undertaken by him, in company with J. McCalman as second
+in charge, Dr. White, a medical man, Colin MacIntyre, G. Widish, and
+Myola, a blackboy. They started with nine camels, six of which were
+young ones, ten horses, and stores for five months. They travelled
+westward over the Cloncurry to the Dugald to the camp, marked XLV. of
+Duncan McIntyre on his first expedition to the Gulf, the camp where he
+found the two horses that Leichhardt lost on his last trip. Near here is
+the grave of Davy, one of their blackboys, who died from fever. After
+travelling over the country in the neighbourhood for a few weeks, and
+not having any fixed plan or instructions, they returned to the depôt
+camp. The expedition, which was well equipped, was eventually given up
+and the party dispersed. In consequence of the death of the leader, no
+notes of his journey were obtainable. The camels remained on Dalgonally,
+the property of Mr. Donald McIntyre, for years, and increased to quite a
+herd. The ladies of Melbourne sent a handsome gravestone suitably
+inscribed to be erected over the lonely grave of the explorer, but for
+many years it lay unnoticed on the beach at Thursday Island, and is
+probably still there.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The trip of Major-General Fielding to Point Parker is in no sense of the
+term an exploring trip through new country, but rather an exploratory
+survey for railway purposes through a fairly well settled tract.
+Nevertheless, some notes of the journey may be found of interest.
+
+In 1881, negotiations were entered into between the late Mr. (afterwards
+Sir) Thomas McIlwraith, then Premier of Queensland, and a syndicate
+called Henry Kimber and Co., to construct a railway on the land grant
+principle, between Roma and Point Parker, on the Gulf of Carpentaria.
+These negotiations resulted in the formation of a larger syndicate
+called the Australian Transcontinental Railway Syndicate, Limited, which
+initiated their scheme by making certain proposals to the Government of
+Queensland, and sending out General Fielding to traverse the proposed
+route in 1882.
+
+The party, under General Fielding's leadership, started from Roma, and
+went by way of Victoria Downs and Yo Yo to Biddenham, on the Nive,
+thence by Lansdowne and Barcaldine Downs to the Aramac, and on to Mount
+Cornish, delays occurring along the route for repairs to waggonettes and
+harness, and for the purpose of exchanging horses or buying new ones.
+Following down the Upper McKinlay, they reached the Cloncurry on October
+7th, and were joined there by the Government Geologist, Mr. R. L. Jack.
+More delays occurred here for the want of stores, and it was not until
+November 1st that all the members of the expedition reached Kamilaroi
+station, on the Leichhardt River; Gregory Downs was reached on the 7th,
+and Point Parker on November 15th; the expedition having camped
+sixty-seven times. On the night of their arrival at Point Parker, the
+natives surrounded the camp at midnight. There were about a hundred of
+them, but they left when three shots were fired over their heads; no one
+was hurt on either side, and this was the only demonstration made by the
+aboriginals.
+
+Point Parker is described as having a very limited area for settlement,
+only about 7,000 acres being available. The Government schooner "Pearl"
+was waiting here, and after a careful survey of Point Parker and Point
+Bayley, they visited Bentinck and Sweer's Islands and Kimberley (now
+called Karumba), at the mouth of the Norman River. Finally, on November
+13th, they sailed up the Batavia River in the "Pearl" for about forty
+miles, and explored it still further in the boats, thence on to Thursday
+Island on December 4th, 1882. In General Fielding's opinion, the
+country traversed on his route may be divided into sections; the first
+part between Mitchell and Malvern was neither fitted for pastoral
+purposes nor for agricultural settlement; thick scrub, bad soil, and
+poor timber prevailing. Between the Ward and the Nive, and thence to the
+Barcoo, Thomson, and Diamantina Rivers was first-class sheep country,
+requiring a good deal to be done in the way of providing water to enable
+the country to be fully stocked. The country between the McKinlay and
+Fullerton Rivers is subject to flood. Approaching the mining district of
+Cloncurry, the country is not so favourable for sheep, and is better
+adapted for raising cattle and horses. From the Cloncurry through the
+Gregory to the Nicholson River is all good cattle country, but the grass
+seed along the banks of the watercourses, and the flooded nature of
+parts of the country in the rainy seasons, render it unfit for
+profitable sheep-farming. From the Nicholson to the Gulf at Point
+Parker, the country is described as particularly useless. The formation
+is desert sandstone overlaid with nodular ironstone conglomerate; the
+vegetation dense, chiefly ti-tree scrubs growing upon spuey or rotten
+ground, together with spinifex, saltpans, and marshes. Such was General
+Fielding's estimate of the country through which the line was to pass.
+Captain Pennefather of the "Pearl" schooner had been surveying the
+waters between Allan Island and Point Parker. He was very reticent as to
+the qualifications of the place as a port; but looking at the
+soundings, and the open nature of the anchorage, coupled with the
+utterly valueless nature of the soil surrounding the place for over one
+hundred miles, the less said about it as a shipping port the better.
+
+The whole scheme was condemned by Parliament, and the general election
+of 1883 returned a majority against the principle of land grant
+railways. One of the first reform acts of the new Parliament was to
+repeal the Railway Companies' Preliminary Act. No doubt, had the scheme
+been favoured by the people of Queensland, a great impetus would have
+been given to settlement by the introduction of so much private capital
+into the colony, while the large annual payment of interest on borrowed
+money would have been avoided to a great extent. At all events, there is
+no transcontinental railway as yet, and when it does arrive, Point
+Parker will not be chosen as the terminus. Mr. Frank Hann, a brother of
+William Hann, the discoverer of the Palmer Goldfield, accompanied
+General Fielding as pilot. Hann is a first-class bushman, as hard as
+nails and full of energy. He was for many years the owner of Lawn Hill,
+situated on a western tributary of the Gregory River, but ticks ruined
+his herd. He is now in Western Australia.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first surveyor appointed by the Queensland Government in the Gulf
+was Mr. George Phillips, lately the member for Carpentaria. He surveyed
+and laid out Burketown, Carnarvon, on Sweer's Island, and Normanton, on
+the Norman River. In company with W. Landsborough, in 1866, he explored
+and named the Diamantina and other western rivers. The former was named
+after Lady Bowen, the Governor's wife, whose Christian name was
+Diamantina Roma. The party passed close by the spot where Winton now
+stands, and by Kynuna, and from the head waters of the Diamantina they
+struck across via the heads of Rupert's and Alick's Creeks to Minamere
+(then Sheaffe's), thence to the Flinders, and on to Burketown. There
+were no signs of settlement between the Thomson River at Mount Cornish,
+and where they struck the Flinders River. Mr. Phillips and Mr.
+Landsborough were the first to navigate the Norman River, and they chose
+the site for the township.
+
+The writer met this party coming down the Flinders on their way to
+Burketown, in which place he had been laid up for several weeks with the
+Gulf fever; he was then on his way back to Conobie, more dead than
+alive. This was in the early part of 1866.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+PIONEERING WORK IN QUEENSLAND.
+
+
+The narrative of the pastoral industry in Queensland is almost the
+history of North Queensland itself. The outward flow of that restless
+and progressive industry can be traced from its infancy, when Mr.
+Patrick Leslie, of Collaroi, in the district of Cassilis, New South
+Wales, moved his stock northwards, and after first exploring the country
+by himself and a man named Peter Murphy, placed his sheep in June, 1840,
+and formed the first station in Queensland on the Darling Downs
+(discovered by Allan Cunningham 13 years before). He called this first
+station Toolburra, and afterwards selected Canning Downs station also.
+The stock consisted of nearly 6,000 sheep, two teams of bullocks and
+drays, one team of horses and dray, ten saddle horses, and twenty-two
+men, all ticket-of-leave men, pronounced by Mr. Leslie to be the best
+men he ever had in his life. The town of Warwick is built near this
+classic spot, where first the pioneers of the squatting industry pitched
+their original camp. The next to reach the Darling Downs were Hodgson
+and Elliott, who occupied Etonvale in September, 1840. No white man had
+settled on Darling Downs previous to Patrick Leslie in 1840. After
+Hodgson, King and Sibley were next to hold Gowrie, and these were
+followed by others, until in 1844, there were thirty stations formed and
+occupied in that district, the stock mostly coming from the Hunter River
+district of New South Wales.
+
+In 1843, the first station on the Burnett River was formed by Russell
+and Glover who took up Burrandowan, and they were soon followed by other
+settlers, occupying all the beautiful country on the Upper Burnett and
+Mary Rivers. Here the soil is rich, the surface water abundant, the
+climate equal to any in Australia; and thus a rich territory was added
+to the young colony.
+
+The names of the early settlers and pioneers of this country are as well
+known as the stations they formed. The Healeys of Tabinga were settled
+not far from Burrandowan. Over the Brisbane Range, John Eales, from the
+Hunter, was the first settler with stock in the Wide Bay District. The
+Jones', of merchant fame in Sydney, were also among the first over the
+range at or near Nanango. The course they followed took them down
+Barambah Creek to Boonara station.
+
+All the centre of the Burnett district was occupied by squatters coming
+by this line, while the upper, or Auburn portion, from lower down by
+Burrandowan. Lawless Bros. took up Boobijan; Anderson and Leslie
+occupied Gigoomgan; whilst McTaggart, H. C. Corfield, Perrier, Forster,
+Herbert W. H. Walsh, Dr. Ramsay, E. B. Uhr, and others followed soon
+after.
+
+Following on this, came the occupation of the runs on the Dawson River,
+a tributary of the Fitzroy, and onwards to the north and far out to the
+great west, where the downs rolled towards the setting sun. The Fitzroy
+River, draining an enormous territory, equal to any river in Queensland,
+and surpassed by but few in Australia, was gradually and successfully
+occupied. Through the brigalow and mulga scrubs, dense and forbidding,
+over mountain ranges, stony and steep, across flooded rivers, and over
+or around all obstacles, the pioneers still moved on and took up and
+occupied runs. Westward to the Maranoa and Warrego, and northward by the
+Fitzroy to the Burdekin and Flinders River, and even over the South
+Australian borders to Port Darwin, their mission was carried on, to fill
+the land with the outposts of civilisation.
+
+Before 1853, the Archer family were squatting on the Burnett River, and
+in that year Charles and William Archer went northward on an exploring
+trip during which they discovered and named the Fitzroy River, and rode
+over the spot where now stands the city of Rockhampton, with all its
+wealth, civilisation, and promise of prosperity. They started from
+Eidsvold, on the Burnett, simply with pack horses and two men, passed
+from Dalgangal to Rawbelle, and at the foot of Mount Rannes found the
+establishment of the brothers Leith Hay, then the farthest out station.
+They had some very troublesome country to penetrate. Besides hilly
+mountainous ranges, brigalow and vine scrubs surrounded the base of
+Mount Spencer, whose thousand feet of height they climbed, and gave to
+it its name. They crossed the Dee, and passed close to the site of the
+famous Mount Morgan gold mine. And so on they journeyed to the top of a
+range, where the most astounding view lay beneath them.
+
+Through a large and apparently open valley, bounded by table-topped,
+pyramidal and dominant mountains, with here and there
+fantastically-shaped sandstone peaks, a large river wound its way
+towards the sea.
+
+They supposed this river to be the confluence of the Dawson and
+Mackenzie, and the sea before them to be Keppel Bay. They explored the
+valley of the Fitzroy, which they named after Sir Charles Fitzroy, they
+being the first to discover it, and then went on to Gracemere Lake, a
+magnificent sheet of fresh water, about two miles long and three
+quarters of a mile wide. They rode on till they came to tidal water in
+the Fitzroy, and found it a fine navigable stream, with the tide running
+strongly up it. Near here they came upon a large lagoon covered over
+with a beautiful pink water-lily (nymphoea), which they called the
+Pink Lily Lagoon. In the account of their journey, they described the
+cycas palm growing with clusters of round smooth nuts encircling the
+top as a crown, under the leaves. After inspecting the country from
+opposite Yaamba to what is now known as Archer's cattle station, and
+laying it out in blocks, they returned to the Burnett. These pioneers
+were looking for new country, and being perfectly satisfied with the
+Fitzroy and its promise of future prosperity, they returned with stock
+two years later, in 1855, and took legal possession. It was on August
+10th of that year that they brought the first stock on to Gracemere and
+occupied it as a run.
+
+In the same year, 1855, the site of the future town of Rockhampton was
+examined. The name of the town was chosen by Mr. Wiseman, Commissioner
+of Crown Lands for New South Wales, who had been sent up from Sydney to
+confirm the Messrs. Archer in the possession of their discovery. The
+rocks crossing the river situated above the present suspension bridge
+and forming the limit of navigation, helped to the choice of a name for
+the new northern town. Gracemere head station is on the south side of
+the Fitzroy River, and is distant seven miles from Rockhampton. Till
+then, Rannes had been the outer limit of occupation towards the north,
+in which direction settlement was extending. The Archers were a family
+of pioneer settlers, several brothers assisting in the enterprise of
+opening up country and forming new stations. They were extremely popular
+men of high character and attainments; and the name of Archer will be
+known as long as Rockhampton exists. Archibald Archer represented the
+town and district for many years in the Queensland Assembly, and acted
+as Colonial Treasurer in the first McIlwraith Ministry with credit to
+himself and much benefit to the young colony.[B] The Archers may justly
+be said to be the original discoverers and actual founders of
+Rockhampton, for although the town took its great start on the road to
+importance from the time of the Canoona rush in 1858, called in those
+days the Port Curtis rush, the site of the town had been made known five
+years previously by the Archer Brothers.
+
+Amongst the early settlers in the country about Gladstone were the
+Landsboroughs, at Raglan Station, James Landsborough, a brother of the
+explorer William, living there after taking it up. They held a run in
+the Wide Bay district, called Monduran, on the banks of the Kolan River,
+a beautiful and picturesque stream of clear flowing water, with varied
+patches of dark pine scrubs growing down to the water's edge.
+
+William Young, a sturdy self-reliant old pioneer, took up a run called
+Mount Larcombe, and held it with sheep. Mount Larcombe can be seen from
+the deck of passing steamers close to Gladstone. Mr. Young was foremost
+in opening the country between Gladstone and Rockhampton. He obtained a
+rough sketch from Mr. Charles Archer of country they had tendered for,
+and on going out came across a large branch of the Calliope which had
+not been so taken up. This he chose for his new run, and Mount Larcombe
+being at the head of the creek, he named the station after it. He took
+his sheep from the Burnett, and settled on his new country on May 29th,
+1855. The reason for those of the advance guard pushing out so far was
+on account of the tendering system for runs then in force. By this
+system, those who marked out country could hold it unstocked, and unless
+a few hundred pounds were paid by them for the right of actual
+occupation, the pioneers in search of land had to go out further.
+Prospecting thus for new country without any intention of stocking it,
+but merely of selling the information and the claim to the country to
+any one in search of a run for their stock, became a regular
+speculation.
+
+[Footnote B: Mr. Archibald Archer died early in 1902, in London, at the
+age of 82. Mr. Alexander Archer and his wife (a daughter of the late Sir
+R. R. Mackenzie) were both lost in the "Quetta," which foundered near
+Cape York.]
+
+The Wide Bay district only extended as far as Little's station at
+Baffle's Creek, and on to Blackman's. When separation took place, and a
+new district was declared, those who had tendered for new country for
+the purpose of reselling, had nine months allowed them to stock their
+country in. Otherwise they were called upon to forfeit it. Mr. Young had
+a great deal of trouble from the blacks; they made a raid on his
+shepherds, killing several, but afterwards he found them very useful for
+minding sheep, etc. At that time, two small trading vessels handled the
+trade to Sydney, and from this port Mr. Young had to get his rations, as
+well as shepherds. Many of the latter sent to him were found useless for
+bush life.[C]
+
+     [Sidenote: Rockhill, No. 3.]
+
+     [Sidenote: Bugulban, No. 1.]
+
+     [Sidenote: Gunyah, No. 2.]
+
+     [Sidenote: Borroran, No. 4.]
+
+                                                    No. 55117.
+
+               Crown Lands Office, Sydney, 29th January, 1855.
+
+     Nos. 2, 5, 11 and 12 of December.
+
+     Gentlemen,
+
+     I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your
+     tenders (opened on the 4th ultimo), for new runs of Crown
+     Lands in the district of Port Curtis, named in the
+     margin, and I beg to inform you, that the same now await
+     the report of the Commissioner of the district, in
+     accordance with the Regulations of the 1st January, 1848.
+
+     I have the honor to be, Gentlemen,
+
+     Your most obedient servant,
+     GEO. BARNEY.
+     Chief Commissioner of Crown Lands.
+
+     Messrs. R. & F. BLACKMAN,
+     Maryborough, Wide Bay.
+
+This copy of the letter from Colonel Barney to the Messrs. Blackman
+regarding the tenders of their runs shows that they were early in the
+Port Curtis district, and occupied a run called Warrah, still held by
+Mr. F. A. Blackman in 1897. The whole of the Wide Bay district had
+become settled with stations, and the necessity for an outlet for
+produce and receipt of supplies led to the port of Gladstone being
+opened. Among the first to establish a business there was Richard E.
+Palmer, who built a wharf and a large wool shed, so that the wool from
+Rannes and other stations lately formed could be shipped away. He then
+took up Targieni station, near Mount Larcombe, and lived there for many
+years. Among the early settlers in the district about Gladstone were the
+Bells of Stowe, father and sons, Mrs. Graham on the Calliope; and
+Charles Clarke, James Landsborough, John Forsyth. Edwin Bloomfield held
+Miriam Vale; Robinson and Wood had taken up Caliungal; William Elliott
+passed Gracemere with sheep, and took up Tilpal in 1857. Ramsay and
+Gaden held Canoona run when the gold rush took place in 1858. Mr. A. J.
+Callan, for some years member of the Legislative Assembly for Fitzroy,
+took up Columbra run. All the surrounding country became parcelled out
+among the early arrivals, and settlement began to spread itself into
+far-away districts to the north and north-west. Civilisation was
+pronounced enough when ladies followed their husbands on many of the new
+stations. Raglan was famous for its hospitality as early as 1860, when
+Mrs. James Landsborough presided, and her numerous family grew up there.
+
+[Footnote C: Mr. Young ended his days peacefully in Sandgate in 1899, at
+an advanced age.]
+
+From Marlborough, a small village on the outward stock route, the track
+led out west towards Peak Downs, a beautiful tableland discovered by
+Leichhardt. Mr. Stuart, known as Peak Downs Stuart, took up one of the
+first runs in 1861 with sheep brought from Victoria. These sheep were
+destroyed by order on account of scab breaking out among them. Mr. P. F.
+Macdonald and Sydney Davis were among the earliest settlers on Peak
+Downs. Mr. William Kilman, whose name is so well known in the central
+districts, was one of the enterprising pioneers of the north. In 1854,
+when he was twenty-five years old, he set out on an exploring trip along
+the Queensland coast. On that journey, he came to the river on which
+Rockhampton now stands, and, passing up the coast, went as far as
+Cleveland Bay, where Townsville was founded some years later. He
+returned to New South Wales from Cleveland Bay, and in 1856 took up a
+large tract of country on the upper waters of the Dawson. It would thus
+appear that Mr. Kilman visited the locality of Townsville ten years
+before Mr. Andrew Ball came down from Woodstock station to explore the
+country.
+
+Captain John Mackay, explorer and pioneer settler, as well as navigator,
+discovered Port Mackay in 1860. The history of the discovery and
+settlement of the district and town of Mackay is of interest, showing
+what individual effort in conjunction with large experience and great
+physical fortitude and endurance can accomplish. Captain Mackay left
+Armidale on January 16th, 1860, with a party of seven men and
+twenty-eight horses, to explore the north country for runs for stocking
+purposes; they travelled by Tenterfield, Darling Downs, Gayndah, and
+Rockhampton. After recruiting and refitting here, they started again on
+March 16th, passed Yaamba and Princhester, on to Marlborough, where Mr.
+Henning was forming a station. They left civilisation behind them when
+leaving this place, and bearing to the north-west over the range, which
+was very rugged and broken, followed the Isaacs and travelled on towards
+the Burdekin. Returning towards the coast, they found a river they
+called the Mackay, traced it to the coast, and having marked trees along
+its course, they decided to return south, having been successful in the
+object of their expedition.
+
+The party now fell sick of fever and ague, a most prostrating malady,
+and were reduced to the utmost extremity for want of provisions, for the
+sick men were for some time unable to travel. In suffering and pain,
+hungry and thirsty, and utterly weary, they started again for civilised
+parts. The blackboy, their faithful companion, died on the journey,
+while some of the others could scarcely manage to ride. On returning,
+they met Mr. Connor, who was forming Collaroy station; here they
+remained a few days recruiting, then crossing the Broadsound Range, they
+camped with Mr. John Allingham, who was travelling with stock looking
+for country, passed Mr. Macartney at Waverley, and arrived at
+Rockhampton after an absence of four months. They tendered for the
+country discovered in accordance with the Crown Lands Regulations, and
+the tenders were accepted by the Queensland Government, from which date
+they were allowed nine months for stocking, failing which, any person
+putting stock in, could legally claim the country. In order to obtain
+some compensation for the discovery they had made, Captain Mackay got
+cattle on terms, and started from Armidale on July 26th, 1861, with
+1,200 cattle, fifty horses and two teams of bullocks. The stock
+travelled by Dalby to the Burnett and Dawson, passing Banana and Rannes,
+and thence to Rockhampton on October 27th, where supplies were waiting
+for them from Sydney. They then passed northwards through the Broadsound
+country, where several stations were then forming, and arrived at the
+foot of the coast range, when by double-banking the teams, that is,
+putting two teams on to one dray with only a part of a load on, they
+managed, after several days' hard work, to get the loads and stock
+across the terrible barrier. After great trouble in forcing a way
+through ranges, scrubs, and other obstacles, the stock arrived at the
+spot selected for the head station on the Mackay River, now called the
+Pioneer, on January 11th, 1862. The station was named Green Mount, and
+having turned their weary stock loose on the well-grassed plains, the
+party set to work to form a station hut and yards. All their stores were
+exhausted, and after waiting long months for the vessel that was to have
+come from Rockhampton, they at last discovered that she was below Cape
+Palmerston at anchor; she was brought up the river four miles west of
+where the town now stands, and landed the stores on the south bank.
+Captain Mackay then chartered the vessel at the rate of £8 per day, and
+spent a few days in taking soundings, bearings, etc.; having made a
+rough chart of the river and adjacent coast line, it was sent with the
+correct latitude and longitude to the Crown Lands Office, Brisbane, on
+which report the Mackay River was declared a port of entry. The name of
+the river was changed to the Pioneer, as Commodore Burnett (afterwards
+lost in H.M.S. "Orpheus" on the Manakau Bar in New Zealand), had, in
+1863, named a stream flowing into Rockingham Bay, the Mackay, and
+recommended the new discovery should be called after H.M.S. "Pioneer,"
+which he commanded. The Queensland Government not wishing to detract
+from the merit of discovery, named the town Mackay. There can be no
+manner of doubt but that the honor of discovering the Pioneer River and
+the Port of Mackay, and making that discovery public information, so as
+to be of service in opening up the district, rests entirely with Captain
+John Mackay.[D]
+
+The discovery of the fine pastoral country in the Barcoo by the Mitchell
+expedition was soon followed by occupation. On October 12th, 1862, the
+first mob of cattle arrived on the Thomson River, for Mount Cornish and
+Bowen Downs. The Thomson River was at that time supposed to be the
+Barcoo, but Mr. N. Buchanan found out that it was the same river that
+had been named the Thomson by Kennedy in 1847. The first station was
+named Bowen Downs, and the first stock to arrive on these waters were
+the cattle started from Fort Cooper, where they had been depasturing for
+some time. The mob consisted of five thousand head, and the route
+followed was by Lake Elphinstone on to Suttor Creek, down that creek to
+the Belyando, following that river up a short distance, then across by
+Bully Creek, crossing the range at the Tanks by Lake Buchanan on to
+Cornish Creek, and down that creek to their destination.
+
+[Footnote D: Captain Mackay, in 1902, succeeded the late Captain Almond
+as Harbour Master at Brisbane.]
+
+Suttor Creek station then belonged to Kirk and Sutherland, and was the
+farthest out station in that direction. On arriving at Bully Creek, a
+dry stage ahead of forty-five miles, caused the leader to leave 1,500
+head behind him, the balance arriving at their destination on October
+12th, 1862. Mr. R. Kerr was in charge, with four white stockmen, one
+blackboy, three gins, and a white man named Maurice Donohue, who died
+before he had been there very long, and was doubtless the first white
+man buried in the district. In the following year, 1863, a drought
+occurred on the Thomson, the plains were left destitute of grass, and
+the waterhole, on the banks of which the station was formed, was reduced
+to two feet in depth. When full there would be about eighteen feet of
+water in it, and it was afterwards found that it took eighteen months
+without rain to bring it down to that level. In about March of this
+year, Messrs. Rule and Lacy, as also Mr. Raven, arrived on Aramac Creek
+with sheep, the former taking up and stocking the country now known as
+Aramac station. Mr. Raven first settling down higher up the creek,
+afterwards returned to Stainburne, taking up and stocking the present
+Stainburne Downs. At the same time that these sheep arrived at the
+Aramac, three thousand cows from the Narran (N.S.W.) arrived on Bowen
+Downs, Messrs. Hill and Bloxham in charge; all these stock went out by
+the Barcoo, and the cattle suffered severely from the effects of the
+drought, one thousand head being lost en route. Four of the party,
+Messrs. Hill, Bloxham, Burkett, and Best, who took out these cows to
+Bowen Downs, decided to go upon an exploring trip on their own account.
+They went up Landsborough Creek, and on to the Flinders River, intending
+to go to Bowen; after getting over the Range on the east side of the
+Flinders, it commenced to rain, and continued an incessant downpour for
+four days, making the country so boggy that they could not travel; some
+of their horses died, and some got crippled by getting bogged among the
+rocks; so they decided to return to Bowen Downs. They got down from the
+ranges into one of the gorges, and then Mr. Best was laid up with
+rheumatic fever, and was unable to travel. Their supplies ran short, and
+they had to kill some of their horses for food; by the time Mr. Best
+was able to move, they had only three horses left; so they decided to
+kill one of these, take a portion of the flesh with them, and walk to
+Bowen Downs for assistance, leaving Mr. Best behind, as he was still
+unfit to travel. They left the two horses with him, and the remainder of
+the horse they had killed, jerking the meat for him before they started.
+The three then began their tramp, Mr. Bloxham being leader and guide;
+they promised to be back in twenty-eight days, and urged Mr. Best to
+remain where they were leaving him, but if he did move to be sure to
+follow their tracks. They also gave him directions as to the route to
+follow to reach Bowen Downs. They got to Bowen Downs in due course,
+after surmounting innumerable difficulties. Mr. Bloxham, who was the
+oldest of the party, was very weak on arrival, and suffering severely
+from the consequences of subsisting on jerked horse flesh; they were all
+wearing horse hide sandals, their boots being worn out. After several
+days spell, Mr. Bloxham made up a party and went to the rescue of the
+man left behind. The other two left for civilisation. The rescue party
+met Mr. Best on the twenty-ninth day from leaving him, a few miles from
+his camp. He had stayed the twenty-eight days as agreed, and started in
+on the twenty-ninth. They, of course, were very glad to find him, and
+the meeting was mutually satisfactory. During his sojourn in the gorge,
+Mr. Best only saw the blacks once; and then he fired his gun off to
+attract their attention, but they took no notice of him. Another report
+said that as he had been using his gun as a crutch, the muzzle had got
+blocked up with mud, and when he fired it off to scare the blacks away
+the gun burst with such a terrible roar that they never ventured near
+him again.
+
+The first pioneer to stock country on the Flinders was James Gibson, who
+took up a run called the Prairie, in 1861. He also stocked several runs
+in the neighbourhood and on the Clarke River. He started two lots of
+cattle from the Barwon (N.S.W.), one in charge of Mr. E. R. Edkins, now
+of Mount Cornish, the other mob in charge of Mr. George Sautelle, now
+long settled at Byrimine station, near Cloncurry. These cattle passed by
+Goondiwindi, through the Downs country, by Yandilla, to the Dawson, by
+Rockhampton, and then by Fort Cooper and Bowen on to the Clarke River.
+These, according to the Land Office records, were the first runs taken
+up in the pastoral district of Burke. Their cattle were supplemented by
+other large mobs, all destined to form new stations in the far north, in
+connection with Mr. W. Glen Walker, of Sydney, an enterprising and
+speculative merchant. In 1864 the country first taken up by this firm
+was sold or transferred, and the cattle (as many as ten thousand head),
+were removed to the Lower Flinders then quite unoccupied. They travelled
+through Betts' Gorge, a creek forcing its way through the basalt to join
+the Flinders. A large stretch of well-watered country on the Saxby
+Creek, known as Taldora and Millungerra was taken up by James Gibson in
+1864.
+
+The first man to open the way to the Albert at Burketown was Mr. N.
+Buchanan, with cattle from Mount Cornish and Bowen Downs on the Thomson
+River; he selected Beame's Brook station on the Albert, eighteen miles
+above the present site of Burketown, and also occupied another run on
+the Landsborough River, a tributary of the Leichhardt, on a waterhole
+about twelve miles long. Following him in order of succession came Mr.
+J. G. Macdonald's cattle from the Burdekin. These travelled by a
+different route via the Einasleigh and Etheridge Rivers, the latter
+called after Mr. D. O. Etheridge, one of the overlanders, a man long
+resident there afterwards, and well known. They followed the route
+opened up by Mr. J. G. Macdonald when on his private exploring
+expedition to the Gulf country a year or two before. The country this
+stock occupied was on the Leichhardt River, at a place called
+Floraville, situated where a great bar of rocks crosses the river above
+all tidal waters, the falls being about twenty feet in height. Another
+run this firm took up at the same time was situated on the Gregory
+River, and called Gregory Downs; but this country was abandoned later
+on, and is now held by Watson Bros.; it is an excellent piece of
+well-grassed cattle country, watered by the finest perennial river in
+North Queensland, a clear, flowing stream of water, shaded by palms,
+pandanus, and ti-trees. The Gregory River, named by the late Mr. W.
+Landsborough in honor of the Honorable A. C. Gregory, M.L.C., C.M.G.,
+the well-known explorer and scientist, has never been known to go dry.
+In March, 1896, Mr. G. Phillips, C.E., estimated the flow of the
+river--which was then low--at 133 millions of gallons per day at Gregory
+Downs. There can be no doubt that the discharge is due to a leak from
+the great artesian beds underlying the Barkly Tableland, on which the
+town of Camooweal is situated, on the head waters of the Georgina River.
+
+The Barkly Tableland was also named by Mr. Landsborough in honor of Sir
+Henry Barkly, Governor of Victoria, 1856-1863.
+
+Donor's Hills station was settled by the Brodie Bros., who came from
+Murrurundi, in New South Wales early in 1865. They travelled by Bowen
+River and along the Cape River route, and took up the country about the
+junction of the Cloncurry and the Flinders Rivers, near some peculiar
+isolated ironstone hills, which were named Donor's Hills. It was
+considered a good run and well watered, and is now held by Mr.
+Chirnside, of Victoria, being still stocked with sheep. Among the last
+wave of pioneers was Mr. Atticus Tooth, who brought cattle from the
+Broken River, near Bowen, and took up a run on the lower Cloncurry,
+which he called Seaward Downs; the stock belonged to a business firm in
+Bowen called Seaward, Marsh and Co. It now forms part of Conobie run,
+taken up by Messrs. Palmer and Shewring, who brought sheep and cattle
+from Pelican Creek, in 1864. The cattle were driven from Eureka, in the
+Wide Bay district, by Edward Palmer, one of the firm who from that time
+resided on the station, and who is the author of these notes. The stock
+followed the route up the Cape River, and were detained in the desert at
+Billy Webb's Lake nearly two months waiting for rain to take them
+through. After the usual vicissitudes of travelling stock down the
+Flinders, and searching for country all round the Gulf it was decided to
+occupy Conobie, where the Dugald, Corella, and Cloncurry Rivers form a
+junction. The sheep were placed on the run in May, 1865, and then the
+trip back to Brisbane had to be undertaken in order to apply for the
+lease of the country.
+
+One of the partners, Mr. W. Shewring, died about a year afterwards from
+the effects of the Gulf fever, and also several of the men. They were
+all buried on the bank of the large lagoon, near which the head station
+was formed.
+
+Supplies to this place were carried from Port Denison by bullock dray,
+but the first wool was shipped for Sydney from the new port, Burketown.
+The price of everything was extremely high, flour and sugar often
+selling at one shilling per pound, while wages for ordinary hands ranged
+from thirty-five shillings to fifty shillings a week, and men were
+scarce even at that.
+
+Pioneers as well as explorers, the settlement of Cape York Peninsula
+will always be associated with the names of the Jardines. The account of
+their trip from Bowen with cattle and horses through the most
+troublesome country ever traversed by stock, will stand as a lasting
+monument to their superior bushmanship and hardihood. The narrative of
+the journey adds a most interesting page to the records of Australian
+exploration, as it was conducted throughout without any mishap, although
+surrounded with many dangers, through a country almost unknown and
+during a season when the risks were much increased by reason of the
+advent of the annual heavy rains. The uncommon task of taking a mob of
+cattle such a distance with success, reflects the highest credit on the
+Jardine Brothers.
+
+The origin of the trip was a report made by the first governor, Sir G.
+Bowen, in 1862, to the Imperial Government recommending Somerset, Cape
+York, as a harbour of refuge, coaling station and entrepôt for the trade
+of Torres Straits and islands of the North Pacific. The task of
+establishing the new settlement was confided to Mr. Jardine, Police
+Magistrate at Rockhampton, who was qualified by experience and judgment
+to carry out the work. Mr. Jardine proposed to establish a cattle
+station there, by sending cattle in charge of his two sons through the
+Peninsula, in order to supply the requirements of trade with fresh
+beef. Frank and Alick Jardine, aged respectively 22 and 20, carried out
+the task of overlanding very creditably, being strong, active, and hardy
+young men, full of resource and inured to bush work and discomforts.
+
+Those who know by experience what a wet season means in the Peninsula,
+with flooded creeks and rivers, poison plants killing the horses and
+cattle, and hostile blacks always on the alert to damage anything in
+their way, will understand the full meaning of the successful issue of
+such a trip. The writer settled a cattle station on the Mitchell River
+in 1879, and can thus enter fully into all the troubles of these young
+overlanders, and appreciate the magnitude of their task.
+
+The party, consisting of ten persons and twenty-one horses, left
+Rockhampton in May, 1864; they travelled overland to Bowen, where they
+obtained cattle from Mr. William Stenhouse, of the Clarke River. The
+furthest out station then was Carpentaria Downs, to the north-west, held
+by J. G. Macdonald, supposed to be on the Lynd River, but afterwards
+proved to be on the Einasleigh, a branch of the Gilbert River. On
+October 10th they were ready for a final start with the cattle from
+Carpentaria Downs. The party were composed of the following:--F. L.
+Jardine, leader; A. Jardine; A. J. Richardson, surveyor; C. Scrutton; R.
+N. Binney; A. Cowderoy; and four blackboys, Eulah, Peter, Sambo, and
+Barney, natives of Wide Bay and Rockhampton; also forty-one horses, one
+mule, and 250 cattle, with provisions to last for four months. They
+started under the impression they were following down the Lynd of
+Leichhardt, that led to the Mitchell River, hence the troubles and
+doubts about their journey were much increased, and it was a
+considerable time before the mistake was discovered. Not long after
+getting into the wilderness, a fire burnt one half of their camp gear
+and rations, which was a loss they felt throughout their journey.
+
+Travelling through poor, flat ti-tree country, covered with spinifex and
+wire grass that no stock would look at, they encountered the further
+misfortunes of the loss of horses and cattle by poison and delay owing
+to their being hunted by blacks. In addition to the loss of cattle,
+travelling was excessively heavy in consequence of the rains. But the
+journey was prosecuted in spite of all troubles and risks. The blacks
+soon commenced to attack them, and had to be checked, although they
+never ceased all through the journey to harass them. The party struck
+salt water when following down the Staaten, and then knew that they were
+out of their course, and not near the Mitchell River of Leichhardt. They
+saw the marine plains extending along the coast, and finally, about
+December 18th, crossed the long-looked for Mitchell River, covered here
+with dense vine scrubs, and having numerous wide channels. They lost
+some horses that went mad through drinking salt water, and at the
+crossing had a severe contest with the blacks, who had been daring and
+mischievous all the time. After crossing the Mitchell, they followed a
+course along the coast line of the Gulf, meeting with disasters all the
+way, their cattle being poisoned, their horses failing, their rations
+exhausted, and hardships accumulating. They finally left the Mitchell
+and made straight running for Cape York on December 22nd; the wet season
+came on them then, and nothing but rain was recorded while going through
+a most dismal, miserable country, poor in grass, and full of obstacles,
+such as scrub, etc. Heavy storms of rain and wind passed over them
+frequently, from which they had no shelter, the tents being blown to
+pieces. They had no salt, and the weather was too muggy to dry or jerk
+the meat when a beast was killed. In this way they crept along the coast
+line, crossing all the rivers and creeks in full flood, and by the time
+they reached the Batavia River they had to do most of the travelling on
+foot, so many horses having died from the fatal effects of the poison
+plants common in this despicable country. As all the creeks were lined
+with vine scrubs, they were compelled to cut tracks through every one of
+them for the cattle and to swim creeks every day, while the prickles of
+the pandanus leaves gave them special discomfort.
+
+Several attempts were made to search for the settlement at Cape York by
+advance parties, but it was not until March 2nd that the brothers,
+having met some friendly natives, were piloted into the settlement, and
+thus this most wonderful trip was concluded, having taken over five
+months to get through about 1,600 miles, the last two or three hundred
+being done on foot, and without even boots to their feet. The country
+passed through was mostly of a forbidding and sterile character, except
+on the Einasleigh River banks, and in consequence of their report, no
+occupation of runs followed. As the Peninsula became more explored,
+better country was discovered near the heads of the rivers flowing into
+the Gulf; and in after years a few stations were stocked with cattle.
+
+Frank Jardine, the elder brother, has lived at Somerset ever since, and
+his house is seen when passing through the beautiful Albany Pass. Alick
+Jardine became a surveyor and engineer, and for many years was employed
+by the Government of Queensland. He attained the position of Engineer
+for Harbours and Rivers, but was among the officers retrenched in 1893.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE SPREAD OF PASTORAL OCCUPATION.
+
+
+After the Canoona rush in 1858 and 1859, the tide of pastoral run
+hunting set in; the route northwards followed by stock going out to
+occupy new country led by Princhester and through Marlborough. Here the
+route turned off westwards towards the Peak Downs, and extended still
+further to the interior where the Barcoo, Thomson, and Alice Rivers
+flowed into a mysterious land. The northern road led on to Broad Sound,
+where Connor's Range had to be passed; this spur of the main coast range
+comes close in to the coast. Overlanders could not avoid crossing it,
+and this was an undertaking. It was reckoned to be two miles from the
+first rise to the summit, and to get drays and stock across sometimes
+took several days, as they had to unload some of their goods at the
+steep pinches and return empty for the balance of the loading. The road
+was in a state of nature, and wound round gullies and sidings through
+the forest trees that grew on the steep sides of the mountain; many a
+curse was wasted on its stony, dusty inclines ere the long looked for
+summit was reached. After crossing the range, the first settlement in
+those early days, about 1860, was Lotus Creek station. From Lotus Creek
+the road led on to Fort Cooper station, considered one of the best coast
+stations then discovered. As early as 1863, Nebo Creek, west of Mackay,
+was made a recruiting centre, where stores could be obtained from a firm
+named Kemmis and Bovey. Passing along Funnel Creek, still going
+northwards, the head of the Bowen River was reached.
+
+The Bowen River country was soon occupied with runs and stock from the
+south, passing along the coast route that led by Rockhampton,
+Marlborough, and Nebo. The roads were lined with flocks and herds of
+those entering on the pioneering work of the North of Queensland, and
+business men were following in the wake of the early stock settlers to
+commence a trade wherever an opportunity offered. The settlement was
+bona fide and genuine; men with means, energy and experience were
+entering on it with great enthusiasm and high hopes of the future of the
+new country. The wave of occupation passed on to the Burdekin River,
+causing a great demand for sheep and cattle for the purpose of stocking
+new country in the north and west. The requirements of this great
+augmentation of the stock northwards led to the opening of Bowen or Port
+Denison as a port of shipment for supplies. The discovery and opening of
+Port Denison will be treated of elsewhere; its opening to commerce was a
+boon to those who were occupying the country immediately at the rear of
+the port. Many overlanders took advantage of the port by shearing or
+lambing their sheep wherever a chance offered, and after obtaining
+supplies for the road, were prepared to extend their search for new
+country still further away. The Bowen River country is very interesting
+and its scenery most picturesque; it has first-class grazing qualities,
+small open plains, with patches of brigalow scrub scattered over
+black-soil country. Sandstone ranges bound the creeks on the coast side,
+whence they come down to the main stream. The river is a fine stream,
+with long and deep reaches, in which are found alligators of large size
+that have come up from the Burdekin River. Among the early settlers to
+take up country was Mr. J. G. Macdonald, afterwards an early pioneer in
+the Gulf country, though not a resident there. He took up, in
+conjunction with others, a large area of country in the Bowen district,
+afterwards known as Dalrymple, Inkermann, Strathbogie, and Ravenswood.
+His residence at Adelaide Point was at one period the show place of the
+North, where Mrs. Macdonald (after whom Adelaide Point was named)
+dispensed hospitality with a kindly grace which won all hearts. Of all
+this, nothing now remains but a memory. The house is gone; Mr. Macdonald
+is dead, and the family dispersed. Carpentaria Downs was also taken up
+by J. G. Macdonald, on the head of the Einasleigh River, for a long time
+the outside settlement.
+
+One of the early sheep stations held by Mr. Henning was located on the
+Bowen River, while lower down a fine piece of country called Havilah was
+held with sheep by Hillfling and Petersen--this was before 1862. Other
+stations occupied somewhere about this time, or even earlier, were
+Strathmore and Sonoma, held by Sellheim and Touissaint, with stock from
+Canning Downs. These stations were a stage still further north, the
+surrounding country being fine open forest land, very well grassed and
+watered. These runs were the first taken up in the pastoral district
+called Kennedy.
+
+The main stock route northward followed the Bowen River settlements
+crossing Pelican Creek, a tributary of the Bowen, through Sonoma run,
+then to the Bogie, and across to the Burdekin River, following up that
+stream to the Clarke and Lynd Rivers. Knowledge of a great pastoral
+country away to the shores of the Gulf and extending far up the Burdekin
+River was in the possession of many pioneer explorers whose names are
+unrecorded, and the tide of advancing settlement followed on as fast as
+was possible, stations being formed to the right and left of the main
+routes, while others moved forward with a restless energy that nothing
+would satisfy but the best country for their stock. One route turned on
+the Bowen River to the west, and crossed the Suttor River above Mount
+McConnel near the junction of the Cape River that came in from the
+westward. This stock track soon became a main road owing to the traffic
+which was carried on from the newly-opened port of Bowen or Port
+Denison to the western settlements, even to Bowen Downs station. The
+road led across the Leichhardt Range--another heavy piece for teams,
+equal to Connor's Range, the sharp stones laming the bullocks, and
+making the ascent a trial of patience and endurance to man and beast. A
+station called Natal Downs was held by Kellet and Spry on the Cape
+River, and by this route a great many of the early settlers in the far
+west travelled their stock during 1864-65. The blacks were aggressive in
+those days on Natal Downs, and were in the habit of cutting off the
+shepherds at outstations; it was reported and believed that as many as
+eighteen shepherds were killed at various outstations in the first few
+years of settlement there.
+
+Onward and westward went the movement of stock. The principal topic of
+conversation turned always upon new country, the latest discoveries of
+good grazing lands, and the men who were following with sheep and
+cattle. The way out west in those first days led up the Cape River
+through poor country, with a good deal of spinifex grass and patches of
+poison bush. On the flat tableland dividing the Gulf waters from those
+flowing towards the Thomson, were a series of large shallow swamps,
+known as Billy Webb's Lake, a kind of halting place for stock. Between
+this and the Flinders waters lies a tract of country nearly two hundred
+miles in width, called the Desert--and the name is a well-deserved one.
+The Desert consists of spinifex ridges and sandy sterile country,
+covered in large patches with the desert poison shrub botanically known
+as "Gastrolobium grandiflora." This dangerous plant grows to a height of
+six to eight feet in separate bushes, and exhibits a bluish-silvery
+sheen conspicuous afar off. It bears a scarlet blossom like a vetch, and
+the leaf is indented at the outer end. Its poisonous nature was soon
+proved by the first stock that attempted the passage. Many of the early
+drovers lost large numbers of both cattle and sheep from its deadly
+effects. In one camp, Halloran's and Alexander's, as many as 1,500 sheep
+died in one night from eating it. All the stock passing through this
+belt of desert country paid some tribute to its evil properties. This
+poison plant is peculiar to the strip of desert country that extends
+along the dividing watershed for many hundreds of miles, from the Alice
+River reaching north as far as the Lynd.
+
+The symptoms of poisoning from this plant are a kind of madness, causing
+animals to rush about furiously, and then, becoming paralysed, to fall
+helpless to the ground, and soon expire. There are but one or two
+varieties of the plant in Queensland, though in Western Australia twelve
+or fourteen varieties of Gastrolobium are found.
+
+Besides the destructive poison plant, there is the evil-smelling
+repellant spinifex growing through this strip of vile country, as well
+as a low, close scrub, through all of which stock has to be got before
+the open plain country is reached. A great scarcity of surface water,
+and low stony ridges with heavy patches of red sand, are characteristic
+of poison country. Glad indeed were the pioneers to leave it behind, and
+with great satisfaction to stand on the rocky eminence that bounded it
+on the western side, whence they looked down the open valley of the
+Jardine, and beheld the downs and the grassy plains of the Flinders
+spreading out before them for many miles. The sight came as a surprise
+and relief after so much disagreeable travelling through the worst
+portion of North Queensland, especially should a thunderstorm have
+passed over the country recently and caused a spring in the herbage. The
+Flinders River flowing to the west and north-west towards the Gulf of
+Carpentaria, through most extensive plains and downs, traverses a
+different geological formation to that which the pioneers crossed when
+coming from the east coast. The edge of the great cretaceous formation
+which forms the major portion of the western country, is here entered on
+for the first time, and a new strange world seems to open up. A new
+fauna and flora is evident on the very first entrance into the new
+region; the birds are different and more numerous; galas, parrots, and
+pigeons abound, and assure the newcomer that he has found a new pastoral
+country, the grasses and herbage of which are more permanent, enduring
+and nutritive than those he has hitherto met with. The downs, covered
+with the Mitchell grass, with scarcely a bush or shrub to break the
+monotony, stretch away as far as the eye can see; while the heavy timber
+along the creeks and rivers indicates their course. A dreary monotony
+prevails on the western rivers, the same everlasting plains, the same
+great grassy waste of downs like an ocean without its interesting
+motion. Far ahead can be seen the river timber winding through the brown
+plains, so that the traveller can see a whole day's stage ahead. For
+over a hundred of miles along the north-eastern, or right bank of the
+Flinders River, is a tableland of basaltic formation, near which the
+river winds its course; a dark fringe of rocks rises abruptly, broken
+here and there by indentations through which flow creeks to join the
+main channel. The cone of eruption for this vast overflow of lava is
+said to be somewhere about Mount Sturgeon, to the eastward. The lava has
+flowed over the original sandstone formation, and formed a level
+tableland now broken and covered with black, porous blocks of lava of
+every size. It is utilised for pasture purposes, notwithstanding its
+forbidding aspect.
+
+Some time after Rule and Lacy stocked the Aramac, Mr. Hodgson arrived on
+it with sheep and took up and stocked Rodney Downs; he crossed the
+spinifex country from the Belyando to the Alice River, and lost about
+six thousand sheep on this track by poison bush, the Gastrolobium
+grandiflora. Mr. Meredith arrived in May of the same year on the
+Thomson, and took up and stocked Tower Hill station. During June of
+this year the Thomson and Aramac Creek were in high flood; Rule and Lacy
+were flooded out of their first camp, and removed to where Aramac
+station now is. Some stockmen looking after the company's cattle on an
+anabranch of Cornish Creek, were surrounded by water, and lived on
+jerked beef for a month. About July the head station was shifted up to
+Cornish Creek, taking the name of Bowen Downs with it, which name it has
+since retained. In 1872 the cattle station was formed into a separate
+establishment under the management of Mr. E. R. Edkins, who called it
+Mount Cornish, in honor of the late E. B. Cornish, of Sydney. This year
+wound up with a wet Christmas. Wages in those days were very high,
+stockmen getting as much as 40s. a week, and cooks 30s.; any old horse
+would bring £25. The year 1864 may be styled the year of Hegira or
+flight of stock outwards to settle new country; they came from all
+parts, and helped to fill the land everywhere with the beginning of
+civilisation. A boom had set in for pastoral occupation; the reports of
+recent explorations told of enormous tracts of grand open country
+waiting for stock to utilise it, and each one was anxious to be the
+first to secure some of it for his sheep or cattle. The head of the
+Flinders River was occupied by a few settlers, and two lots of sheep
+passed Bowen Downs, en route to the Flinders. They belonged to Kirk and
+Sutherland, and Mr. J. L. Ranken, and came from Fort Cooper way, losing
+heavily in crossing the range between Bully Creek and Lake Buchanan,
+between eight and ten thousand sheep perishing through eating the desert
+poison bush. They discovered what was the cause of such losses by
+feeding some sheep on the suspected plant when they died with all the
+symptoms of the victims in the desert track. The first white man known
+to have been killed by the blacks on the Thomson was one of the
+shepherds with Kirk and Sutherland's sheep. He was killed on Duck Pond
+Creek, a tributary of Cornish Creek. After he was buried, the blacks dug
+the body up at night and drove a stake through it, pinning it to the
+ground. Kirk and Sutherland must have reached the Flinders about April,
+and then occupied and stocked Marathon. Mr. J. L. Ranken occupied Afton
+Downs, but was dried out the following year, and he lost a number of his
+sheep in consequence of having to remove them lower down the Flinders.
+In March of this year Mr. Meredith, of Tower Hill, formed a station on
+the east side of Landsborough Creek, naming it Eversleigh, and stocked
+it with cattle. In March also Bowen Downs sent cattle up the
+Landsborough for the purpose of stocking the west side of the creek. The
+men with the cattle had a very rough trip, as there was incessant rain,
+and the country became one vast quagmire; all their rations and
+ammunition were spoilt, and they had to live on young calf, "staggering
+bob," as they called it. Mr. E. H. Butler was in charge, and after
+leaving the cattle, started for home at the Mud Hut, when a thunderstorm
+occurred that put out their fire and wet all their matches. The river
+branches were flooded, and during the next two days they had nothing to
+eat, and no fire, and were drenched to the skin by thunderstorms; their
+pack-horse with all their blankets had knocked up, and they passed the
+night without sleep, being wet and cold and hungry; next morning they
+had to swim the main branch of the river, and then walk four miles to
+the station, leaving behind one of their mates knocked up on an island
+in the river. About September of this year (1864), Bowen Downs
+despatched about fifteen hundred head of cattle in charge of Mr. Donald
+McGlashen to the Gulf of Carpentaria for the purpose of taking up
+country and stocking it. These cattle travelled up the Landsborough,
+crossed the watershed on to Walker's Creek, followed it down to the
+Flinders, and down that river to the turn off to Sackey's Lagoon, and
+down the Alexandra to the Leichhardt, then across by Miller's Waterhole
+to Beame's Brook, where the first station was formed called the Brook,
+about sixteen miles above where Burketown now stands; they arrived there
+before the end of 1864, and were the first stock to occupy the Gulf
+country. When Mr. Landsborough left the Albert River on his trip in
+search of Burke and Wills, he left a four hundred gallon tank there with
+a lot of rations in it for the use of any distressed explorers or
+others, and fastened the lid in such a way that he thought the blacks
+would be unable to open it; but when Mr. McGlashen found the tank, he
+discovered that the blacks had solved the problem, and the rations were
+not there. When they were mustering these cattle before starting, the
+boss, Mr. A. Scott Holmes, riding along with a stockman, met a
+blackfellow whose gin had two half-caste children with her, aged about
+nine and seven years; the blackfellow evidently wanted them to see the
+children, as he kept pointing to them. Some years after this it was
+reported that two half-castes were with the blacks out to the west of
+the Thomson, but nothing more was heard of them.
+
+It was during this year of 1864 that the first settlers found their way
+to the Barcoo, although the fame of its pastures had been known years
+before from the reports of Sir Thomas Mitchell and others explorers.
+Among the first to settle there was J. T. Allen, who took up Enniskillen
+in 1862, and who still resides there. Bell and Dutton took up Tambo
+station, close to where the township of the same name sprang up
+afterwards. Govett and Parsons took up Terrick, and Yaldwyn occupied
+Ravensbourne, while Moor and Reid held Moorsland, now called Lorne.
+Henry Edwards, from the Burnett, took up Malvern, which was sold the
+same year to the Ellis Bros., who then occupied Portland.
+
+In 1865, C. Lumley Hill, with Allen and Holberton, took up Isis Downs.
+Then a pause ensued in occupying new runs, and progress was checked;
+but after the passing of the Pastoral Leases Act of 1869, which gave
+greater facilities for the occupation of new country, and more liberal
+terms, many runs were occupied; among them, Mr. Hill held Westlands. A.
+B. Buchanan took up Wellshot, while Welford took up Welford Downs, and
+was killed by the blacks in 1872. Among the runs opened in those days
+were Tocal, Bimerah, Mount Marlow, and Louisa Downs. The stock to occupy
+all these runs in those early days mainly came from the Darling Downs
+and Burnett, as in the first days of the Queensland Parliament an Act
+was passed excluding New South Wales stock. Mr. Hill, in 1874, sold Isis
+Downs, which was divided into three runs called Albilbah, Ruthven, and
+Isis Downs. A great deal of the western plain country was occupied
+during the years between 1865 and 1870, and a great deal of interest and
+energy was exhibited in taking up and selling large blocks of fine
+pastoral country. Sheep for stocking country rose to high prices, but
+when the crisis occurred, there was a collapse in values, and many
+abandoned a good deal of the country and disappeared from the scene.
+
+Berkelman and Lambert discovered and settled Elizabeth Creek and
+Listowel Downs. Mr. H. E. King was the first Land Commissioner, and
+superintended the laying out of Tambo, the first town on the Barcoo. The
+price of carriage for supplies in those day was £46 per ton. Cameron and
+Crombie took up Barcaldine in 1864 with sheep from New England, and, in
+conjunction with Mr. Allen, they also took up Home Creek, Enniskillen,
+Minnie Downs, Vergemont, and Evesham. They brought their stock by the
+Burnett, the Dawson, and Springsure, over the Expedition Range. There
+was the usual trouble with the blacks after settling down. The natives
+killed the shepherds and robbed the huts of rations and cooking utensils
+that were very difficult to replace in those days. The Peak Downs was
+first reported on by Dr. Leichhardt, but many years elapsed before
+occupation set in. Among those who were prominent in the opening up and
+early settlement of the fine tableland of Peak Downs, with its rich
+soil, were De Satge and Milford, of Wolfang; Mackay, of Huntley; Gordon
+Sandeman, of Gordon Downs; Hood, of Hood and Manning; and Lamb and
+Black, of Yamala.
+
+As the character of the new country became known, many other runs near
+Hughenden were occupied by overlanders struggling along with stock,
+among them was Fairlight, on the basalt ridge, held with sheep by Henry
+Betts. Afton Downs, as has already been mentioned, was taken up with
+sheep by Mr. Ranken, who deserted it later with a considerable loss of
+stock owing to drought. Kirk and Sutherland, who had come from Suttor
+Creek with sheep in 1863 were also dried out from Marathon, and suffered
+great losses. Both of these runs now possess flowing streams in every
+direction, formed by artesian bores. Notable among the early settlers
+was the family of the Annings, father and sons, from Victoria. They held
+Reedy Springs, on the head waters of the Flinders, Charlotte Plains, and
+several other stations formed by their enterprise; the sons still occupy
+the same country, and have grown gray in pioneering. Another Victorian
+firm, Muirson, Jamieson and Thompson, occupied Mount Emu with sheep in
+1862, after much travelling about in search of suitable country. Mrs.
+Thompson, with a young family, accompanied her husband in those early
+pioneering days of roughness and privation, and lived at Mount Emu for
+many years, where her large family grew up, and her sons are now
+occupying runs throughout the district. The hospitality of Mount Emu was
+proverbial, and the refinement that prevailed in all the arrangements at
+the head station gave additional value to the welcome that was extended
+to all travellers. On the Burdekin country, the family of the Hanns,
+father and sons, possessed themselves of Maryvale, a splendid piece of
+country.
+
+The farthest outstation north in 1860-61 was that of W. Stenhouse, on
+the Clarke, a tributary of the Burdekin. Seventy miles nearer Bowen, was
+the station of Allingham Bros., and thirty-five miles still nearer port
+were located the Messrs Cunningham. Ernest Henry very early took up
+Mount McConnel, at the junction of the Suttor and Selheim Rivers; this
+is one of the old landmarks of Leichhardt when on his trip to Port
+Essington in 1844-45. Stock were taken there from Baroondah, on the
+Dawson, in 1860; and later on Hughenden station was settled with stock
+taken from Mount McConnel. Hughenden is situated at the beginning of the
+open plain country on the Flinders; it was one of the first stations
+settled there in 1864. The present head station is on the exact spot
+taken up so long ago, but is somewhat different in style to the original
+slab hut on the ridge in which Mr. R. R. Morrissett and his hutkeeper,
+old Jack Ryan, dwelt in 1864, when water for the use of the head station
+was drawn from the junction of the creek with the river, that being the
+only surface water within miles. Mr. Ernest Henry, a most energetic and
+indefatigable pioneer carried on a good deal of prospecting on the
+Cloncurry, and was the earliest discoverer of the mineral wealth of the
+district. A company was formed in 1868 to work the copper lodes
+discovered by Mr. Henry, but after expending large sums of money on
+smelting works, etc., they were obliged to cease operations on account
+of the expense of carriage and the low price of copper. H. Devilin was
+one of the most active and venturesome pioneers in discovering and
+making known to others the country on the Flinders. He opened the way
+for several stockowners in that extensive district, though he himself
+does not appear to have had much personal interest in any of the
+speculations.
+
+In opening up the highway through the head of the Flinders to the far
+west, these pioneers were the forerunners of the great wave of
+settlement that followed on immediately afterwards, notwithstanding the
+deterrent features of the desert and the poison bush, through which they
+had to pass with their stock. Up to 1864 the runs that had been stocked
+on the Upper Flinders downs were Fairlight, by Betts and Oxley with
+sheep, and Telemon station by Collins and Walpole. This last property is
+now owned by J. L. Currie, of Melbourne, is mostly freehold, and with
+the discovery of artesian water, and the introduction of fine wooled
+sheep, has become a most valuable estate. It consists of open rolling
+downs, with patches of gidya, a species of acacia. Marathon, on the
+Upper Flinders, was taken up by R. H. Sheaffe, who for five years
+represented the Burke district in the Legislative Assembly. The run was
+sold by him to Kirk and Sutherland, who were in search of grass for
+their sheep. Marathon is now owned by a Melbourne firm, and by means of
+artesian wells, carries 200,000 sheep. After being dried out from Afton
+Downs, John Ranken, a member of a very old colonial family in New South
+Wales, eventually found his way to Barkly Tableland, where he settled
+for a time. Afton Downs is situated on Walker's Creek, a tributary of
+the Flinders on the western side, and is of the usual open rolling downs
+formation. All these runs, as previously mentioned, were occupied before
+the discovery of artesian springs, and therefore subject to being
+periodically dried out. At the present day, with judicious expenditure
+on artesian wells, and other improvements, this run annually shears
+close on 100,000 sheep. Following down the Flinders through the great
+plain country, the next station occupied was Richmond Downs, where a
+struggling township named Richmond now stands; this was held in 1864 by
+Bundock and Hays, with cattle from the Clarence River, in New South
+Wales. They lost many on their way out by pleuro-pneumonia and the
+desert poison bush already described. Opposite to Richmond Downs, across
+the Flinders River, Kennedy and Macdonald took up about the same time a
+run which they called Cambridge Downs, now a large sheep station. All
+these runs on the Upper Flinders were first settled in 1864, and formed
+an outpost of settlement by which other pioneers directed their course
+lower down the river. During 1865 and the following year, another wave
+of occupation flowed on past these outside stations, and the new
+pioneers finding country further on, became in their turn a starting
+point for others, and still the tide flowed outwards and westwards till
+all available country was taken up. Those who came out during 1864 and
+1865 had a serious difficulty to contend with in facing a drier season
+than has since been experienced up to 1897. The pioneers with their
+stock were compelled to follow the course of the river, as it was almost
+certain death to go far to the west looking for water or country. All
+the tributary creeks of the Flinders were dry, and those who ventured
+out had soon to return to the main watercourse. The native dogs crowded
+in on the Flinders in thousands, and the blacks themselves had also to
+resort to it. During that trying season, none of the rivers ran in their
+channels, and even most of the large waterholes in the bed of the
+Flinders dried up, while stages of thirty or forty miles without water
+were frequent. Notwithstanding these drawbacks to stockowners who were
+on the search for some unfrequented nook to unharness on, the crowd
+pressed on in the hope of better country ahead, some Canaan far beyond,
+where hills were always green and water abundant. These men followed
+each other in quick succession and took up runs on the Lower Flinders
+and all over the Gulf country, wherever water could be found.
+
+This settlement, carried out in those early years, was most extensive
+and comprehensive, and during the time the western country was being
+sought out and utilised the Burdekin was being stocked in every part.
+One of the pioneers was Mr. Robert Stewart, of Southwick station, on
+Fletcher's Creek, a stream of pure, clear water, flowing from the great
+basaltic wall into the Burdekin. Reedy Lake station was stocked with
+sheep by O'Reilly and Reeve, near Dalrymple, where the main route from
+Bowen to the Gulf crossed the Burdekin River. Many other runs were taken
+up on the Burdekin and towards the coast, and many soon changed hands,
+the first settlers passing on to occupy country in the interior.
+Several of these first-comers took up coast runs and stocked them with
+sheep, believing they would thrive there. This was found to be a
+mistake, and from Wide Bay to the north scarcely any sheep are now to be
+met with on coastal runs. For a few years in some places they did well
+enough, but they soon began to die from fluke, worms, and grass seeds,
+and they were accordingly replaced by cattle. The sheep on being removed
+to western pastures throve well, and soon recovered health. The seeds of
+the spear grass (Andropogon contortus) were a terrible scourge--they are
+finely barbed and intensely sharp and hard; once entered they pass right
+through the skin of the sheep, even into the flesh, causing great
+annoyance and leading to poverty and death. The soil in which this grass
+thrives best is in the sandy strips along the banks of creeks. After
+seeding, the heads bunch together, in tangled masses, and shower the
+seeds on to sheep passing through. It is of use as a fodder grass only
+when young and green, although cattle thrive fairly well upon it, and
+its presence in any quantity at once determines whether the pasturage is
+favourable to sheep or not. The cattle that were brought from Bowen
+Downs to stock the runs taken up on the Gulf, were brought to their
+northern starting point from Fort Cooper and further south during 1860
+by N. Buchanan and W. Landsborough, who were both very active and
+enterprising in opening up new country. This splendid property (Bowen
+Downs) was settled by the Landsborough River Company, held in shares by
+Messrs. N. Buchanan, W. Landsborough, Cornish, and W. Glen Walker, with
+Messrs. Morehead and Young, of Sydney. The first four went out of the
+company shortly afterwards, and Mr. Cornish, after visiting the Gulf
+country, fell a victim to maladies contracted during the journey. Mount
+Cornish was known in the early days as the Mud Hut. Mr. E. R. Edkins,
+who has now been the manager for many years, was among the very early
+drovers of stock to the Gulf. He left the Murray in 1861, and started
+from the Gil-gil in January, 1862, passed Rockhampton, took in charge
+Mr. R. Stewart's cattle, and brought them to Fletcher's Creek, now
+Southwick, on the Lower Burdekin, and reached Maryvale in September of
+that year. He then returned to the Murray, and brought out another lot
+of cattle, passing Bowen in April, 1864. Here the cattle were placed in
+quarantine. After being inoculated for pleuro, they travelled on to
+Mount Emu, in September, 1864. James Gibson also took up a run on
+Junction Creek, also Wanda Vale and Cargoon stations.
+
+Among the settlers who were first in the new country on the Flinders
+were Messrs. Little and Hetzer, who took up a run called Uralla, near
+the junction of the Saxby and Flinders Rivers. Their stock consisting of
+cattle and sheep came by Bowen Downs to the head of the Flinders, and
+then followed the usual route. The blacks made some trouble at the
+station and several lives were sacrificed. Others of the pioneers to try
+their fortune in the general rush for new country were the Earle
+Brothers, who had a station near Bowen; one of them, Mr. Thomas Earle,
+took up country on Spear Creek, the head of the Norman River, in 1865,
+and called the station Iffley. The season was so uncommonly dry, that
+permanent water was the chief attraction, and the splendid waterhole at
+Iffley, more than two miles long, and very deep, decided the Earles to
+fix themselves there with their cattle and drays. There was at the time
+a vast extent of country open for settlement; the terms were fairly
+liberal, and the prospects good for those in search of new runs. The
+settlers were like a great advancing army, confident in their numbers
+and strength; and so they advanced into the unknown land, and left the
+rest to fortune. They came from all the settled parts of Australia; that
+was what induced Mr. H. F. Smith, of Barnes and Smith, to bring cattle
+from Lyndhurst and take up a run on the Lower Flinders, called Tempe
+Downs, on L Creek, so called from a tree marked L, one of Leichhardt's
+marked trees when on his expedition to Port Essington, 1844-5. In 1865
+James Kennedy took stock from Cambridge Downs, and held a fine run on
+the Upper Leichhardt River, calling it Pentland Downs. In the same year,
+James Cassidy occupied country lower down on the same river with sheep.
+One of the pioneers who went through much personal privation and
+hardship in the general forward march to discover new country, was Mr.
+Reginald Halloran, associated with his brother-in-law, Mr. Robert
+Alexander, of Proston, on the Burnett. They suffered heavy losses among
+the sheep while going through the desert, from the poison plant, and
+also from want of water. With the party was a young fellow named Briggs,
+who was killed by the blacks on Skeleton Creek before reaching Hughenden
+while a detachment of the party was camped there. The remnant of the
+stock that survived the trip were placed on a piece of country on the
+Lower Flinders, which they named Home Creek, but which was soon deserted
+by this firm, though held as a station years afterwards. Mr. Halloran
+was a man conspicuous for his utter disregard of personal comfort; he
+would start on a ride of a hundred miles without rations or blanket,
+trusting to the chapter of accidents for food, and to his saddle cloth
+for covering for the night, and he was always welcome at any camp owing
+to his geniality and fund of humour. The young fellow, Briggs, who met
+with an untimely death, had arrived at the advance camp only the night
+before for rations, and while alone in the tent next morning, the other
+man being absent horse-hunting, a party of blacks visited the camp. The
+white man showed fight, breaking a gun over the head of one of the
+blacks, but was soon killed, and when the horse-hunter returned, he
+found Briggs dead and the camp looted.
+
+A place called Sorghum Downs, on the Lower Cloncurry, now part of
+Conobie, was claimed by an old colonist and pioneer named Murdoch
+Campbell; he and his wife (a Devonshire woman), had camped on the Bowen
+River in 1863, but it was a long time before they found their way out so
+far west. Mrs. Campbell's hospitality and kindness to all travellers was
+one of the pleasant remembrances of those early hard times. Campbell
+died in 1867, and Mrs. Campbell ultimately went to New Zealand, where
+she had friends. A small firm of two men, Anderson and Trimble,
+successful diggers from the Snowy River, in New South Wales, joined the
+rest of the pushing crowd, and held a good run on the Saxby River with
+sheep.
+
+Still the tide of occupation flowed on, and when all the available
+watered runs around the Gulf were occupied in 1865 and the following
+year, those remaining unsatisfied, marched on, restless as the surges
+that beat on the shore. Several of those in charge of stock travelled up
+the Gregory River southwards, and out far away on to Barkly Tableland,
+discovered by Mr. W. Landsborough. These were among the first to make
+known the capabilities of this splendid district. The Stieglitz Brothers
+held country far away to the south on the Herbert River, called now the
+Georgina, having passed through all the Flinders and Gulf country
+unrewarded.
+
+Gregg and Nash, with sheep for the Messrs. J. and E. Brown, of
+Newcastle, followed on the far-away track to the inland Never-Never,
+Mrs. Gregg and her daughter accompanying the party in all their
+wanderings. The attention and hospitality of this lady to all travellers
+was as conspicuous as it was highly prized, and it will not be easily
+forgotten. Several other pioneers occupied runs on the Barkly
+tablelands, which was recognised as some of the finest pastoral land in
+Queensland. In after years, when this country came to be restocked by a
+new generation from the south, after being deserted and forsaken by the
+original pioneers, the new settlers were surprised to find evidences of
+a previous occupation. Where the early settlers had come from, where
+they had gone to, and who they were, were matters of curiosity; sheets
+of galvanised iron they well knew did not grow like the gidya trees,
+neither were old sheepyards (built of basaltic stones) the work of
+blacks. But who those early pioneers were, and what their fate, was
+utterly unknown, and caused much speculation.
+
+All the country bordering on the Gulf suitable for grazing purposes was
+portioned out and occupied between the years 1864 and 1868. Though in
+most cases the number of stock on each run was small, the runs were
+numerous, and most of the owners were resident. It was recognised that a
+great future was in store for this vast new territory just opening up to
+enterprise and capital. The Plains of Promise, named by one of the early
+navigators (Captain Stokes, of the "Beagle," in 1842), had been much
+talked of for years, but when they were stocked, the distant fields
+lost much of their interest. The fine rivers flowing into the Gulf of
+Carpentaria, through hundreds of miles of open plains and rolling downs,
+covered with permanent and valuable pasturage, gave to the early
+settlers good reasons for believing they were the pioneers in opening up
+a grand and wealth-producing territory.
+
+Stations were formed, stock brought out, improvements made, and the way
+opened for permanent occupation. The high hopes entertained seemed
+likely to be realised, until a change came over the aspect of things--a
+change brought about by influences far removed from the local scene, and
+in which the settlers had no voice--a change in which no amount of
+energy or sacrifice on their part could avail aught. The days of
+commercial panic set in, culminating in the crisis of 1868-69, the march
+of settlement was instantly checked, and the outward flow of
+civilisation turned backwards. The financial crisis was felt all over
+the mercantile world; banks of old standing collapsed, and low prices
+for wool and stock, and all station produce, brought the pastoral
+industry to a low ebb.
+
+In consequence of these monetary disturbances, agents declined to find
+money to carry on places so far distant as the Gulf stations--even the
+little required for current expenses. All credit was stopped, and
+supplies also, and as the newly-formed stations could not be made
+self-supporting in the absence of local markets, the stock had to be
+abandoned or removed. The tide began to ebb at a greater rate than it
+had risen; some of the stock were sent south, while the rest were boiled
+down, scarcely clearing expenses in either case; the improvements were
+abandoned as well as the runs. The sheep came in from Barkly Tableland,
+the Gregory, and the Leichhardt, and by the year 1871, there were but
+few runs occupied. The great flood of 1869-70 helped to fill the cup of
+misfortune for the Gulf residents; no such flood was ever dreamt of, or
+has ever been seen since; it rained all January, February, and most of
+March, and the rivers covered all the plain country, though the loss of
+stock was small. A few runs on the Flinders and Cloncurry were still
+kept in occupation, but they were not many, and these only struggled
+along, hoping for better times. No value was attached to runs or stock
+in any of the Gulf country then, as runs could be obtained much nearer
+settlement for next to nothing, many being thrown up through the general
+depression. It seemed as if the bottom had fallen out of the pastoral
+industry, and hope had gone, but relief came sooner than was expected.
+The Etheridge goldfield was opened, and served to employ a good deal of
+the floating population. This field is situated to the east of Normanton
+on the Delany and Etheridge Rivers, about 250 miles towards the east
+coast. The discovery of auriferous reefs there, as well as some
+alluvial gold, helped to keep trade alive, until the discovery of the
+rich fields on the Palmer in 1873, when a great demand set in for
+cattle. The financial depression lifted, the price of wool went up 100
+per cent., and a demand again arose for runs to stock; the old ones were
+all taken up, new country was applied for, and the voice of the man with
+money was heard again in the land. In the years following, up to 1884,
+much speculation was carried on in buying and selling runs and stock,
+and country for occupation was as eagerly sought after as in the early
+days.
+
+Advantage was taken of the liberal provisions of the Pastoral Leases Act
+of 1869, to take up unoccupied country, even if it was dry. Cattle were
+selling on the Palmer diggings at £10 and £12 a head cash, and the
+supply of bullocks was not equal to the demand, because the runs had
+been so thinned by the exodus of stock south to clear expenses, that no
+surplus was available to meet such a sudden demand as that caused by the
+arrival of 20,000 diggers in the north. Then the tide flowed again, and
+became the flood that helped to fill the country with work and life.
+Cattle came out in large numbers, and passed on to occupy country in the
+northern territory of South Australia, and even in Western Australia. As
+many as 30,000 head passed over the border in one year at Burketown, for
+the purpose of stocking country around Port Darwin.
+
+For several years travelling stock went out to the far north-west, and
+all had to pass through the Gulf country. The route followed from the
+borders of Queensland was by the track that Leichhardt took on his
+journey to Port Essington, between the tableland and salt water,
+crossing the Macarthur, Roper, Calvert, and other rivers. Stations were
+occupied on the Orde and Victoria Rivers on the Cambridge Gulf side with
+stock from North Queensland. In those districts some very fine open
+downs country had recently been discovered. Fisher and Lyons had 20,000
+head of cattle sent out to their country in the north-west. Osman and
+Panton also had large numbers of cattle from Queensland. Dr. Brown is
+reported to have expended £100,000 is sending sheep and cattle from the
+Adelaide side to the northern territory. The stocking of this far away
+country was extremely expensive owing to the distance the cattle had to
+travel, and the unusually high percentage of losses on the way. Some of
+the stock were two years on the road, and a new disease called red water
+attacked them when passing the Roper River. This disease is supposed to
+be due to cattle ticks (Ixodes Bovis), and has since carried disaster
+into many herds in Queensland. The average cost of some of the cattle
+when arrived on their country was equal to £7 a head, in consequence of
+losses and expenses. The Gordon Brothers were among the early drovers to
+take stock over the borders to West Australia, and they made several
+trips. The Duracks are another family of pioneer settlers in the
+northern territory, and held extensive possessions. The country
+bordering the rivers that flow into the Cambridge Gulf was reported to
+be of a superior description and of a fattening nature. Though much of
+the country in the northern territory was reckoned of an inferior
+description for grazing, the encouraging terms of leasing offered by the
+South Australian Government induced many to venture on the hazardous
+undertaking. The markets opened up by the goldfields of Port Darwin
+repaid some of their enterprise. Bullocks were sold at from £17 to £20
+cash for butchering purposes. Eventually a shipping trade in cattle was
+opened up with Singapore from Port Darwin; a company built special
+steamers for carrying stock and passengers to the northern ports. The
+results have proved satisfactory, as the s.s. "Darwin" lately (1897)
+took a cargo of 190 head of fat bullocks on board, this being her
+forty-second trip.
+
+The Cape York Peninsula, within which was found the rich Palmer
+diggings, came in for a share of settlement between 1875 and 1880. The
+first of the early pioneers to take up a cattle run on the Mitchell
+River was Mr. A. C. Grant, now of Messrs. B. D. Morehead and Co. He left
+the Bowen River with three hundred fat cattle from Havilah station for
+Messrs. Skene and Henderson, and took up Wrotham Park in 1873, situated
+between the Mitchell and Walsh Rivers, on Elizabeth Creek, 120 miles
+N.N.E. from Georgetown, a nice open piece of country, consisting of
+black soil flats and ridges. The cattle he took up realised £11 5s. per
+head cash all round; beef was then selling on the field at 1s. per lb.
+Mr. Patrick Callaghan held a few blocks of country along the Mitchell
+River, chiefly as a depôt for bullocks for sale on the various diggings,
+as he became a large buyer of cattle from the local market in
+conjunction with F. Leslie, J. Edwards, and J. Duff. The transactions
+and profits of this enterprising firm were on a very large scale, one
+partner travelling outside buying cattle, another superintending the
+supply to local butchers, and the other two attending to the gold
+buying, slaughtering, and financial business of the concern. The next to
+take up country for pastoral purposes on the Mitchell water was Edward
+Palmer (the author of these notes), who, in conjunction with John
+Stevenson and Walter Reid, took up and stocked Gamboola in 1879 with
+cattle from Ravenswood and Mount McConnel runs. The extent of good
+pasture land on the Mitchell waters, or anywhere on the Peninsula,
+further north, is limited. When the Palmer goldfield was opened the
+farthest outstation stocked on the overland route was Mount Surprise, on
+Junction Creek, held by the Firths, and this was over 200 miles from the
+diggings by the nearest practicable road. The road was opened by drovers
+taking stock, and carriers and miners passing northwards with their
+faces set direct to the wonderful land of gold. The road crossed the
+Tate, the Walsh, and the Mitchell Rivers, and then followed up the
+Palmer River through some of the roughest country in North Queensland.
+When Cooktown was opened as a port for the diggings, the overland route
+was abandoned for dray traffic, and droving stock alone used it. The
+consumption of beef on the field for several years demanded an average
+annual supply of from 15,000 to 20,000 head, most of the cattle
+realising from £7 to £10 each. The stock came from coastal runs mostly,
+Dotswood and the Burdekin country supplying much of it, Bowen Downs and
+Aramac[E] also sending in many large mobs. Very few breeding cattle were
+brought out, but some small runs towards Cooktown were occupied with
+cattle, the country consisting of open timbered ridges of only a
+second-class description, but fairly well watered. The Mitchell River
+was named by Dr. Leichhardt in memory of another explorer, Sir Thomas
+Mitchell. Leichhardt saw this river where it junctioned with the Lynd,
+and one of his old camps is still to be seen on the Lynd a little above
+this junction. It is really a beautiful river, with a clear running
+stream all the year round, and some deep reaches of still water; the
+banks are covered with scrubs of pencil cedar and a great variety of
+hanging vines and thick shrubs. The principal source of the river is
+near Port Douglas on the east coast, within six miles of the township,
+on the top of the range, from whence the water flows north-west, and
+continues its course to the Gulf of Carpentaria, where it empties itself
+in latitude 15 deg. 10 sec. In its course, it receives the waters of the
+Walsh, Lynd, and Palmer Rivers, as well as the Hodgkinson, and becomes a
+mighty stream. Indeed it is one of the most picturesque and interesting
+rivers in Queensland. The upper parts of this stream were explored by J.
+V. Mulligan and his party of prospectors in 1875. Leichhardt followed it
+below the junction of the Lynd when on his trip to Port Essington,
+before leaving it to cross to the Gulf country. The Mitchell River
+country is famous for its native game; the scrubs abound with wallaby,
+turkeys, and pigeons; the river and lagoons teem with fish of every
+variety, and waterfowl cover the shallow waters where the alligators are
+unable to reach them. The open country surrounding has the large
+kangaroo and the common bustard (plain turkey) in abundance. The
+country fattens stock, and is well watered. It consists of alluvial
+soil and open ridges of a sandy nature, where the grass is coarse and is
+covered with a low mimosa scrub.
+
+[Footnote E: The word "Aramac" was coined by the late Mr. W.
+Landsborough, the well-known explorer, and is an euphonious abbreviation
+of the name of the late Sir Robert Ramsey Mackenzie, who was Colonial
+Secretary in the first Macalister Ministry (1866) and Colonial Treasurer
+and Premier 1867-8. Mr. Landsborough was fond of coining words by
+joining the first syllable of one name to the first syllable of another
+name--thus the run known as "Willandspey," on Vine Creek, near Mount
+Hope, just below the junction of the Belyando and Suttor Rivers, is a
+combination of the names of William Landsborough and Peyton, the first
+lessee of the run.]
+
+Among the many other disabilities that cattle were subject to in this
+new country was a poison bush or tree, growing along the banks of creeks
+and rivers, called the peach tree (Cannabis sp.) It is said to have been
+the cause of many deaths, for hundreds of cattle that were unused to the
+plant died along the bends of the rivers, though young stock bred in the
+country appeared to be immune to its evil effects. Notwithstanding all
+these drawbacks and discouragements, runs were taken up on the Archer
+and other rivers in the Peninsula as far as Cape York, and the rivers
+flowing into Princess Charlotte's Bay were all occupied by the pioneers
+of settlement in face of all opposition and discouragement.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE RISE OF THE NORTHERN TOWNS.
+
+
+The site of Rockhampton, now the principal city of Central Queensland,
+was chosen in 1855 by Mr. Wiseman, a Land Commissioner of New South
+Wales who had been despatched from Sydney to confirm the Archer Brothers
+in the possession of their Gracemere run. The town received its name
+from the bar of rocks running across the river at the head of
+navigation. Its first expansion dates from the rush to the Canoona
+diggings, then called Port Curtis rush, which took place in 1858, as it
+was then the nearest port to the field, and therefore handled all the
+trade to and from the diggings. When the field was declared a "duffer,"
+and the miners departed in disgust, they left the nucleus of a
+settlement behind which was subsequently to become the seaport and
+distributing centre for all the rich pastoral country now comprised in
+the Central District.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Among the first settlers to open up Gladstone was R. E. Palmer, who
+built a large wool store and wharf so that the wool from Rannes and
+other stations lately formed could be shipped from there. He then took
+up Targinie cattle station over the harbour on the north side. The town
+is now noted for its healthiness and pleasant climate, and the beautiful
+view of the harbour, studded with islands. A North Australian settlement
+was attempted here when the Gladstone Government was in power, in
+January, 1847. Colonel Barney was head of the colonising party in the
+"Lord Auckland." Both these names are perpetuated in Barney Point, and
+Auckland Creek. The party were recalled after three months stay, and the
+locality was left alone until 1854, when Captain (afterwards Sir)
+Maurice O'Connell was sent up as Government Resident.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first to discover and report on the grand harbour of Port Denison
+was Captain Sinclair, in the schooner "Santa Barbara." An expectation
+had been held out by the New South Wales Government that a handsome
+reward would be given to anyone who discovered a good harbour north of
+Port Curtis.
+
+In hope of obtaining this reward, this little craft of only nine tons
+was fitted out at private expense, and sailed from Rockhampton on
+September 1st, 1859. The party consisted of Captain Sinclair, master; W.
+H. Thomas, seaman; and Messrs. James Gordon and Benjamin Poole,
+passengers. After piloting their way through islands and reefs and heavy
+storms, besides unknown dangers from the natives, they sailed into Port
+Denison on October 17th, 1859, and were gratified and surprised to find
+such a capacious and secure harbour. They landed and examined the bay,
+surveying and sketching some parts of it, but owing to the hostility and
+treachery of the natives, who were very numerous both on the islands and
+the mainland, they were not permitted to extend their knowledge of the
+port. The "Santa Barbara" left Port Denison on October 19th, and after
+boxing about for some time among the Cumberland Islands, reached Keppel
+Bay on her return on October 31st. The harbour is of an oval form,
+probably some ten miles in extreme length, and about four miles across
+from Station Island to the mainland; it is formed partly by an
+indentation in the coast, and partly by two islands running across it.
+Here at last was a port that would be a starting point for further
+settlement in the interior, a most suitable and secure harbour,
+discovered and opened up without any expense to the Government, and with
+such small means and outfit that the journal of those enterprising and
+heroic voyagers reads like a tale of romance. Although successful in
+this matter, they were not able to obtain the promised reward, for just
+at that time the separation of the new colony took place, and their
+claim was handed over to the new Government. A petition presented to the
+Queensland Parliament procured no further recognition than that Captain
+Sinclair was made Harbour Master, and Mr. James Gordon the first
+customs officer in Townsville.
+
+Very little was at that time known of the interior comprising the
+Kennedy district, which was thrown open to pastoral occupation on
+November 17th, 1859, by proclamation of the New South Wales Government,
+it being then part of that colony. Leichhardt had passed through it down
+the Suttor; Mitchell just touched its southern extremity; Landsborough
+penetrated from the direction of Fort Cooper, into the upper waters of
+the Bowen, which river he discovered and called the Bonnar.
+
+Bowen was settled by George Elphinstone Dalrymple, Police Magistrate and
+Commissioner of Crown Lands, and several squatters who had come overland
+with him, and also by a number of persons, including Mr. James Gordon,
+who arrived at Bowen from Rockhampton per schooner "Jeannie Dove" with
+stores, a few days before Mr. Dalrymple.
+
+On the organisation of the new Queensland Government, a proclamation was
+issued withdrawing the Kennedy district from occupation, and the tenders
+previously received were returned to the tenderers.
+
+These explorers of a new port and future city were deserving of a much
+higher and better recognition than was accorded them by either
+Government.
+
+The first sale of Bowen town lands was held in Brisbane on October 7th,
+1861, when eighty-nine lots were sold, realising £2,083. Many of those
+early investors were Brisbane men, well known in business and the
+professions. The lots were mostly half-acres in area, and averaged about
+£25 to £50 per acre, the first Bishop of Brisbane (Tuffnell) figuring
+largely among the land buyers. In 1863 the demand for land called for
+several sales, as the town was progressing on account of the large
+overlanding of stock and the shipments of supplies for parties taking up
+country to the north and west.
+
+A land sale on April 20th, 1863, was held in Bowen, when seventy-nine
+lots were sold, realising £1,718; all the lots went above the upset
+price. On June 8th, 1863, another land sale took place in Bowen, when
+seventy-four lots were sold, realising £1,135; among these were some
+country lands in ten-acre lots, which realised the upset price, £3 7s.
+6d. per acre. For town lots the upset price was £20 per acre; the
+competition for fancy lots was keen enough to run them up to as much as
+£100 per lot. Still another land sale had to be held to keep pace with
+the growing town, and the demands of speculators. This was held in Bowen
+on August 3rd, 1863, when seventy-three lots found purchasers, realising
+£2,643. This sale consisted mostly of country lands, put up in lots of
+from seventeen to fifty acres, at the upset price of £1 per acre; 1,518
+acres were sold at this last land sale. These figures from official
+sources testify to the rapidity of the expansion of the new town, and
+to the high expectations that were formed as to its future rise and
+progress. Many familiar names occur in the annals of the official
+register, but most of the purchasers are now dead. Seaward, Marsh, and
+Genge, who had a large business as storekeepers, figure extensively as
+buyers, also Mr. J. G. Macdonald, James Hall Scott, Korah H. Willis,
+Thomas Cavanagh--a well-known celebrity of Bowen--and many other old
+identities are called to mind by looking through the list of the first
+land buyers in Bowen. Few now remain of those early speculators. The
+treasury of the young colony benefited by their ambition to hold land in
+the future capital of the north by the sum of £7,579.
+
+The town wore gay and holiday aspect when the Governor, Sir G. F. Bowen,
+landed in 1865. The jetty at that time was being built, and the town was
+filled with squatters from all parts of the north, getting supplies or
+tendering for new country. Flags were flying, addresses of welcome were
+presented, a bullock was roasted whole on the beach, barrels of beer
+were on tap alongside the bullock, tons of bread were there to go with
+it, and an assorted crowd was ready to do justice to both bullock and
+beer. A levee was held, an undress one, of course, as evening dress had
+not reached so far north at that time, but coats were found for every
+one in which to make a bow to the Governor. The only block hat that had
+reached the latitude of Bowen was worn by Mr. R. H. Smith, afterwards
+member for the district, who had the honor of escorting His Excellency
+up to the town. A ball was held in the evening in honor of the event,
+and many other things took place that this chronicle will pass over.
+
+Frederick Bode, at Strathdon, W. Powell, of Salisbury Plains, J. G.
+Macdonald, of Inkermann, Collings, at Eton Vale, A. C. Grant, at
+Dartmoor, all were settlers in Bowen district in the early days.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Townsville was named after Captain Robert Towns, of Sydney, of the firm
+of R. Towns and Co., who held stations inland from Cleveland Bay, and as
+it became necessary to open some other port north of Bowen, which had
+hitherto been the distributing centre, explorations were made by some of
+the managers of these stations, foremost among whom was Mr. Ball, the
+result being the discovery of the site of the present town, which was
+gazetted as a port of entry in October, 1865. On the 10th of that month,
+Mr. James Gordon arrived to perform the duties of Sub-Collector of
+Customs, and a great number of other official duties as well.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Cardwell is situated near the head of Rockingham Bay, opposite the north
+end of Hinchinbrook Island, and distant north-west from Brisbane about
+950 miles, in latitude 18 deg. 16 sec. S., longitude 146 deg. 4 sec. E.
+Population of district and town, 3,435. The first settlement in the
+locality took place in 1863, and it became a place of considerable
+importance, being the nearest port on the east coast to the Gulf of
+Carpentaria, but since then other ports have been opened, offering
+greater facilities for shipping.
+
+The first telegraph line from the east coast to the Gulf of Carpentaria
+commenced at Cardwell, but the expense connected with keeping the line
+open across the Sea View Range and through the dense jungle on the coast
+side thereof, proved too great, and the route was finally abandoned. Up
+to 1873, Cardwell was the most northern port on the east coast of
+Australia, and the port of entry for the Herbert River district. The
+town is now in a languishing state, but the excellence of the port may
+yet redeem it from obscurity.
+
+It was from here that Kennedy's expedition took its final departure for
+the north early in June, 1848, and in connection with that memorable
+event, we may quote a paragraph recently appearing in a Queensland
+journal:--
+
+     "A SAD REMEMBRANCE BRINGS."
+
+     Recently a remarkable discovery was made at the foot of
+     the Coast Range to the north of Cardwell--relics of the
+     vehicles left by Kennedy, the explorer, when on his
+     ill-fated journey up York Peninsula. It may be remembered
+     that the party landed at Tam O'Shanter Point, Rockingham
+     Bay, on May 30th, 1848, and that on July 18th the carts
+     were abandoned, the party going on with twenty-six pack
+     horses and fifty sheep. The story of the fate of Kennedy
+     and nearly all of those who accompanied him has been
+     frequently told, and the discovery of the remains of the
+     carts, which have lain for nearly half a century in the
+     jungle, revives interest in one of the saddest episodes
+     in Australian exploration. The exact locality of the
+     relics is kept a strict secret, the possessor of the
+     secret being of opinion that he should profit by it. No
+     doubt the Government would be glad to secure information
+     which would enable it to establish the authenticity of
+     statements which have been made on the subject.
+
+The first intimation the southern parts had of the existence of gold in
+the north was a telegram from Cardwell dated September 9th, 1873. It ran
+as follows:--"Prospectors Mulligan, Brown, Dowdall, A. Watson, and D.
+Robertson, got one hundred and five ounces on the Palmer River, which
+they prospected for twenty miles. They say nothing of the country
+outside the river. Nearly all are leaving here." This news spread like
+wild-fire and created a great sensation all over Australia; the
+difficulty was to get to the Palmer quick enough. The Government sent
+Mr. Bartley Fahey, Sub-Collector of Customs at Normanton, to explore the
+Mitchell River in order to open communication from Normanton towards the
+new field. Mr. G. E. Dalrymple, leader of the north coast expedition,
+was ordered to proceed to the Endeavour River, and he arrived at Cook's
+Landing on October 24th, 1873, but the expedition was recalled. In the
+meantime, the A. S. N. Co.'s steamer, the "Leichhardt" (Captain
+Saunders), left Brisbane on October 15th with some members of the
+Endeavour River expedition on board. Mr. A. C. MacMillan and his party
+were taken on at Bowen. The "Leichhardt" arrived at Townsville on
+October 20th, and took on all the horses, forty-six in number, and one
+hundred and fifty diggers, all for the new Palmer rush. Mr. Howard St.
+George and party embarked at Cardwell, and on Saturday, October 25th,
+1873, the "Leichhardt" was made fast to the mangroves on the Endeavour
+River, in sixteen feet of water, and the new township began its
+existence on the site where the famous navigator, Captain Cook, on June
+17th, 1770; beached his damaged vessel for repairs. The gold fever was
+irresistible, and helped to lift the town into prominence at once,
+drawing people from all parts of Australia. Four months after the
+landing of Mr. St. George, J. V. Mulligan, arriving from the Palmer
+field, described Cooktown as a large progressing township, about half a
+mile long, with stores, public houses, and shops of all sorts, with
+steamers and other boats coming in and going out every few days, and
+containing not less than two thousand people, though some estimated the
+numbers at a much higher figure. Cooktown dates its existence from the
+landing of the passengers by the steamer "Leichhardt" in 1873. The first
+Police Magistrate appointed was Mr. Thomas Hamilton, who also acted as
+Sub-Collector of Customs. Mr. James Pryde was the first Clerk of Petty
+Sessions. When the first court was held on December 27th, 1873, it was
+to deal with the charge of stealing a goat from Townsville.
+
+Mr. Gold, Commissioner St. George, and Mr. A. C. MacMillan, soon started
+on their expedition after landing at Cooktown, accompanied by
+eighty-six diggers, the command being one hundred and eight strong. They
+reported finding a good track to the Palmer. One reminiscence of their
+journey remains in the name of the original track, which is now known as
+Battle Camp, because the natives came down from the adjoining hills to
+dispute the right of the white men to travel through their country.
+Things in Cooktown kept booming along, and in April, 1874, there were
+from three to four thousand people camped between Grassy Hill and the
+outside boundary of Cooktown. During that month, sixty-five publicans'
+licenses were issued, and thirty more applied for; there were also
+twenty eating houses, twelve large stores, twenty small ones, six
+butchers, five bakers, three tinsmiths, four tent makers, six
+hairdressers, seven blacksmiths, besides doctors, chemists, fancy shops,
+watchmakers, bootmakers, saddlers, etc., in proportion, and all going
+full speed ahead. Until the discovery of the Palmer field, and the
+opening of Cooktown, Cardwell was the most northern port of call on the
+Queensland eastern coast, and was the telegraphic centre of news from
+the Etheridge and Gilbert goldfields. The golden news from these far
+northern diggings was of a most glittering nature, but there was a
+reverse side of the picture in the hardships and privations endured.
+
+In 1874, the Cooktown "Courier" was started, and shortly afterwards the
+"Herald." The journalistic standard of the early days of Cooktown was
+esteemed, comparatively speaking, brilliant. The Queensland National
+Bank opened a branch there in 1874, followed by the Bank of New South
+Wales and The Australian Joint Stock Bank. Religion was not neglected
+either. In 1876, Cooktown was proclaimed a municipality, and from thence
+to 1878, it prospered mightily. Gold was plentiful, and its export was
+measured by the ton. The official returns in 1878 showed something over
+forty tons as having passed through the Customs, but that did not
+represent the measure of the enormous richness of the Palmer, as
+thousands upon thousands of ounces of gold were secretly taken away to
+China. Since then the goldfields have gradually dwindled down in their
+returns, and the Palmer of to-day, or even the Palmer of a few years
+ago, was not the grand and glorious field that made Cooktown rise like
+magic by the side of its splendid harbour. The later discovery of tin on
+Cannibal Creek, and the Annan River, again caused some stir in business,
+but of a much quieter description than in the halcyon days of golden
+light. The beche de mer industry has also been a great help to business
+people in Cooktown. The great red-letter day in Cooktown was the turning
+of the first sod for the Cooktown-Maytown Railway, on April 3rd, 1884,
+by the Mayor, Mr. Edward D'Arcy, when a tremendous public demonstration
+took place. Mr. George Bashford was the contractor for the first
+section, and he gave a great banquet on the occasion, inviting people
+from all parts of Queensland to be present. Like many other towns in
+Queensland, Cooktown in recent years has suffered from depression, but
+there is a solid future before it still. With one of the finest harbours
+on the east coast, it is the key to the Torres Strait route and to New
+Guinea. The reef-bearing country on the Palmer has still to be
+developed, and the great extent of this mineral wealth is as yet quite
+under-rated. Besides containing tin and coal in abundance, North
+Queensland has other grand resources in its back pastoral and
+agricultural country.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The town of Normanton was opened by the settlers as a better port for
+shipping for the Lower Flinders stations than Burketown, which was
+inconvenient, being too far to the west, and difficult of access. The
+Norman River, so called by Landsborough after the captain of the
+Victorian Government ship "Victoria," is a fine and deep river.
+
+Messrs. W. Landsborough and G. Phillips were the first to navigate the
+Norman, in January, 1867. They chose the site for the township on the
+left side of the river, where some high ironstone ridges come close in
+on the river bank. Here was room for the extension of a large city,
+naturally drained, and free from the possibility of floods, with ready
+access to the back country. Unfortunately, the upper reaches of the
+river are obstructed by bands of rocks running across from bank to
+bank, that hinder navigation. These, however, could be removed at small
+cost.
+
+Among the first to settle in the town was Dr. Borck, a popular medical
+man; his brother still keeps a store in the town. Another hotel built in
+the first days was that of Mr. A. McLennan, who had been concerned in
+the first occupation of Burketown. Ellis Read, trading for R. Towns and
+Co., soon had a fine store established, and carried on a large business
+with the stations, and also with the diggings opening on the Etheridge
+River. The first team to arrive in the town was driven in down Spear
+Creek by George Trimble from his station on the Saxby, at the head of
+the Norman River. Then wool commenced to arrive from Donor's Hills and
+other stations on the Flinders, even as early as 1868, and was shipped
+away to Sydney by any chance vessel offering. One of the early traders
+to the Norman was a well-known skipper on the east coast, Captain Till,
+of the "Policeman," schooner, who made several voyages there. Normanton
+was never affected by sickness as Burketown had been, and its progress
+was steady, though slow. The country around was well watered, but not
+adapted to agriculture. Lagoons of fresh water fringed the river, and
+were well supplied with game, the river full of splendid fish, some of
+which ranged up to twenty pounds in weight. Alligators abounded in all
+the brackish waters, as they do in all tidal rivers in the Gulf, while
+the crocodile (so called), a smaller but quite harmless creature, is
+found in fresh water only. Being amphibious in its nature, it can adapt
+itself to pools and rivers a long way inland, and is found wherever
+there are deep lagoons, and in all the waters flowing into the Gulf of
+Carpentaria.
+
+In the early times, when one of R. Towns and Co.'s vessels was unloading
+at the bank of the river, one of the Kanakas employed was seized by an
+alligator. The man held on to a mangrove tree, and his mates beat the
+alligator over the head until he let go, but not before he had so torn
+the flesh from the man's leg that he bled to death.
+
+Among those who are to be reckoned as the oldest inhabitants of the Gulf
+country, was John Harrix, who came over with the first cattle of Mr. J.
+G. Macdonald from Bowen in 1864, and who owned some teams and a small
+station near Normanton. A partner of his named Macdonald came down the
+Flinders early in 1865. Percival E. Walsh, a nephew of Mr. W. H. Walsh,
+of Degilbo, helped to settle some runs in the Gulf country. He took up a
+run on the Dugald, naming it Granada, which was sold afterwards to
+Messrs. Hopkins Brothers. He also restocked Iffley after its desertion
+by its first owners, the Earle Bros., now of Yacamunda, on the Suttor
+River. The early citizens of Normanton include the names of Peter
+Armstrong, David Swan, Charles B. Hely, Charles Borck, John Edgar
+Byrne, for many years proprietor of "Figaro," and a hundred others who
+more or less helped to form this city of the Gulf. Many of them are now
+resting in the cemetery outside the town.
+
+R. Towns and Co. had forty thousand sheep on the Leichhardt, near
+Floraville, and a shearing shed near tidal water lower down the river,
+where a small steamer (the old "Pioneer," the remains of which are still
+to be seen at Sweer's Island), came for the wool. The country proving
+subject to terrible floods and unsuitable for sheep, the numbers
+gradually decreased until the remnant were finally removed.
+
+The Etheridge goldfield was opened in the early days of Normanton, and
+found occupation for many teams and much labour.
+
+Prices in the early days were at a really famine level; flour was often
+sold at £40 a ton, and other goods at a corresponding rate. The writer
+had experience of these prices when loading his own team in those early
+days.
+
+Normanton had many advantages over her sister settlement, Burketown, and
+when the port became known, all the station trade drifted there, and
+Burketown declined in consequence.
+
+Normanton was, in 1891, connected with Croydon by a railway ninety-four
+miles in length, which cost £211,000, and was constructed by Mr. G.
+Phillips, C.E., on a principle new to Queensland, the sleepers being of
+mild steel, instead of wood, on account of the ravages of the white
+ants. The line between Croydon and Normanton passes through a perfectly
+level and very uninteresting country, a melancholy sandy waste of
+ti-tree flats, covered with the innumerable pinnacles and mounds made by
+white ants; the pasturage is as poor as the country looks.
+
+From Normanton a number of carriers are employed to carry goods to
+Cloncurry and the many stations trading therewith. Many teams are found
+carrying loading by the side of the railway line to Georgetown and the
+Etheridge past Croydon, ignoring the services of the railway. A punt
+service connects the town with the carrier's camp on the opposite side
+of the river, where loading starts for the Etheridge. The carrier's
+waggon is loaded fully up to its carrying capacity of from six to seven
+tons, and is drawn on to the punt by the team; on its arrival on the
+opposite side, the team draws the load on to the bank ready to depart on
+its journey. The country to Georgetown is generally of an inferior
+description. Towards the Cloncurry (southwards) for the first twenty
+miles, the road passes through timbered country, bloodwood and messmate
+of a poor class, then it opens out after passing Reaphook Range into
+open treeless plains and black soil, with excellent pasturage, and this
+extends for hundreds of miles to the interior, the whole of which is
+occupied by cattle and sheep stations that draw their supplies from
+Normanton up to a certain point, when the trade is induced by special
+arrangements of rebates on traffic rates, to diverge to Townsville, at
+the expense of the Gulf ports.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+About the same time that Townsville was opened as a port in order to
+meet the requirements of the new movements in stock on the country
+surrounding the Gulf, Burketown commenced its rather chequered career as
+a commercial port in 1865.
+
+The first supplies were brought by the "Jacmel Packet," chartered and
+loaded by R. Towns and Co., from Sydney. She was the second vessel in
+the Albert River, the first being the brig "Firefly," in which Mr.
+Landsborough brought his horses, which were landed a mile below the site
+of the town. The old vessel afterwards went to pieces in the river. The
+manifest of the "Jacmel Packet" was perhaps the most varied and
+strangely assorted that a trading vessel ever carried; the general cargo
+included pigs, dogs, fowls, houses, building materials, outfits of every
+kind, drays, rations, rum, and other spirits. In such fashion was the
+mercantile trade of Carpentaria commenced. On the opening of the goods,
+a saturnalia ensued, and the times were lively. The overlanders having
+money to spend, and not having indulged in a "spree" for years, took
+advantage of the absence of all control, and thoroughly enjoyed
+themselves in bush fashion; a fight every half hour, horse racing on the
+plain, or in "the street" as it was called, and strong rum for
+everyone. Other vessels quickly followed the first venture with more
+supplies. One of them, the "Gazelle," from Sydney, made a very quick
+trip of sixteen days to the mouth of the river, where she broke her back
+on a sandbank; the hulk was towed up the river, and gradually mouldered
+away just opposite the town. In 1866 the first wool was shipped to
+Sydney from the Gulf; the first load of wool taken into Burketown being
+from Conobie station, shorn in November, 1865, on the Cloncurry, about
+200 miles distant. The assistance the first settlers received from the
+Government amounted to little or nothing; the administration situated
+nearly two thousand miles away, had little care or thought for the
+struggling outsiders in the far-away Gulf country. The settlers had to
+protect themselves from blacks as well as from whites, and as it was
+some years before Burketown was made a port of entry, goods had to be
+cleared at Brisbane before sailing for Burketown. When the port was
+opened, the Customs Officer, Mr. Sandrock, was kept at Sweer's Island,
+where supplies had to be cleared before going on to the mainland. This
+meant a great loss of time to those who brought in teams for loading.
+All departmental work had to be done in Brisbane, and there also the
+first applications for runs and declarations of stocking had to be made.
+
+The tide of settlement had been too swift and too strong for the
+authorities to keep pace with, and although a Land Commissioner, in the
+person of Mr. J. P. Sharkey was sent out in 1866, and the Government
+were represented the same year by Mr. W. Landsborough in Burketown, the
+fact was evident that people were pretty well left to do as they liked.
+Burketown in 1866, and for the two or three following years, made some
+little progress, or appeared to do so. The drovers and shepherds, paid
+off after long trips with stock, had good cheques to spend, and their
+money was laid out in the lavish way peculiar to the old bush hand.
+Wages were high for all sorts of employment, 35s. to 45s. a week being
+the lowest. Everything was dear in the new town, but that made little
+difference to men who had not been in a town for years and had money to
+spare.
+
+One of the first vessels to arrive in the Albert River in 1866 was the
+"Margaret and Mary." She was said to have touched at some infected port
+in Java, and after arrival a fatal sickness broke out in Burketown that
+nearly carried off all the population. All hands that came in the ship
+died except the captain, his wife also falling a victim. A new crew had
+to be engaged to work the vessel before she could get away. There is
+little doubt but that the great mortality among the residents of
+Burketown during 1866 was traceable to the infection brought by this
+vessel. It was the wet season at the time, and this, in conjunction with
+the reckless life led by most of the people, and the want of medical
+assistance, increased the danger of the disease, and scores of strong
+men succumbed to its malign influence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It would be difficult to say how many men fell victims to the epidemic,
+but there must have been at least a hundred, besides those who died on
+the surrounding stations. The disease, which ended in fever and
+delirium, was as fatal to the strong as to the weak, and the little
+cemetery soon looked like that of an old established town, so numerous
+were the graves. This outbreak gave Burketown an evil name. People began
+to leave it, and when Normanton was opened in 1867 with the prospect of
+becoming a more suitable port for the district, many removed there to
+carry on their business. Shortly after this, Burketown was absolutely
+deserted, not a living soul remained, and nothing was left to mark the
+spot except heaps of empty bottles and jam tins, and some large iron
+pots belonging to a boiling-down plant. A few stumps remained standing
+on the open plains where once had been buildings. The hulls of the
+"Gazelle" and "Firefly" lay falling to pieces in the river, and none
+were left to sigh over Burketown's fallen fortunes, or sing a dirge in
+memory of its history; its short and merry life was over, and none
+lamented.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In these early days, Sweer's Island was a kind of marine suburb
+belonging to Burketown, a sanatorium about thirty-five miles from the
+mouth of the Albert, where the fever-stricken people were taken to
+recover. Mr. W. Landsborough, the Police Magistrate, or Government
+resident, lived there with his family. Mr. J. P. Sharkey, the first Land
+Commissioner, and Mr. Ellis Read, in charge of R. Towns and Co.'s
+stores, also resided on the island. Life was much pleasanter there than
+on the dead plains surrounding Burketown, and the sea breezes were
+constant and refreshing. On Sweer's Island, which is only about nine
+miles long, and from half a mile to three miles in width, vegetables and
+watermelons grow in profusion. A township was surveyed called Carnarvon,
+after the Earl of Carnarvon, allotments were sold and buildings erected.
+The first Customs House in the Gulf was here, and Mr. Sandrock was the
+first officer. The soil on Sweer's Island is sandy, and the grass thick
+in places. The turtle ponds made there by Captain Norman of the
+"Victoria" in 1861-2, were still to be seen in 1866, as also was the
+well sunk by Flinders in 1803, from which fresh water was still
+obtainable. Opposite the island, towards the west, lay Bentinck Island,
+much larger than Sweer's, though unoccupied, except by the natives,
+whose fires could be seen every evening after dark. About forty miles
+north-east of Sweer's Island is Bountiful Island, noted for its oysters,
+and also for turtles, large numbers resorting there at certain seasons.
+Sweer's Island has been deserted for many years, and is no longer a
+health resort. The buildings are gone, and the people also. The only
+residents now (1897), are a family of the name of Creffield, who keep
+some cattle, goats and sheep on the island.
+
+To the south-west of Burketown is a fine run called Lawn Hill,
+comprising a lot of good country surrounded by mountains, and well
+watered. This property was taken up by Mr. Frank Hann and Mr. E. R.
+Edkins in 1875. The former bought up many of the brands of cattle left
+in the district by former occupiers, and also travelled stock from
+Lolsworth on the Burdekin, and by this means a large herd was soon
+raised. At the same time the Watson Brothers stocked Gregory Downs,
+which is only ninety miles from Burketown. Then Mr. F. H. Shadforth, who
+had come all the way from Victoria overland with his family, took up
+Lilydale, next to Lawn Hill. In those days the supplies had to be
+obtained from Normanton, so Hann, Watson, and Shadforth chartered a
+schooner, loaded her with station supplies and material for a store for
+Foulkes and Harris to start business. The schooner arrived, and the
+store was erected on the site of old Burketown, but disaster followed.
+Foulkes was drowned, and Harris was killed by his team of horses bolting
+and dragging the waggon over him. Then Watson Brothers ran the store for
+a time, Mr. P. S. Watson taking charge and enlarging it in every way.
+Shortly afterwards Mr. Michael Kelly opened a public house, and the town
+commenced its second term of existence. Mr. Jack Reid soon opened
+another public house, and Burns, Philp and Co. began another store
+under the management of Mr. Theodore C. Amsden. Then police protection
+under Senior-constable Synnott, arrived, as the people were becoming
+rather lawless. Mr. P. Macarthur was appointed Customs Officer, and in
+conjunction with this appointment held many other offices. Finally the
+Queensland National Bank opened a branch. The town now progressed
+quickly owing to the great number of cattle passing through to the
+northern territory and the reoccupation of all the deserted runs. A
+Divisional Board was formed in 1884, and the population of the town rose
+to three hundred and fifty. Burketown resumed her old activity in
+business matters, and the evil name died out with the memories of the
+old days. So mote it be!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE MINERAL WEALTH.
+
+
+An expedition under the leadership of William Hann, sent out by the
+Queensland Government left Fossilbrook station on June 26th, 1872, and
+on August 5th, reached the Palmer River, named after the then Premier of
+Queensland, Sir A. H. Palmer. They found traces of gold in the ravines,
+and on both sides of the river, so that it was Hann's party who first
+discovered the existence of gold on the Palmer. This expedition went
+right through to where Cooktown now stands, and on to the Bloomfield
+River. From the description of the country given in Hann's journal, one
+of the well-known old northern prospectors named James V. Mulligan,
+concluded that gold would be found in quantities, and with the
+restlessness proverbial among his class, formed a party to go out and
+prospect the Palmer country. His expedition consisted of himself, James
+Dowdal, Alexander Watson (these two miners leaving Charters Towers with
+him), David Robertson, Peter Brown, and Albert Brandt, who joined him at
+Georgetown. Mulligan and his party left the Etheridge on June 5th 1873,
+passed Mount Surprise and Fossilbrook, the farthest out station in those
+days, and went on to the Tate River, through poor, rough country, only
+obtaining colours. They proceeded northwards to the Walsh River, and saw
+one of W. Hann's camps on their way. After travelling down the Walsh a
+few days, they crossed Elizabeth Creek to the Mitchell River, where they
+had some trouble in finding a ford, the river being quite six hundred
+yards wide, with high and scrubby banks on either side, and a strong
+flowing stream. After effecting a crossing with their packs, rations,
+etc., they passed on to Mount Mulgrave, fifteen miles further north.
+This well-known landmark is a precipitous bare rock dominating the
+surrounding country, and visible for many miles. They soon reached the
+Palmer River, where they continued prospecting, and obtained a good show
+of gold in the river and tributary creeks. Blacks were very numerous
+along the main river, necessitating guard being continually kept; they
+caught abundance of fish while camped on the river, where they spent a
+month, finding gold almost everywhere, some of it coarse, and some very
+fine. The party started back for the Etheridge, following the same route
+by which they had come. The scene of their operations was a little above
+Palmerville, and they prospected thence to Maytown. They were absent
+from Georgetown three months, and procured one hundred and two ounces of
+gold, valued at £4 an ounce. It was a prosperous trip, and all the
+party returned in good health.
+
+In 1874, J. V. Mulligan went on another prospecting expedition from
+Cooktown. He named the St. George, a tributary of the Mitchell River,
+and the party did a lot of prospecting and exploring in the country on
+the Upper Mitchell, where some fine pastoral country was discovered.
+While on this trip they made the discovery of the hot boiling springs at
+the head of the Walsh, mistaking the steam of it for the smoke of a
+blackfellows' fire.
+
+Before the end of 1873, there were over five hundred diggers on the
+Palmer, and the escort left in December with 5,058 ounces of gold,
+leaving a balance of 3,000 ounces in the banks. The first warden on the
+Palmer was Howard St. George, and the field developed at a furious rate.
+In the course of two years there were over fifteen thousand white men
+and twenty thousand Chinese located in and about the Palmer. The
+discovery of the field came as salvation to the north after the
+stagnation following upon the low prices and depression ruling since
+1867. The price of cattle went up enormously, and horses could be sold
+anywhere at good prices. The workings were along the creeks and rivers
+where water was plentiful, and the gold was obtained in quantities on
+the bars or ledges crossing the river. Rations were dear in the early
+days; carriage to Maytown was up to £120 a ton, beef was selling at 1s.
+per lb. A great deal of the loading was carried by pack horses from
+Cooktown, the diggings being situated among the highest tablelands in
+North Queensland, and scattered over a large extent of mountainous
+country. Byerstown, near the source of the Palmer is about fifty-five
+miles south-west from Cooktown. The situation is elevated, being near
+the culminating line of the Great Dividing Chain. Tin occurs in the low
+ranges to the south that separate the Mitchell from the Palmer, and also
+in the valley of the Bloomfield to the east. The blacks were dangerous,
+the wet seasons severe on the Palmer, and the first diggers had many and
+bitter trials. Early in 1874, the last of the flour was selling at 3s.
+6d. per pannikinful, and even an old working bullock when killed was
+eagerly bought up at 1s. per pound; the last pairs of Blucher boots were
+sold at 38s. Horseshoe nails were exchanged for their weight in gold,
+and old horseshoes were eagerly sought after. As early as April, 1874, a
+riot occurred in Cooktown, when the dissatisfied diggers rushed the
+"Florence Irving," steamer, for free passages. It was said there were
+three thousand people waiting to get away, and the police and miners had
+a fierce fight for the upper hand. Then other rushes took place on the
+goldfield as new discoveries were made, and the "Palmer fever" became
+bad again.
+
+In 1871 the following party of prospectors had been in the vicinity of
+the country that afterwards became so famous for its golden produce, but
+they missed the rich deposits, and kept a lower course down in the
+level country towards the Gulf of Carpentaria, namely, Messrs. T.
+Leslie, J. Edwards, Charles Ross, T. Hackett, and J. Duff. Some of these
+men became wealthy afterwards through buying cattle and retailing them
+and by buying gold. Leslie, Duff, Edwards, and Callaghan joined in a
+company and fairly coined money on the Palmer goldfield; all were
+extremely popular men. Maytown was called Edwardstown for some time
+after it was opened, and the name was so printed on the bank's cheque
+forms. Another of these early prospectors was W. T. Baird, known as Bill
+Baird, who had led a most adventurous life and had amassed several small
+fortunes; the last one he made was at Mount Romeo tin mines; he led a
+rough knockabout life, doing bush work or cattle droving when hard up,
+etc.; he was killed by the natives of Batavia River while prospecting
+there; he was a general favourite for his good humour and
+kindheartedness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Croydon, a reefing field on the waters of the Norman River was
+discovered about 1886 by W. C. Brown and Aldridge, who obtained the
+reward of £1,000. The field comprises several mining centres scattered
+about in the hill country, which commences here and extends away to the
+east. No alluvial gold has been discovered on this field; reefing has
+been the only way of working the gold, which is more or less connected
+with refractory ores. The future of this field is well assured, as the
+reefs maintain their character at all depths reached, and the place is
+decidedly businesslike and stirring. The absence of good timber adds to
+the cost of working the reefs, but the extension of the railway to
+Georgetown, which is contemplated, will add to the facilities for
+obtaining supplies, and will also increase the traffic in other ways.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Georgetown is on the left bank of the Etheridge River, so called after
+D. O. Etheridge, one of Mr. J. G. Macdonald's drovers who came out to
+the Gulf with the first lot of cattle through this country. It is about
+one hundred and sixty miles west, in a straight line from Cardwell. The
+surrounding country is gold-bearing, and known as the Etheridge
+goldfield; silver, copper, tin, and lead are also among its mineral
+products. This was one of the first reefing districts opened in the
+North of Queensland, but owing to the expense of carrying on the mines
+on account of the cost of carriage, labour, and mining appliances, none
+but the best mines have been worked. The formation is granite, and
+pyrites with the stone has helped to increase the cost of working. The
+field is very extensive, and embraces a large number of small mining
+centres covering an enormous area of gold-bearing country. In the first
+days, alluvial gold was sought for over large portions of the field. A
+specimen nugget found in June, 1896, at Mount Macdonald, weighing 151
+ounces was dollied and smelted, yielding 85 ounces of gold, valued at
+£3 5s. per ounce. Other large specimens were found recently in the same
+locality.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Cloncurry is the commercial centre of a district rich in various
+minerals. It is situated on the right bank of the Cloncurry River, a
+tributary of the Flinders, and is about 430 miles west-south-west, in a
+straight line from Townsville, and about 240 miles south from Normanton.
+The copper deposits are very extensive, the whole surrounding
+mountainous district being more or less copper-bearing. Lodes of gray
+ore and blue carbonates are numerous, and virgin copper and malleable
+ore have also been found. The difficulty and expense of carriage has
+prevented the field from taking that position as a mining centre to
+which it is entitled; other metals found are gold, silver, lead, iron,
+and bismuth. The Cloncurry goldfield includes a large tract of country,
+extending eastwards to the Williams River, and southwards to an equal
+extent. Reefing has been carried on of late, but not to any great
+extent. In the early days of gold discovery, alluvial sinking attracted
+a large population, and some splendid nuggets were found (mostly on
+Sharkey's Flat), weighing from five to forty ounces, the gold being of
+the highest Mint value, £4 3s. 6d. per ounce. Gold is still produced at
+some of the outlying diggings, extending over to the Leichhardt River in
+the west, where the whole country is mineral-bearing. The Cloncurry
+Copper Company expended large sums of money in machinery and sinking
+shafts and prospecting in opening up some of the lodes of copper so
+abundant there, but owing to the depreciation in the value of the
+mineral and the great expense of mining and carriage to port, the
+operations had to be entirely suspended. The first to discover copper
+and make use of it was Mr. Ernest Henry, in 1865. Henry discovered lodes
+of copper on the Leichhardt and in several other places, and has
+distinguished himself not alone as an enterprising pioneer squatter and
+settler, but also as an early and most indefatigable prospector for
+minerals. In conjunction with Mr. R. K. Sheaffe, at one time member for
+the district, and subsequently Mayor of Sandgate, he helped to open much
+of the Gulf country, and has spent a fortune and a lifetime in
+pioneering in outside districts.
+
+The Black Mountain is on the opposite side from the town across the
+river, and is, as its name denotes, a real black mountain. It is a most
+extensive outcrop of nearly pure metallic iron ore, and it is calculated
+the amount in sight is over thirteen millions of tons: great masses of
+the ore are lying all round the base of this enormous outcrop.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Clermont is situated on a tributary of the Nogoa River, about two
+hundred and twenty-seven miles distant by railway from Rockhampton, and
+well known for its mineral resources. Since 1862 large quantities of
+copper have been obtained, and the surrounding country is also
+auriferous, alluvial mining having been carried on with more or less
+success. Four miles from Clermont are the ruins of old Copperfield, a
+township prosperous from 1864 to 1870, in the palmy days of the Peak
+Downs Copper Company, which paid dividends of eighty per cent., and in
+1867 sold copper to the amount of £120,000. Owing to a great fall in the
+value of copper, the property was sold for £3,000, and this mining
+enterprise collapsed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+INCIDENTS OF THE EARLY DAYS.
+
+
+The early arrivals with stock in the Gulf country were obliged to obtain
+rations and supplies from Bowen, on the east coast, as that was the only
+port then opened in the North of Queensland. The distance was from five
+to seven hundred miles through the desert country and down the Flinders,
+and as the old-fashioned pole bullock-dray with only two wheels was then
+in vogue, no great quantity could be carried in one dray load. The
+opening of Burketown in 1865 as the second port after Bowen in North
+Queensland, enabled the early settlers to obtain supplies more easily,
+although the cost was still excessive. But the rations were fresher than
+those the overlanders had been used to. Some of the flour that had come
+out with the parties had been years on the road, and was very much the
+worse for the long journey. This flour could only be used after much
+sifting and airing; it was made into small thin cakes called Johnny
+cakes, which were cooked in the ashes and eaten hot; even then it was
+bitter and nearly brown in colour. The grubs and worms had long since
+left it, or died in it from old age. It was said that some flour from
+Bowen Downs that had left Sydney years before and come out to the Gulf
+stations just formed, being too strong to use, was thrown out, and the
+dingoes and crows were found lying dead round it. The sugar in those
+days was the dark, treacly kind, that left a stain on the floor like
+blood; it came in casks. However, people were not very particular as to
+the quality of the supplies, provided there was anything at all to eat.
+Pig weed (portulacca), boiled or roasted on a shovel was one of the
+changes open to travellers; tea was made from the marjoram bush; and
+very fair coffee was made from the scrapings of the burnt edges of
+dampers, and was called Scotch coffee. When Burketown was opened, the
+fresh supply of flour and stores was very welcome to the early settlers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For the first year or two of Burketown's existence, a saturnalia of a
+most original and determined fashion set in. There were only two or
+three women in the town, and no police, and the crowd enjoyed themselves
+in their own breezy, sunshiny way. Burketown was the haven of refuge for
+all the outsiders and outlaws from the settled districts when they had
+made other places too warm to hold them any longer.
+
+  "God forsaken, devil may care,
+  Every one with his sins to bear;
+  From East, from West, they are camping there;
+  Where all the bad lots go."
+
+All kinds of characters made their way out to the Gulf in those early
+days. Men went there who had been wanted by the police for years. Horse
+stealing and forging cheques were very common pastimes among the fancy,
+and Burketown society, in its first efforts to establish itself, was of
+a kind peculiarly its own.
+
+An ex police officer (O'Connor), who started business in Burketown, and
+who hailed from the land of the shamrock, knew many of the "boys," as he
+called them. One noted character broke out of the lock-up, swam the
+Albert River, swarming with alligators, got a horse somewhere or
+somehow, and was followed by Mr. W. D'Arcy Uhr far into New South Wales,
+and brought back to Burketown, only to be discharged, whilst Mr. Uhr,
+who was one of the smartest officers of the police was asked for an
+explanation for leaving his district without permission.
+
+The following case of horse-stealing will serve to show the lawless
+state of things prevailing in the outside regions when the borders of
+civilisation were undefined, and no laws could be enforced.
+
+Three men were implicated, all notorious characters, even for those
+days. They were called Dublin Bob, Firearm Jack, and One-armed Scotty.
+They had spent some time mustering the horses and in building yards to
+hold them, on Bowen Downs run. As soon as the theft was discovered, they
+were followed by Mr. J. T. C. Ranken, the manager, Mr. J. Moffat,
+Junior, a blackfellow, Jacky, and another man. They overtook the
+horse-stealers on the range near Betts' Gorge, took possession of the
+horses, and arrested the thieves, as Mr. Ranken and the other white men
+had been sworn in as specials before starting. As they were riding
+along, Mr. Ranken saw a horse down a gorge that he thought he
+recognised, and leaving the prisoners in charge of the others, giving
+them strict instructions to guard them carefully, he went to look at the
+horse. On returning, he found the men had escaped, and no satisfactory
+explanation was ever given as to their departure. This was in the year
+1866, when there was a great demand for horses in consequence of so much
+stock being driven to take up new country. In the previous year, 1865,
+the first sheep were brought on to Bowen Downs, and another mob of
+cattle was sent out to the Gulf country in charge of J. Neil, who
+stocked the country on the Alexandra, a tributary of the Leichhardt
+River, where there was a large waterhole ten or twelve miles long. The
+Mud Hut on the Thomson had to be abandoned owing to the scarcity of
+grass and the waterhole drying up before the end of the year. The year
+1865 was a very dry one on the Thomson, the Barcoo, and the
+Flinders--waterholes went dry that year that have never gone dry in the
+thirty-five years that have followed. Law and order in those days was a
+"go-as-you-please" sort of arrangement. At a shanty about twenty-five
+miles from Burketown, a man was shot by the keeper of the shanty, and
+died. The man was prosecuted, but owing to his detention waiting trial,
+and his long sea voyage west about the Leeuwin, and other extenuating
+circumstances in the case, the man being compelled to keep order in a
+lonely place amongst a very disorderly crowd, he got off.
+
+During the year 1864, a man named G. Nicol, and his wife, both of whom
+had been employed at Bowen Downs, and had left with the intention of
+going to Rockhampton, were found dead between Bowen Downs and
+Stainbourne. They had been offered quiet horses for the journey, but
+they preferred to walk. As they did not turn up at Stainbourne, a search
+was instituted, and they were found on one of the branches of Bullock
+Creek, both dead. The woman had been dead much longer than the man, as
+portions of her corpse were missing, while the body of the man was
+whole; the woman had a hole in her skull; the man had a revolver with
+two chambers empty. She was the first white woman on the Thomson, and
+was a very kind decent little body. The story remains one of the
+mysteries of the bush that will never be solved. Another tragedy that
+marked this year was the murder of Mr. Meredith, of Tower Hill station,
+and his overseer by the blacks. Mr. Meredith had been away from his
+station on a visit, and when returning passed his teams loaded with
+rations on the road somewhere between Bully and Cornish Creeks. In
+passing them he promised either to meet them himself or to send someone
+else. When he got to Cornish Creek, he saw so many blacks that he
+decided to meet them himself; therefore, on arrival at the station, he
+obtained fresh horses, and started back, taking his overseer, Mr. Robert
+McNeely, with him. He intended to stay with the teams until they were
+past all danger, but he never reached them. Both men were killed on
+Cornish Creek, about fifty miles above Bowen Downs. The exact spot was
+unknown, nor were the bodies ever recovered; but their clothes, watches,
+etc., were found in the blacks' camp. The men with the teams were the
+first to find out that something was wrong, for on bringing up their
+horses one morning, they found some of the Tower Hill station horses
+among them, one in particular that Mr. Meredith always rode himself.
+Suspecting trouble, they went on to the Bowen Downs teams, a few miles
+ahead, and the teamsters went back with them to search, and in the
+blacks' camp articles were found which left no doubt that both Mr.
+Meredith and his overseer had been killed. No doubt there had been a
+night attack when the two pioneers were asleep in their camp, unaware of
+the approach of the observant enemy. Blacks seldom attacked during the
+day, but preferred to steal stealthily upon their victims and kill them
+in their sleep. Numerous cases of this description might be mentioned,
+and it was the rule among experienced bushmen to either keep watch at
+night, or else to shift camp after dark.
+
+In the early days, the blacks of North Queensland, and especially of the
+Peninsula, used to be troublesome to stock, and never failed to kill
+horses and cattle whenever a chance offered, cutting up and carrying
+away the carcase to the scrubs or ridgy country. Great numbers of stock
+were killed by them in the early days of settlement all over the Cook
+district. Even teamsters' horses have been known to be killed close to
+the road during the night, cut up, and carried away, or skinned of the
+flesh and the skeleton left entire. Not alone to stock did they confine
+their attacks, for many a white man and Chinaman, of whose death there
+is no record, fell before their spears, and it is maintained they ate
+their victims on many occasions. The usual war of reprisals went on
+between the intruders and the native race, and the latter soon went
+under, although the tribes inhabiting the country around the main rivers
+were numerous. In no district in Queensland have the blacks shown
+themselves more hostile to the settlers than in the Peninsula. The
+Jardine Brothers' journal of their trip to Cape York is a record of
+continued and unprovoked attacks by blacks on their little party. One of
+the early settlers, a Mr. Watson, was killed on his own verandah at his
+station on the Archer, and Gilbert, the naturalist belonging to
+Leichhardt's party, was killed in a night attack by blacks, not far from
+the Mitchell River. The lonely gullies about the Palmer hide the record
+of many a lost prospector done to death by the savages; while the sight
+of one of them was enough to cause a stampede among a camp of a hundred
+Chinese, for the poor Chinamen always fell easy victims to the blacks,
+as they would never show fight, and seldom carried firearms. It was a
+very common occurrence for the early settlers to bring in cattle to the
+yard for the purpose of drawing broken spears out of their sides. Horses
+were hunted down as readily as cattle, and this in a district noted for
+its native game.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE MEN OF THE NORTH.
+
+
+There were never lacking men ready for the enterprise and hardship of
+pioneering when there was such a field of profitable work open before
+them, work that was for those trained in bush experience, hardy and
+acclimatised as they were. The life, in spite of hardships, was not
+without attraction and satisfaction to many who took part in it. There
+was a kind of fascination to many bushmen in the idea of being the first
+to enter upon new and unknown scenes; to note the surprise of native
+game beholding for the first time the presence of the stranger, and to
+observe the terrified astonishment of the aborigines when first they saw
+the white intruders; all this tended to add to the romance and interest
+of helping to open a new district. But outside pioneer life in early
+days had a reverse side; there was little or nothing of comfort or
+relaxation; there was always hardship and exposure; there was no Sunday
+for rest, no holiday, no Eight Hour Day, nothing but constant movement
+and watching. The duties were shared by all alike; each had to take a
+turn at anything and everything, cooking one time, driving a team
+another, shepherding sheep occasionally, herding cattle sometimes,
+cutting timber, making bough-yards for sheep, lambing down a flock of
+ewes, shifting hurdles, and poisoning dingoes, killing and salting beef,
+ear-marking, washing and shearing sheep, looking for stragglers, yoking
+bullocks, building huts, tracking and hunting stock, all little duties
+that made up the routine life of the outside grazier. They all took
+their turn, and generally there was one dish and one table. Where the
+ways and customs consequent on the life brought all on a partial level,
+the man who could turn his hand to anything from shoeing a horse to
+weighing out a dose of quinine or driving a bullock team, was the most
+valuable.
+
+
+THE STOCKMAN, OR STOCKRIDER.
+
+  He was native to the soil and bred,
+    Merely a cowboy he;
+  A nomad's life was what he led.
+    And all he wished to be.
+
+He is a class of his own, and is a man of some importance in the daily
+life of a station. The term may mean to many any man who can climb into
+a saddle; but a good stockman is not so easily picked up, nor is he made
+out of any material to hand. A good and experienced stockman, one who
+knows his work thoroughly, is active, and can ride well, can command
+wages all the year round. His work is not by any means easy; there are
+long hours, in fact all hours, hard fare, and often no lodging but the
+bare ground; he must endure hunger and thirst, cold, heat, and wet, and
+often has to take a watch at night. When at work in the yard branding
+and drafting, he has either to endure tremendous dust, or else he is
+covered with mud. But the trained stockrider makes light of all these
+discomforts, in fact he looks on them as all in the bill of fare, and
+belonging to the day's work. He is hardy, wiry, as well as possessed of
+a good deal of endurance and pluck, and like all men who ride much, is
+nearly always lean in condition. He is generally the owner of a couple
+of horses and an outfit of saddle, swag, stock whip, and spurs, and
+takes an interest in all racing and sporting matters. As a rule, he is
+not a saving man, although some may lay up enough money to start a small
+store. The native youth makes the best all-round stockman; many follow
+horse-breaking at times, or take a turn at droving. To draft on
+horseback in the cattle yard, or in the yard on foot, to castrate and
+brand horses and calves, to ride a young horse, to make a leg or head
+rope out of green hide, or a pair of hobbles, to counterline a saddle,
+to cook a damper, all comes within the province of the stockman. Towns
+and townspeople are not much in his way, any more than the customs of
+the city are congenial to his free-and-easy style of associations.
+Moleskin trousers, Crimean shirt, cossack boots, and felt hat, are his
+rig out. The modern type is less pronounced than he of the ancient
+school, the flash, hard-riding, tearing, loud-swearing, rowdy stockman
+of olden days, with a stockwhip sixteen feet long, sporting breeches and
+leggings, and a loud red shirt. Stockmen have very little to do with
+unions, but are seldom without employment on stations or on the road.
+
+
+THE COOK.
+
+Bush cooks are of every shade of colour, complexion, and social
+standing, from the foreign count who has been expatriated for political
+leanings, to the squalid shuffling Chinee, or the wily, treacherous
+Cingalee. Hut keeper was the term employed in the olden days when two
+shepherds had each a flock of sheep folded for the night inside a yard
+made of movable hurdles, and a hut keeper was joined to them to do a bit
+of cooking, as well as to shift one set of hurdles each day. He was
+supposed also to watch at night against native dogs, strychnine not
+being so much in use then to reduce the numbers of these pests. They
+were men of dirty, lazy habits; their cooking was fearful, consisting
+simply of boiling a bit of beef or mutton, making a damper, and rinsing
+out a tin pannikin. Greasy-looking, growling, and drunken they were,
+with scarcely energy enough to fetch a little wood or water; to wash
+their clothes was an unheard-of thing. Those who cook for drovers on the
+road have to be more alert; a good man on the road is a great
+consideration, and it is no sinecure to cater for a party while
+travelling with stock. The cook is exempt from watching, as he has to
+be up during the night to get breakfast ready by daylight for the men to
+start on with their cattle. Some good cooks will provide hot suppers for
+the men in all weathers. The shearers' cook is quite another variety. He
+is often a boss man employs one or two others under him, and gets top
+wages, but he has to be up to the mark, for our shearer is a fine
+specimen of an inflated growler, and will have nothing but of the best,
+and up to time, tea and cake between meals, duff and all the luxuries
+for dinner; in any case he comes in for a full share of the shearer's
+arrogance and abuse. Station cooks comprise all sorts, good, bad, and
+indifferent, clean and unclean; but one who can make real good bread is
+a rarity, and all are self-taught. They frequently get good wages, but
+soon become lazy and dirty, and often a Chinaman has to be put on to do
+the kitchen cooking. About the towns it is notorious that European cooks
+cannot be relied on for any time on account of their drinking habits,
+and once again the Chinaman has to be resorted to.
+
+
+THE SHEARER.
+
+This class of labourer has been very much in evidence of late years in
+Queensland on account of the numerous strikes that have taken place,
+brought about by them or their leaders, although it is the best paid of
+all unskilled work in the colony. The Shearers' Union attempted to rule
+all labour and labour interests throughout the whole colony, and
+succeeded for a long time in keeping things in a very disorganised
+state. There is nothing in shearing that any man could not master in a
+few days, although the work may be laborious when long continued. The
+money earned is out of all proportion to what other classes of labour
+receive, nevertheless the shearer is the most discontented and turbulent
+of all classes, and very decidedly aggressive. He can earn in a few
+months enough to keep him for the rest of the year without work, he is
+gregarious in his habits, and travels about in mounted groups, generally
+armed. He may be said to be a flash man, given to gambling, dicing, and
+other sports, and a good deal of his money is spent at roadside
+shanties. When at work, however, he is sober and industrious, as most of
+them are desirous of making a good tally at the end of the shearing, and
+the rules of the shed forbid any latitude for loafing or mischief.
+Shearing by machine instead of by hand will tend to modify the aspects
+of the work, and allow more men to learn the art. Shearers travel from
+shed to shed during the season, and sometimes earn from four to six
+pounds a week. They live on the best that can be got. Instances are
+common of men shearing over two hundred sheep per day for days running.
+Amongst the shearers will be found many respectable men, who have homes
+or selections of their own on which their families reside, and who
+travel round a few large sheds to earn enough money to carry on with and
+support their homes.
+
+
+THE BULLOCK DRIVER.
+
+The man of strong body, and of stronger language, the old
+"bull-puncher," is going out. He was an institution of early days when
+the pole-dray was in vogue, a fearful kind of vehicle that tipped up
+going out of a steep creek with a load on, and going down would bear on
+the polers fit to break their necks. The four-wheeled waggon has for a
+long time superseded the old bullock-killing dray, but the driver
+remains much the same. Instead of driving ten bullocks in a pole-dray,
+he yokes up eighteen or twenty to a waggon and draws instead of three
+and a half tons, about seven or eight tons.
+
+His whip is a terrible long plaited thong with a strip of green hide
+attached, and a handle like a flail, with it he wakes the echoes and his
+oxen at the same time. The crack of the whip is accompanied by a voice
+as deep and hoarse as the bellow of one of his own long-suffering
+yoked-up slaves, and his lurid language makes even his bullocks shudder.
+To see the "bullocky" at his best is only given to those who travel with
+him for a whole trip, and observe his style of getting out of
+difficulties that would dishearten many another man. He is full of
+resource, and not lacking in energy, and when his team is bogged in a
+creek in a seemingly hopeless mess, and beyond all appearance of ever
+being extricated, after exhausting his ample stock of dire profanity, he
+proceeds in a methodical manner to dig under his wheels and corduroy
+the track with branches and limbs of trees, weeds out his jibbing
+bullocks, and with renewed energy and awful voice, he calls on his
+patient and weary team for a big effort, and out they walk with their
+load on to the bank. The "bullocky" was a great factor in the early days
+of settlement, where there were no roads and loading had to be dragged
+over mountains and through steep creeks and over all obstacles. His
+bodily strength, great experience, and energy, came in to help in no
+small degree to keep settlement alive. The arrival of the bullock teams
+was quite an event, perhaps after being months on the road, and when all
+supplies had run short--not that the fact of supplies being short on the
+station would induce them to hasten their progress, for no bullock
+driver was ever known to hurry or go out of his slow, crawling pace for
+any inducement whatever. The "bullocky" could drink rum in buckets, and
+was always given to use his fists. Take him all round, he was about as
+rough a specimen of a bush artist as could be found; but he was
+hospitable in his camp; it was always "Come and have a pot of tea,
+mate," to any traveller. The quicker-moving horse teams and the
+railways, are elbowing the bullock driver out into the never-never,
+where there are still opportunities for his special faculties, and it is
+not often that bullock teams, with their wood and iron yokes, and dusty,
+hairy drivers, are seen on any roads coming into railway stations. To
+ask a bullock driver where he got his beef from was not always a safe or
+prudent question; it was looked upon as a piece of wanton impertinence
+that would require suppression. After putting down so much on the debit
+side, something should be said to the credit of the carrier. He must
+have been hard-working and thrifty to have acquired the necessary
+capital to purchase his waggon and team. Physically, he must be
+exceptionally strong to stand the life he leads. Mentally, he must be
+full of resource to overcome the obstacles he meets with on unformed and
+often uncleared roads. Morally, he must be passing honest, for he often
+carries loads of great value, for the safety of which he alone is
+responsible for weeks and often months. These men take up the work of
+distributing goods where the railways end. Their duties are arduous and
+responsible, and they deserve more consideration than they generally
+receive.
+
+
+THE TRAMP.
+
+  "My life is a failure, the weary one said,
+    And the days of my youth are past;
+  But I still tramp along, and am not afraid,
+    While grub in the bush shall last.
+
+  "My shirt is patched, and my trousers are torn,
+    My hat is a sight to see,
+  The nap of my blanket has long been worn,
+    And is patched with an old soogee."
+
+The tramp is found everywhere in the world. The bush tramp is only
+another variety, and since the big strikes took place in Queensland some
+years ago, the tribe has multiplied, as it taught them to loaf on the
+stations for rations. Now they make a practice of getting all their
+supplies for the road from the station stores, pleading they have no
+money, and from policy rations are given them, and no questions asked.
+Many men carrying their swags on their backs are really looking for
+work, and deserve encouragement by the gratuity of a little rations to
+help them along, as stations are far apart in the outlying districts. As
+station owners are dependent on these same swagmen for the extra labour
+they require from time to time, it is policy to keep on good terms with
+a class that can work incalculable damage to station men that have miles
+of grass in sheep paddocks to burn, woolsheds to demolish, and gates on
+the main road to be left open, with no evidence forthcoming as to how
+fires were started, etc., and no police to supervise or control the
+actions of these irresponsible wanderers. But the tribe of "whalers," as
+they were called in New South Wales, men who tramped up one side of the
+Darling River, and tramped down on the other side, never betraying any
+desire to find work, these can be found in the Queensland bush too, but
+not far out, where there are long dry stages between the stations, and a
+shortness of water which terrifies these old "bummers." There are men
+who have tramped all over the colonies--every colony in Australia they
+have been through, and know all the tracks. They come up to a station
+and ask for work in a sort of a way, and then ask for rations to carry
+them on, even asking for a bit of tobacco; they say they have no money
+(and their appearance confirms all they say), and have done no work, for
+six months past, or longer, tramping all the way, and never a job. Their
+rags and swag betray dire poverty; their clothes patched in every
+colour, so that a blackfellow would hardly wear them, and they are dirty
+in the extreme. These men are not decrepid or weak, but are simply lazy,
+whilst the fine dry climate enables them to live without hard work.
+Occasionally, in order to procure some tobacco or a little money for a
+spree at a shanty, they will take a job for a time as rouseabout or
+wood-chopper, but they are soon off on the "wallaby track" again. It is
+a recognised custom now among stations in the west and north-west to
+ration the swagmen as they pass along, and the cost to some stations
+during the year is very considerable; they just bring up their ration
+bags and get them filled, and go to the creek to camp and cook the
+evening meal they have walked perhaps twenty miles to obtain, but which
+cost them nothing but the exercise. Poverty is the inheritance of some,
+but many of these wanderers are poor because as soon as they do earn a
+few pounds at odd jobs during shearing time, they march at once to the
+nearest bush shanty and drink what they have earned until turned away,
+and then tramp back to the stations, begging rations as they go along,
+and at the same time regarding the donors with a consuming and
+persistent malice. The professional tramp is not a nice character,
+there can be no mistaking him, with his swag done up in a long roll, and
+hung round his shoulder and down his side, a billycan and water-bag in
+his hand. He creeps along slowly with sore feet and shuffling steps,
+camping in the shade when he can to rest; he has no companions
+generally, and his life is a joyless and miserable one; but there he is,
+and there he will remain, for his tribe will not die out, because no one
+will refuse to give a little rations to a wayfarer because he is hard
+up, ragged, and penniless.
+
+
+THE DROVER.
+
+  He knew of every drover's way,
+    From Normanton to Bourke;
+  From far Port Darwin's ample bay,
+    Right through to Muswellbrook.
+  The desert plains he knew full well,
+    Where duststorms blind the eye;
+  And oft he had come from Camooweal,
+    Drivin' stock to Narrabri.
+
+The life of a drover, under the most favourable circumstances, is the
+reverse of a pleasant one, but like all nomadic occupations, it has a
+fascination for many bushmen. The drover would appear to be regarded as
+the common enemy of every owner or superintendent through whose run he
+passes, although in many cases it is a fact that roads are fenced off so
+that a drover cannot leave them without breaking down the fences. In
+many instances the only permanent water on the stock routes has been
+fenced in by the owner of the run. The principal wealth of Australia is
+stock, and these, both sheep and cattle, to be marketed need bringing
+down to some seaport or market, either as stores or fats. Sometimes long
+distances are travelled, from one end of Australia to the other, the
+journey occupying months. At starting, the stock are counted and handed
+over to the charge of a competent drover, who delivers them at the end
+of the journey, and is paid either by contract at so much per head, with
+an allowance for losses, or else by weekly wages, the owner finding the
+whole plant and money. Overlanding is a constant source of anxiety from
+start to finish of the journey. The varying items, such as floods,
+droughts, disease, incompetent hands, lost stock, and the surveillance
+from the owners of runs through which they pass, make up the daily
+routine of a drover's life. Stormy nights, when cattle become very
+restless, keep the drover awake and anxious. His duties are of a
+responsible nature, and he requires a good deal of tact and patience to
+manage his men properly, for he may have over a dozen employed with him
+on a droving job. With sheep the anxiety is not so great as with cattle
+or horses, as sheep are much easier to manage. The law provides that
+unless detained by flood, stock shall be driven not less than six miles
+every twenty-four hours. In most instances this distance is exceeded,
+but should the drover fail to travel the prescribed distance, through
+any accident, the owner or manager of the run turns up at the camp and
+gives the drover the option of either moving his stock on the proper
+distance, if it is only one mile ahead, or of appearing at the nearest
+police court, perhaps a hundred miles away, to answer an information for
+a breach of the Pastoral Leases Act or the Crown Lands Act. Although,
+perhaps only a nominal fine may be imposed, the vexatious delay, loss,
+and inconvenience of attending at the court, induce the drover to avoid
+any needless infringements of the Act. Some managers of runs are ever
+ready to pounce on any unfortunate drover who may deviate a few yards
+from the regulated half mile on each side of the road, and then it will
+be so arranged that the drover will not get a summons until he is a
+hundred miles away from where the offence was committed, when he has to
+leave his stock in the hands of the men, while he returns to answer the
+trivial charge; he is always fined, as he cannot well defend his case,
+and he is anxious to return to his duties.
+
+As a rule, the drovers in Queensland are a trustworthy and respectable
+class of men--of course there are exceptions, but these are soon found
+out. Cases have come to light where cattle sold on the road have been
+returned as knocked up lame, or dead from pleuro, and grog has been
+entered in the accounts as stores supplied. The owner is a good deal at
+the mercy of the drover after the latter has taken charge of the stock,
+as he has then very little control over them until they reach their
+destination. Some drovers have a plant of their own, twenty or thirty
+good horses, a dray or waggonette, and saddles, and make contracts to
+shift cattle or sheep at so much per head, paying their own men, and
+finding everything. The wages of drovers are always high, but not too
+high when the care and constant work are taken into consideration.
+Sundays and week days alike, rain or fine, grass or no grass, whatever
+turns up, it all means that the drover, or man in charge has to be on
+hand and see to things himself. The life is monotonous, wearying and
+fatiguing in the extreme. Man and boss alike have to rise before dawn,
+roll up blankets or swag, get breakfast, catch horses, and move the
+cattle off the night camp as soon as it is light, then ride all day with
+them, keep them moving slowly along feeding on any grass to be found,
+watering them when a chance offers, carrying a bit of lunch on the
+saddle, and a quart pot to boil some tea in. After the day's journey is
+over, the cattle have to be rounded up on the camp at sundown and then
+each takes his turn at watching during the night, which means three
+hours solitary riding round in the darkness, turning in any cattle
+inclined to stray out from the camp, and keeping up one's spirits by
+calculating how long the trip will last. When the weather is fine, the
+life is bearable, if monotonous, but when it rains, especially in cold
+rain and wind, the pleasures of droving are limited; with wet ground to
+lie on, wet clothes to ride in, and scarcely fire enough to cook at,
+with stock restless and troublesome at night, the drover will sometimes
+think longingly of the home and the comforts he once despised. Still,
+droving is a popular calling, and men have followed it constantly for
+years, procuring a long droving job during the season, and spelling
+their horses when work is scarce.
+
+More provision should be made for regular stock routes throughout the
+country, and the area of these should not be included in the runs on
+which lessees have to pay rent, as the case is now. The drover's calling
+is a necessary one, and he should have more protection and greater
+facilities for getting his stock to market, and not a continual fight
+for the rights of the road as he has now.
+
+  "In my wild erratic fancy, visions come to me of Clancy,
+    Gone a-droving down the Cooper, where the western drovers go;
+  As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,
+    For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know."
+
+  --"Banjo."
+
+
+A. S. N. CO.
+
+Not least among the forces that worked for the settlement of the north,
+may be reckoned the steamer services. In this respect, the old A. S. N.
+Co. held the premier position, as their steamers were the first in all
+the ports of Queensland, and the colony is much indebted to the energy
+and enterprise of that Company. From Brisbane to Cooktown, their
+steamers were the first to cast anchor in the new harbours and help to
+develope the trade of the coast. Although not always very popular, for
+the public complained often at the charges made for freight and
+passages, the Company gave a good helping hand towards the opening up of
+the young country.
+
+A few notes about the history of this pioneering Company, obtained
+through the agency of their secretary, Mr. F. Phillips, may be of
+interest to some. It was originally established under the name of the
+Hunter River Steam Navigation Company, in August, 1839, with a capital
+of £40,000, and premises at the foot of Margaret Street, Sydney. In
+April, 1841, the "Rose," steamer, arrived from England, 172 tons burden.
+In October of the same year, the "Shamrock" arrived from England, under
+Captain Gilmore, being 123 days out. The "Thistle" had previously
+arrived. In 1841, the Company advertised their intention of sending one
+of their steamers to Moreton Bay, and the "Shamrock" sailed thither in
+December of that year. The fares were £8, £6, and £4; freight, 20s.
+wool, 20s. per bale. After five months, the steamer was withdrawn, as
+the trade was not remunerative. In September, 1842, the "Tamar," and
+"Sovereign," steamers, were purchased by the Company from Mr. Grose for
+£12,000; they were then carrying on a trade with Twofold Bay, Melbourne,
+and Launceston. In July, 1844, two water frontage allotments in Brisbane
+were secured for £50, and Mr. James Paterson was appointed manager in
+October, 1845. The Company's engineering works were established at
+Pyrmont in February, 1846, the land being leased for that purpose. The
+"Eagle," steamer, a well-known old northerner, was built for the Company
+at their Pyrmont works. On March 11th, 1847, their steamer, the
+"Sovereign" was wrecked in the south passage in Moreton Bay, and
+forty-four lives lost. In March, 1851, the Company's name was changed to
+the Australian Steam Navigation Company, it was incorporated, and its
+scope enlarged. The capital of the Company was £320,000, divided into
+16,000 shares of £20 each, and the opposition of the Melbourne Steamship
+Company, which had been carried on at a great loss to both, ceased. In
+May, 1858, the Company offered the colonies a mail service to Galle, and
+in September of the same year the rush to the Port Curtis diggings set
+in, and land was purchased by the Company at Rockhampton in 1860. Their
+steam service was extended to Bowen, a port which was just then opening
+a way to inland settlers to obtain their supplies from, and the Company
+obtained a contract for a mail service between Adelaide and King
+George's Sound. In February, 1863, a new opposition was started by the
+inauguration of the Queensland Steamship Company. The following year the
+A. S. N. Co. had extensive wharves and stores built for themselves both
+in Brisbane and Rockhampton. The "Leichhardt," steamer, was built at
+their works for the northern trade, and the Company's operations were
+extended to Townsville in 1865, Captain Trouton being appointed manager
+the next year. In January, 1868, the Queensland Steamship Company was
+wound up, and its steamers and wharves bought up by the A. S. N. Co. In
+1870, the Californian mail service was opened by H. Hall, who chartered
+the company's steamers "Wonga" and the "City of Melbourne" for that
+purpose. Campbell's Wharf in Sydney was bought for a large sum in 1876,
+and the next year Captain O'Reilly leaving the Brisbane agency, Mr. W.
+Williams was appointed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In 1878, three Chinese crews were obtained for the A. S. N. Co.
+steamers, a circumstance which caused a strike in November, 1879,
+lasting until the following January. The Company had been engaged in the
+trade between Newcastle and Sydney, but this was abandoned in September,
+1880, when the plant and stores were sold to the Newcastle Steamship Co.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In January, 1887, the extensive intercolonial trade of the A. S. N. Co.
+ceased, and all their steam fleet was sold to a new company called the
+A. U. S. N. Co. The fleet stood at £481,000 in their books, and was sold
+for £200,000. The shareholders received £20 8s. 9d. per share, the par
+value being £20 per share; the shares when the fleet was sold were £9
+10s. in the open market, but the increase in the value of the landed
+properties of the Company helped to this satisfactory result.
+
+
+BURNS, PHILP & CO.
+
+Throughout Australia, but above all in the northern parts of Queensland,
+the name of Burns, Philp and Co. ranks foremost among the many wealthy
+and large companies that have helped to develop trade in the northern
+parts, and a short account of the growth of this great business may
+prove interesting. Intimately associated with North Queensland, the
+business of the Company has grown and prospered with the growth and
+prosperity of the youngest colony of the group, and much of the rapid
+opening of new ports and harbours on the northern coast line, and also
+among the Pacific Islands, is due directly to the natural business
+capabilities of the founders of the Company.
+
+A number of shipping agencies are also held in North Queensland, Western
+Australia, and Sydney, and the Company itself owns a fleet of small
+vessels used in the coasting, lightering, and island trade. Altogether
+there are between sixty and seventy steamers, sailing vessels, and
+lighters owned and chartered which fly the flag of Burns, Philp and Co.,
+and the red, white, and blue, with Scotch thistle in the centre, is a
+flag well known throughout the Pacific Islands and all round Australia.
+A mail service is run by the Company between Cooktown, New Guinea, and
+Thursday Island, also a three years' contract was in 1897 entered into
+with the Government of Western Australia to run weekly between Albany
+and Esperance. Considerable trade is done with the Solomon Islands, and
+steamers run regularly from Sydney in this trade. The Company have also
+steam and sailing services with the New Hebrides, Louisades, New Guinea,
+New Britain, Ellice, and Gilbert, and many other islands in the Pacific,
+having a ten years' contract with the Commonwealth Government for
+regular communication with all the islands which are practically under
+British control, while branch businesses have been established at Port
+Moresby and Samarai in British New Guinea, at Elila in the New Hebrides,
+Nukualofa in the Friendly Islands, and elsewhere. The first steam
+service down the Gulf of Carpentaria from Thursday Island was
+inaugurated by the senior partner of the Company, Mr. James Burns, in
+the year 1881, by means of the little steamship "Truganini," which used
+often to be overcrowded with passengers and freight for Normanton.
+
+The Company is the largest colonial shipper to the European and Eastern
+markets of Pacific Island produce, such as copra, beche de mer,
+sandalwood, ivory nuts, tortoise shell, and, above all, pearl shell, for
+which Torres Straits is so famous; add to this the amount of tallow,
+wool, and other Australian produce annually exported, and it will give
+some idea of the export business done. The Company has two fleets of
+pearl shelling luggers, comprising about forty pearlers in all.
+
+Burns, Philp and Co. is essentially a company of a co-operative
+character, and a glance at the share list will show that the great bulk
+of shareholders are managers, employees, and others actually working in
+the company. This tends to a live interest all round, and each branch
+vies with the other in good management and success. The business was
+originally established at Townsville, thirty years ago by the senior
+partner, Mr. James Burns, and the new offices lately completed there at
+a cost of £15,000 are the finest in North Queensland, while recently,
+premises costing £50,000 were erected in Sydney. Mr. Philp, now the Hon.
+Robert Philp, Premier of Queensland, joined Mr. Burns some twenty-five
+years ago. Both are Scotchmen, the one hailing from Edinburgh, and the
+other from Glasgow. The Company was formed into a limited liability
+company twenty-one years ago.
+
+Much could be written of the varied character of the business of Burns,
+Philp and Co., which embraces almost every colonial interest besides,
+while they are allied to a group of other colonial companies which act
+in accord with them, notably the North Queensland Insurance Company, and
+other concerns. For some years the Company engaged in the whaling
+enterprise with fairly successful results, but the detention of Captain
+Carpenter, and the seizure of the whaling barque "Costa Rica Packet" by
+the Dutch authorities in the Malay Archipelago, abruptly terminated what
+promised to be a most important colonial enterprise. It will be
+remembered that the Dutch Government had to pay a considerable sum to
+the captain, owners, and crew of the vessel for this wrongful seizure.
+
+The total turnover of this Company now exceeds two millions sterling,
+and it is one of the largest and most progressive of the purely
+Australian concerns.
+
+In the Sydney office a special telegraphic operator is always at work,
+and cable and telegraphic messages are sent to, and received from, all
+parts of the world direct. This is the only company in the colonies
+which has a Government operator established on the premises solely for
+its own business.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+ABORIGINALS OF NORTH QUEENSLAND.
+
+
+Where did the natives come from?
+
+How long ago?
+
+Where did they land first?
+
+Where are their ancestors?
+
+Were they ever civilised?
+
+These and similar questions occur to those who regard the natives of
+Australia with interest. They live only in the past, there is no future
+for them, here at least. Their origin is involved in impenetrable
+obscurity. Scarcely on the earth is to be found a race similar to the
+aboriginals, whilst their antiquity is beyond doubt, and also the fact
+that they have a common origin. Their speech, habits, colour, customs,
+and superstitions, proclaim in the strongest terms that they all came
+from a common source; from the far north of Australia to the farthest
+south, a hundred proofs are forthcoming to show a common ancestry. Words
+that have a similar meaning are used on the Darling River and in places
+in the Gulf of Carpentaria; the weapons are similar all over the
+continent; their faces and figures are similar, allowing for the
+effects of varieties of food and climate. In the three hundred years
+since the first contact between Europeans and the New Hollanders, no
+change has occurred; they were then spread over Australia, the same in
+habits and life as they are now, and the only result of the contact of
+the two races of men, the civilised and the savage, is that the native
+is fading away before the white man like mist before the morning sun.
+Nothing can avert the doom that is written as plainly as was the writing
+on the wall at Belshazzar's feast. And to what purpose would we preserve
+them? What good could accrue from maintaining a remnant of a race that
+it is impossible to civilise. The buffalo of America, like the Red
+Indian himself (the hunter and the hunted), pass over the river in front
+of the advancing tide of civilisation.
+
+As a study, the native race of Australia is eminently interesting, for
+in them we have living representatives of the stone age; remarkable for
+their pureness of race, having had no admixture from any other nation
+through countless generations for their great antiquity, for before the
+pyramids of Egypt were built, they had occupied Australia and for the
+silence of all history and traditions concerning them and their destiny
+of doom; as a race problem they are full of interest.
+
+From Cape York to the Great Australian Bight, and from the Leeuwin to
+the Great Sandy Spit on Frazer's Island, there is no difference in the
+type of the native of Australia, although the quality and quantity of
+their food has caused some of the tribes to be more robust and better
+developed than others. In the north, where food is plentiful, there are
+many fine specimens of men over the average height of the European. Many
+of the northern aboriginals are tall, muscular men, of great activity
+and endurance, with keen sight and observation, and they often attain to
+a good old age. Nearly all are bearded, with hair that is wavy rather
+than straight or curly. They are not a cowardly race, as among
+themselves they conduct their fights with a certain degree of honour,
+and with great pluck, not taking advantage of an opponents' accident.
+They excel in throwing their spears with the wommera or throwing stick,
+and can hit a mark at a distance of seventy to eighty yards with great
+force; the boomerang is used for game, such as ducks or pigeons, as well
+as in warfare, and is really a formidable weapon. On the north-east
+coast, they use a wooden sword which is wielded with both hands, and
+seems to have been an improvement or an innovation on the boomerang,
+where the dense scrubs prohibited the use of the throwing weapon.
+
+They appear to have been from all time a race of hunters, ever living on
+the products of the chase, and from the scarcity of game, and difficulty
+in keeping it when killed, they seldom remain more than one or two
+nights in one camp, but move about in small parties. Although the
+tribes or families are always on the move--a nomad hunter race--their
+districts are well defined, and they seldom trespass on the hunting
+grounds of an adjoining tribe, unless with consent. This strict
+delimitation of districts and dislike of trespass, has led to a great
+diversity in their dialects, and every little tribe seems to have a
+different language; in a distance of one or two hundred miles, the names
+for the commonest things may be altered, although the same social system
+prevails substantially throughout all tribes, with little or no
+variation.
+
+In their original state they could not have been an unhappy people; when
+food was plentiful, they made weapons and shaped their stone tomahawks,
+which of itself was a work of slow progress; they wove nets for their
+game, and composed or sang their wild songs, or still wilder
+corroborrees, or dances. Obedient to the laws and customs handed down
+from their ancient forefathers, and following out the rites of their
+marriage laws with great strictness, they lived healthy lives to a good
+old age, while the increase of the race was checked by the amount of
+food each district could supply. With the advent of the white race, the
+social system that held them together for thousands of years, became
+disturbed and broken into, and their natural food supplies were
+destroyed. Thus, with the introduction of new diseases, this primitive
+race of mankind is fast disappearing, apparently without a thought or
+struggle or hope, and after a few years not a remnant of them, or any
+sign of their occupation of the country will remain. Some of their
+customs appear to be very general, such as knocking out the two front
+teeth among women, and sometimes among men; this is done by a sudden
+blow on the end of a stick which is placed on the tooth, and then
+knocked inwards. A very general custom is boring a hole through the
+septum of the nose, although it is not often that an ornament is put
+through it. Another manner of adornment is by raised cicatrices made on
+the chest and back and arms, by cutting the skin with a piece of sharp
+flint and putting in gum or clay. In their native state, they do not
+appear to have made any attempt at any kind of covering or dress, either
+male or female, except that young girls wore an apron round the loins
+made of fibre or grass hanging down a few inches. For camping at night
+they used ti-tree or other bark as a shelter when procurable, and always
+slept between two or three small fires, making a slight hollow in the
+ground so as to get the warmth of the fire above them, and generally
+choosing the sandy beds of rivers away from the wind. In the Gulf
+country, during the wet season, they made small sleeping benches raised
+on forks driven in the ground, about three feet high, with sheets of
+bark laid flat, and over them other sheets of bark bent in a
+half-circle, so as to throw off rain; beneath these structures or
+sleeping places they kept up a smoke to save them from the mosquitoes,
+which in the Northern Peninsula, were dreadfully annoying. It was the
+duty of the gins to keep the fire going during the night. In dry weather
+or windy nights, a breakwind made of boughs or branches was used as a
+protection, behind which they made their small fires for sleeping by.
+The cooking was generally done away from their camp fires, mostly during
+the daytime.
+
+In the Gulf country also, the coast blacks make small gunyahs of bent
+twigs thatched with grass. These are only used during the wet season as
+a protection, chiefly from mosquitoes.
+
+The treatment of the native races has always been a difficult question.
+Whenever new districts were settled, the blacks had to move on to make
+room; the result was war between the races. The white race were the
+aggressors, as they were the invaders of the blacks' hunting territory.
+The pioneers cannot be condemned for taking the law into their own hands
+and defending themselves in the only way open to them, for the blacks
+own no law themselves but the law of might. The protection of outside
+districts by the Native Police, was the only course open, although the
+system cannot very well be defended any more than what was done under it
+can be. The white pioneers were harder on the blacks in the way of
+reprisals when they were forced to deal with them for spearing their men
+or their cattle or horses even than the Native Police. But how were
+property and the lives of stockmen, shepherds, and prospectors in the
+north to be protected unless by some summary system of retribution by
+Native Police or bands of pioneers? The vices and diseases of the white
+race have been far more fatal to the blacks than the rifles of the
+pioneers, more particularly when they were allowed about the towns,
+where they always exhibit the worst traits of their character, becoming
+miserable creatures, useless for any purpose, and an eyesore to
+everyone. Those employed on stations as stockriders and horse-hunters
+become very useful and clever at the business, having a special aptitude
+for working among stock, and they are, as a rule, well treated, clothed,
+and fed. The Northern Peninsula up to Cape York is the only territory in
+Queensland where the natives may still be found in their original state,
+and on some of the rivers flowing into the Gulf they are still numerous.
+
+Their cave drawings show their taste for drawing or sketching to have
+been of the rudest; just a few marks on their boomerangs, line drawings
+on water koolimans, and some attempts at drawing figures on rocks in
+caves are all that have been discovered. The drawings are found wherever
+sandstone caves are found, and many of these are to be met with on the
+range about the Normanby River, near Cooktown, where the steep cliffs
+have been eaten into by the weather or by landslips, leaving hollows or
+caves in which the blacks have camped and ornamented with figures rudely
+drawn and coloured with red ochre or pipeclay; many of these drawings
+represent nothing at all; in some a hand is drawn, occasionally an
+attempt at some bird, or animal, or tree. Sir George Grey describes some
+elaborate drawings on the north-west coast of Australia found in caves
+of a similar nature, and large numbers are found on the coast near the
+Roper River in the Gulf of Carpentaria, and at Limmen's Bight, in the
+hollows of rocks, where, sheltered from the weather, the face of the
+stone is entirely covered with their rude attempts.
+
+All the lands in the southern seas are supposed to have been populated
+by castaways, driven by gales out of their reckoning, and landing
+haphazard at the first land or shore. The first visitor to the unknown
+and uninhabited land, arriving by accident, would have a struggle for
+existence, and a hard one too; he would have to improvise his weapons
+for the chase, and to learn to adapt himself to his new surroundings.
+His only chance of existence would be to become a nomad, a hunter; and
+all his spare time would be taken up in finding food and making weapons
+for the chase; for which Nature provided in a rude way the materials
+such as flints that break with a cutting or conchoidal edge that would
+answer very well for carving flesh, fashioning spears, or hollowing
+vessels for carrying water, though large shells could be used for this;
+the gum that exudes from many trees would serve to fasten handles to
+these flint knives. Hard rocks, such as diorite, would be used for axes.
+These stones require a vast amount of patience in chipping and grinding
+into shape. To make canoes out of sheets of bark would become a
+necessity for fishing and visiting the islands, and they would have to
+be sewn together with twine made from the inner bark of a tree.
+Wonderfully well made some of those canoes on the coast are; three
+sheets of thin bark tapered to a point; one sheet for the bottom and one
+each to form the sides; the fire is laid on some mud on the bottom, with
+a shell to bail out. Using a single paddle on each side alternately, the
+natives will make long voyages among the islands on the coast. Primitive
+Nature would be the castaway's granary or storehouse; the herbs and
+fruits as they grew naturally, and the wild animals and fish would form
+the only means of subsistence.
+
+Arriving in the country with such surroundings and difficulties to
+contend with, no wonder the castaways remained in a state of savagery.
+Without any means to better their condition, or even to know that it
+could be bettered, they remained as they landed, simple savages or
+children of Nature, quite satisfied with their surroundings, and happy
+enough if left alone to follow their own mode of life. What spare time
+they had would be passed singing songs or composing them. The women
+would assist in all the work of life and perform all the drudgery,
+collecting roots, nuts, and fibre; grinding the seeds, making the fire,
+and carrying wood and water to the camp. It is well known that savage
+women are possessed of uncommon endurance and vitality. In the course
+of ages, as their numbers increased, they would gradually spread abroad,
+carrying with them the customs and habits of their forefathers, but not
+improving or adding to the knowledge of the tribe. The natural instincts
+of the aboriginals are sharpened by exercise, and their skill in
+tracking is marvellous; they can follow the trail of another black over
+bare rocks or on the driest earth; they can recognise an acquaintance by
+the track of his foot. As bushmen they excel, having the faculty of
+being able to steer a course to any place they may wish, even in the
+dark, although, from superstitious ideas, they do not travel about much
+at night. Most of their quarrels are over their women; one man
+appropriating the wife of another. It is allowable by their laws for a
+man to have several wives, and marriage by arrangement is the general
+course. They are betrothed at a very early age, and the girl remains
+with her parents till the man comes to claim her. The brother-in-law has
+the right to marry the widow, and is expected to do so. The
+mother-in-law never looks on the face of her son-in-law, avoiding him on
+every occasion, even if in the same camp; this is a custom peculiar to
+all parts of Australia, and even to other savage peoples outside the
+continent.
+
+They are all compelled to marry within their class, and all tribes come
+under the same system, an equal rule prevailing all over Australia. The
+system of their marriage laws is puzzling to white people, but it is
+well understood by every black, male or female, old or young, and will
+be referred to further on, under the class system, the writer having
+collected information of several class systems for Mr. A. W. Howitt, of
+Victoria.
+
+The blackfellow generally wears his hair long, and usually caked into
+thick matted rope-like coils, with a band of red above the forehead, or
+else a native dog's tail. When dressed for a dance or corroborree, the
+hair is sometimes tied in a tuft with cockatoo feathers on the top. The
+married women wear their hair shorter, but the unmarried women generally
+wear it long. When mourning for the dead, the hair is plastered all over
+with mud, and the eyes and forehead are painted round with pipeclay.
+
+The natives are fond of singing, and their voices are melodious, while
+they keep excellent time by beating two boomerangs together; they sing a
+sort of monotonous chant, and keep it up in camp to a late hour. Their
+songs of mourning are always pitched in a minor key, and convey a
+dreadfully sorrowful expression; they are sung by both male and female,
+but the chant is soon varied, as their natural inclination is to be
+merry, and they look on most things in a ludicrous light. Their sense of
+humour is very keen and to mimic everything is their chief delight. The
+clear ringing laugh that they indulge in, and their merry chatter, are
+an indication of the cheerful nature and freedom from care, that help
+to make them so contented and easily pleased.
+
+They believe that the spirits of the dead, which are good and bad, go
+about at night and hold communication with some members of the tribe,
+particularly with the medicine men, or doctors. The medicine men claim
+to have power to talk with the spirits, and the blacks firmly believe
+that they have such power of communication. These old men are also
+supposed to preserve the traditions and superstitions of the tribe, and
+they alone can perform with efficacy the various ceremonies attendant on
+the healing of the sick; they also instruct the young men in the beliefs
+of the tribe and as to the proper conduct of their lives, and this they
+do at special meetings known as bora meetings. It is the special
+privilege of the old men to hold communication with the spirits of the
+departed, by which they become possessed of much knowledge which they
+impart to their tribe. They believe they have the power of making rain
+and healing the sick. The blacks live in continual dread of death, which
+they attribute to some spirit agency or to witchcraft. Scarcely any
+death is put down to natural causes, except those killed in fight;
+sickness and death are always regarded by them as the works of an enemy
+at a distance. This belief is universal among Australian blacks. They
+have various ideas as to how this evil influence is brought about; one
+of them is by pointing a bone at the victim, and for this a piece of a
+human leg bone sharpened to a point and several inches long is used.
+They live in dread of this bone (Thimmool) being pointed at them, and
+have a great aversion at any time to touch or even look at any bones of
+deceased members of the tribe. It is supposed that the pointing of the
+bone causes a gradual wasting away of the victim until death takes
+place. Another process is to take the pinion of a bird, the two bones
+fastened together with wax, including some hair of the person whose
+injury is intended; this is stuck in the ground and surrounded with
+fire, then it is set in the sun, and again returned to the fire, varying
+the performance according as to the extent of the harm to be caused;
+when sufficient sickness has been caused, they place the bone in water,
+thus dispelling the charm. This process is called "Marro." There is a
+superstition about abstracting the kidney fat of a blackfellow for
+promoting luck in fishing, and this is said to be done in various ways.
+The blacks are very good to the aged and infirm, and carry them from
+camp to camp; they are also good to the blind, whom they feed and care
+for, and when death ensues, they will mourn and chant their death song
+nightly.
+
+The aborigines believe that the spirit survives after death, and that it
+walks about on earth for a time, and then departs for another country
+which is supposed to be among the stars, the road to which is by the
+milky way, and the ascent by the Southern Cross, as by a ladder. The
+life supposed to be led there is similar to that on earth, but the food
+is abundant and shade trees and water are everywhere. They have names
+for all the constellations, and understand their times and movements.
+The Pleiades they call "Munkine," the name for a virgin or unmarried
+girl. Orion's Belt is called "Marbarungal," they believe him to have
+been a great hunter who formerly dwelt among them. The moon is a male,
+who, they say, was once a blackfellow, who killed a lot of their people.
+The latter burnt him in the struggle, and they point to the shadows on
+its surface as marks of the scars. A paper was read before the Royal
+Society of Brisbane by E. Palmer on October 2nd, 1885, "Concerning some
+superstitions of North Queensland aborigines."
+
+Cannibalism is practised among the blacks everywhere, but more from
+custom following certain traditions than for the sake of food; certain
+blacks are eaten, while others are not; those killed in a fight are
+generally eaten. In some places they skin the dead blackfellow, and
+twist the skin round a bundle of spears with the hair sticking up on
+top, and they carry this to different camps, sticking it in the ground
+by the points of the spears; children are sometimes eaten when they die.
+
+They are expert at all game hunting, and in snaring wildfowl; the plain
+turkey can be caught with a long reed on the end of a spear with a
+running noose made of twine and quills; with this in one hand, and a
+bush in the other, a man with patience will creep up close enough to
+catch a turkey round the neck. They make strong nets of cordage, having
+a large mesh to catch emus, kangaroos, or wallabies. These nets they
+stretch in certain places, and drive the game into them; small hand nets
+are used to catch fish with; pigeons and ducks are snared in nets which
+are stretched across creeks. The habits of birds and animals are closely
+studied, and their instincts are overmatched by the cunning of the
+savage, who wants them for food.
+
+All their food is cooked before being eaten, generally on stones made
+red-hot. It is wrapped in green leaves, and then covered over with hot
+ashes to steam. In the north they eat the alligator when they can manage
+to kill one, and the small fresh-water crocodile, found in most of the
+Gulf rivers, is also an article of food.
+
+Seeds of various grasses are ground into a paste with water and poured
+into the ashes to cook, while some fruits and nuts require great
+preparation before using, as they are extremely poisonous without such
+treatment. In preserving game, the blacks are very cruel, they twist the
+legs out of joint to prevent them getting away, and keep them alive in
+this way until they are wanted for cooking.
+
+They eat the dingo, and everything else that lives; and are very clever
+at discovering the nests of the native bees; honey, or "sugar-bag," as
+they call it, is a favourite food of theirs. It is only by constant
+moving about from camp to camp that a supply of food can be kept up, the
+women doing their share of providing by digging up yams and roots,
+fishing for crayfish and mussels, and grinding seeds between two stones.
+Their life is a constant worry for food from day to day, and nothing
+passes them that can be eaten. A favourite food of theirs is the tuber
+of the water-lily growing in lagoons, of this they even eat the stalks
+or stems of the seed stalk.
+
+The dugong, a large marine grass-feeding mammal is netted and speared;
+the flesh, when dried, is similar to bacon, and in the Wide Bay dialect
+is called "Koggar," the same name they give to the pig. White ants are
+esteemed a treat, and their nests are broken into, and the young ones,
+with the eggs winnowed from the dirt are eaten raw, as well as the
+grubs, which are the larva; of some locusts or beetles, and which are
+cut out of the trees.
+
+
+THE CLASS SYSTEM.
+
+All natives acknowledge the same system of class divisions, and these
+correspond all over Australia. The blacks are born into these divisions,
+and the idea is instilled into them from the beginning that they are to
+observe them as sacred.
+
+Though differing in name or in totem, the classes and divisions prevail
+everywhere, and a blackfellow knows at once which of the divisions
+corresponds to his own in a distant tribe.
+
+All things in Nature are divided into the same classes, and are said to
+be male and female; the sun, moon, and stars are believed to be men and
+women, and to belong to classes similar to the blacks themselves.
+
+The following is an instance of the system of class divisions belonging
+to a tribe on the Upper Flinders River, in the Gulf of Carpentaria,
+calling themselves "Yerrunthully." They had four class divisions,
+namely:--
+
+    Male     marries   Female.         Children are
+
+  Bunbury      ...    Woonco      ...   Coobaroo
+  Coobaroo     ...    Koorgielah  ...   Bunbury
+  Koorgielah   ...    Coobaroo    ...   Woonco
+  Woonco       ...    Bunbury     ...   Koorgielah
+
+Each boy and girl in the tribe is born under one of these divisions, and
+is subjected to the laws, connected with tribal marriages. These classes
+are represented by totems, which are different in other tribes lower
+down the river:--
+
+  Bunbury       Carpet Snake      Tharoona
+
+  Coobaroo    { Brown Snake       Warrineyah
+              { Emu               Gooburry
+
+  Koorgielah  { Plain Turkey      Bergamo
+              { Native Dog        Cubburah
+
+  Woonco        Whistling Duck    Chewelah
+
+Many other instances could be given, but they all partake of the same
+divisions and classes. A blackfellow can only marry into one class,
+namely that opposite to his name, the other three are forbidden to him
+strictly. The descent seems to be reckoned through the mother, for the
+child takes its name, not from its mother's class, but from the
+grandmother's class. The class name always goes back to that of the
+grandmother on the female side, the father's class name having no
+influence in the matter. Woonco's daughter is always Coobaroo, and
+Coobaroo's daughter is always Woonco, and so on through succeeding
+generations. The father might possibly be of a name representing the
+proper class, but from a far away tribe, for they correspond in class
+though not always in name; still the children take their name through
+the mother in this tribe. The blacks understand these relationships
+well, and exemplify them with two sticks crossed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+PHYSICAL FEATURES.
+
+
+The annual reports issued by the Water Supply Department of Queensland
+give detailed accounts of the annual and average rainfall over the whole
+of the colony, with the results of boring for artesian water, both
+privately and by Government. It is one of the most valuable and
+interesting reports issued, and with the rain maps accompanying it,
+conveys in a moment an accurate estimate of the average rainfall both on
+the coast and in the far interior. Beginning at Mackay, where the
+tropical rains commence, and following the coast line to Cape York, the
+record is higher than anywhere else in the colony, owing to the near
+approach of the high ranges to the coast. The maximum rainfall recorded
+in one year is reported at Geraldton, where 211.24 inches fell in 1894;
+Cairns can boast of 174.56 inches as its highest rainfall; this occurred
+in 1886. At Cape York, the average is 60.87; and at Mackay, 72.73
+inches; these numbers give a general indication of the humidity of the
+climate on the east coast of North Queensland. As we advance into the
+interior a far different climate prevails, and the farther west we go,
+the lighter becomes the rainfall, till it would almost appear as if it
+scarcely ever rained in some places in the interior, which are not much
+raised above the level of the sea. At Birdsville, low down on the
+Diamantina River, on the borders of South Australia, the rainfall taken
+for three years, amounted to only 5.72 inches, and on the Mulligan,
+where for six years an average was taken, it amounted to only 5.77
+inches. At Boulia, on the Burke River, the average for nine years was
+13.54 inches.
+
+Between these extremes of great dryness and excessive moisture, the
+intervening country shows a graduated increase or decrease as one
+approaches or recedes from the eastern coast. As very few water-ways
+exist to carry off surplus water, the drainage being often imperceptible
+to the eye, this seems a merciful dispensation of Nature, as under such
+conditions any great rainfall would place the whole country under a sea
+of water long enough for all animal life to become extinct. The water
+that flows down the usually dry channels of the western rivers
+southwards comes from the Gulf watershed, where the rainfall is much
+heavier, averaging at Cloncurry 20.80 inches. The amount of rainfall
+determines largely the nature of the fauna and flora of a country, and
+causes it to vary, even in the same latitudes. Between the high coastal
+districts and the vast rolling plains and downs of the interior these
+differences are so marked and distinct that they seem like two separate
+countries; climate, timber, herbage, and even animal life are so
+different in the two regions that it seems extraordinary such contrasts
+should exist in the same latitude in one country. All along the east
+coast, where the rainfall is heavy, we find forests of splendid hardwood
+and scrubs containing cedar and pine of gigantic growth. In the
+interior, the timber is as a rule dwarfed, hollow, and crooked; the
+principal timbers being the acacia family, such as the gidya, myall,
+brigalow, boree, etc. The grasses of the interior adapt themselves to
+the climate, and are of a far hardier growth than the coast grasses; one
+season without moisture does not impare their wonderful vitality; the
+salt bushes are the hardiest of all vegetation in the interior, and are
+of the greatest value to pastoralists. Birds are found on the coast that
+never visit the interior districts; while the galas and corellas are
+never found in a wild state near the coast. During the wet season in the
+summer months many seabirds migrate to the interior for a few weeks.
+
+Accompanying the report of the Hydraulic Engineer is a coloured map
+showing the sites of artesian bores and tanks and the supposed area of
+the lower cretaceous or water-bearing strata, as well as the underlying
+impermeable palæozoic rocks. The whole of Western Queensland may be said
+to belong to the lower cretaceous formation; here and there, where it
+has not been denuded by the action of the atmosphere, the desert
+sandstone may be found overlaying it. The whole of this vast area of
+water-bearing rocks has been proved by artesian bores, most of which are
+far below the level of the sea. The knowledge of the area of the
+water-bearing country in the interior is extending as additional bores
+are put down. Some of the bores within the known belt of the water area
+have been abandoned owing to causes that may be generally classified as
+accidents.
+
+The Government have sunk a number of wells, while hundreds of flowing
+bores that now stud the great western country have been put down by
+private enterprise. The policy of the Government has been to determine
+the area within which artesian water may be hopefully searched for, and
+to provide water in arid country or on stock routes, and excellent
+results have attended the carrying out of this policy. The Winton bore
+is down in the lower cretaceous beds 4,010 feet, it gives a flow of
+720,000 gallons of water a day, at a temperature of 192 degs.; the
+surface level is 600 feet above the sea; it will take about £8,000 to
+cover the total cost of sinking, etc. The Charleville bore has the
+largest flow of any Government bore, giving 3,000,000 gallons in the
+twenty-four hours, but some bores on Tinenburra, on the Warrego River,
+give as much as 4,000,000 gallons. About 800 private bores have been
+sunk in search of artesian water in the western area of Queensland; of
+these 515 give a total output of 322 millions of gallons in the
+twenty-four hours, and the total cost of them amounted to nearly
+£2,000.000. This expenditure made within sixteen years, is creditable to
+the energy and forethought of the western settlers. Some of the bores
+are not overflowing, and the water is raised by pumping, though the
+supply is inexhaustible. By the flow of water thus brought to the
+surface, the devastating effects of the periodical droughts have been
+minimised, and large areas have become available to profitable
+occupation that previously were waste country. The flow of this artesian
+water from the private and public bores is worth more to Queensland than
+a river of gold. They have completely changed the face of the country,
+and removed the anxiety of the stock owners towards the end of the
+season, when all surface water (except the most permanent lagoons) has
+dried up and formed mud traps to catch all weak stock that venture near
+them. These tiny perforations of the earth's surface have helped to
+solve the difficulty of settlement on the western lands, where we find
+the rainfall diminishing as we go further west. As these little threads
+of water find their way across the plains and form into small ponds in
+the hollows, the wildfowl resort to them as if they were natural waters,
+while the bulrushes (typha angustifolia), soon follow and grow in
+masses, although these are only to be found round springs, and never in
+permanent lagoons or rivers. Some curious features are connected with
+the artesian water supply; sometimes the temperature is very high, that
+of the Dagworth bore reaching 196 degrees, while the pressure of the
+Thargomindah bore is over 230 lbs. to the square inch. The water supply
+tapped is perhaps beyond calculation, and up to the present time there
+is no indication of exhaustion.
+
+The source of this enormous pressure of water that is capable of sending
+a jet over a hundred feet above the surface, is still unexplained, and
+many theories are afloat as to its origin; some of these go far afield
+for reasons for the great supply and strong pressure. The enormous
+rainfall on the coast ranges, where the intake probably occurs, and
+where the impermeable rocks approach the surface, carrying the water
+under the lower cretaceous, or more recent formation (which is shown to
+be the most extensive in Western Queensland), seems to be the most
+reasonable to adopt at the present time. These water-bearing strata must
+cover very large areas in Australia, for a bore at Tarcanina, near the
+south coast on the Great Australian Bight, is down over 1,000 feet below
+the level of the sea, and throws the water to a great height above the
+surface.
+
+Mr. R. L. Jack, the Government Geologist, in a paper on artesian water
+in the western interior of Queensland read before the Australian
+Association for the Advancement of Science, in Brisbane, January, 1895,
+argues in a most convincing manner as to the source of artesian supplies
+of water, giving the intake or gathering ground at about 55,000 square
+miles, over a region where the mean average rainfall taken at thirteen
+meteorological stations along the line of outcrop, amounts to 27 inches
+annually, which is considerably greater than that of the interior of the
+downs country. The greater part of the rainfall is not carried away by
+the channels of the rivers, neither is it evaporated, but sinks through
+porous strata into the earth, and does not return except through springs
+or submarine leakage. The fact of all this great supply of water finding
+its way to the sea at great depths, shows what little effect a few bores
+can have on the enormous annual supply. It is an encouragement to extend
+the number of bores, which are so necessary to successfully settle the
+arid plains of the distant interior, in order to anticipate the waste of
+water.
+
+The fact of an artesian bore diminishing its flow may be due to many
+causes other than shortage of supply, faults in the tubing or caving in
+of the strata may account for it. We have here the secret of successful
+settlement in inland Australia--an inexhaustible supply of water fit for
+all the wants of man.
+
+The Normanton bore, practically on the edge of the Gulf, and sunk from a
+level of about 30 feet above the sea, struck artesian water at a depth
+of 1,983 feet, or 1,950 feet below sea level. This bore and the one at
+Burketown, both of which were successful in reaching artesian water,
+were put down by the Government during the time Mr. G. Phillips
+represented Carpentaria in the Legislative Assembly, 1893-5.
+
+
+THE GRASSES AND FODDER PLANTS.
+
+An enumeration of all the fodder plants and herbage common to North
+Queensland would require a long catalogue, as variety is Nature's law in
+this case, and the western soil teems after the wet season with flowers,
+herbs, grasses, and fruits all more or less adapted for use as fodder.
+The prospect on the wide spreading plains after the early thunder
+showers in November and December is very refreshing to the eye that has
+been for months staring on the dry stalks of the Mitchell grass, or else
+on the brown bare earth. Trailing vines of the melon and cucumber family
+spread themselves in profusion, the fruit of which is eagerly sought
+after by stock. Convolvolus flowers and vines grow among the young green
+grasses, and many varieties of the compositæ show in bright yellow their
+gleaming flowers, mingled with hibiscus of every hue. The growth of
+plant life is marvellous after the fall of soft rain on the warm rich
+soil. Portulaca, known as pigweed, is among the first of the plants to
+spring up, and grows in great masses; the seeds form a principal article
+of food for the birds that frequent the plains, the young plants are
+also used by stock, and are not despised by man in an emergency. All
+life, vegetable and animal, revives suddenly after the surface of the
+earth has been saturated with the life-giving element; frogs and locusts
+sing their songs of joy day and night; flies increase beyond
+conception, and mosquitoes and sandflies torment to distraction both
+man and beast.
+
+On the plains, the first vegetation to spring up is the sensitive plant,
+spreading its delicate foliage over the surface, the leaves closing
+during the heat of the day, and opening in the evening. The small
+creeping plant said to be poisonous to stock (Euphorbia Drummondi),
+appears immediately after rain. The climbing vine (Capparis lucida),
+which bears a sub-acid fruit not unlike passion fruit, at this time of
+year gives out its white flowers and fruit at the same time. The scent
+of the innumerable flowers on the plains, the tender herbage, the young
+grasses sending their seed stalks several feet high, and all the soil
+covered densely with vegetation and herbage suitable for stock present a
+picture to the eye, so utterly opposed to that which prevailed but a few
+weeks before the advent of the rains, that the spectator can scarcely
+believe it to be the same country. The seeds of some plants will remain
+dormant for years, and then suddenly spring up in profusion; for
+instance, the plant commonly known as peabush, a leguminous annual
+(botanically Sesbania aegyptica), has only a periodical growth, and at
+such times, varying for many years, it covers the plains in such rank
+masses that the stockriders get quite bewildered when searching for
+stock through its scrublike density; for several years after this
+abundant growth, the plant will scarcely be noticeable; it is said that
+every three years is a peabush year, but the writer cannot support the
+theory, as he can only call to mind four or five really bad peabush
+seasons in a period of thirty years. The seeds which fall to the ground
+in great quantities form the sustenance for flocks of pigeons and other
+birds, but much seed must also fall down the cracks of the earth and
+bide their time for a chance of springing into life. The flowers of this
+plant grow in lilac and yellow on the same stalk. Cattle are fond of it
+when young, and mustering stock in a peabush year has many extra
+difficulties on account of the prolific growth of this intermittent
+annual. It will sometimes grow to a height of fifteen feet, and in
+swampy places is so dense that it is difficult to keep even a few horses
+in sight when driving through it; after it dries and the seeds fall to
+the ground, the stalks break off, and the sweep of the water over the
+plains during the succeeding year gathers these dry stems against the
+trees in enormous masses like small haystacks, and there they remain
+until a bushfire reduces them to ashes. The masses of peabush carried
+down creeks and watercourses at certain seasons will yet prove a source
+of danger to railway and road bridges when such structures come to be
+built on the western plains comprising the watersheds of rivers flowing
+into the Gulf of Carpentaria. Though peabush grows strongly on flooded
+ground, it can be found of a sturdy growth on ridges or high plains or
+downs during a favourable year, especially where water lodges between
+ridges. It is an ancient and historical plant, for the flowers that
+composed the wreath found on an Egyptian mummy of ancient date, when
+softened and opened with warm water, were found to be identical with the
+flowers of the peabush of the Flinders River and western plains of North
+Queensland.
+
+The native pastures have not been improved by the introduction of stock;
+the evils of overstocking and the want of bushfires to keep down the
+under-growth, have in some districts deteriorated or exterminated some
+of the best of the fodder grasses. The best of all indigenous grasses is
+known as Mitchell grass, a perennial of strong growth, and capable of
+resisting the driest weather; there are many varieties of this grass,
+which is found only on the plains and downs of the interior. It
+possesses the faculty of shooting green from the old stalks at the
+joints, and taking up moisture, renewing its youth again. The Mitchell
+grass grows in isolated strong bunches, and its presence is a sure sign
+of a fattening country. The following are the best known varieties:--
+
+"Astrebla pectinata," common Mitchell grass, growing in erect tussocks
+of two or three feet high.
+
+"A. triticoides," wheat-eared Mitchell grass; this plant is taller and
+coarser than the last, attaining a height of four or five feet.
+
+"A curvifolia," or curly Mitchell grass; plant forming erect tufts one
+or two feet high, the leaves narrow and much curved.
+
+"A. elymoides," weeping Mitchell grass; plant decumbent, the stems
+several feet long.
+
+The blue grass (Andropogon sericeus), is an annual of soft rapid growth,
+with a branching seed-stalk that breaks off and is blown by the wind in
+masses into waterholes; the blacks use the fine seeds of this grass for
+food.
+
+"Anthistiria membranacea," called the Flinders or Barcoo grass, is an
+annual of a reddish colour, found all over the western plains. It is
+soft and brittle, breaking easily off to fall on the ground, when stock
+will pick it up; it makes excellent hay, keeping sweet for years, and is
+one of the most fattening grasses.
+
+The varieties of the indigenous grasses that cover the great western
+plains are innumerable; all are more or less eaten by stock, even the
+triodia or spinifex that is looked on as a desert grass, and of a
+formidable and forbidding nature. Spinifex is a very drought-resisting
+plant, and in times of great scarcity and extreme drought, when all
+other grasses have dried out and been blown away, the spinifex is there
+with its erect spiney leaves, possibly bitter to the taste, but still
+life sustaining to stock, as has been proved in many a severe drought.
+It grows on sandy sterile ridges, and seems to adhere to the latest
+geological formation, the sandstone or cainozoic period; it is found on
+ridges adjacent to alluvial flats where the richest herbage and grasses
+are found in abundance.
+
+Kangaroo grass (Anthistiria ciliata), is found mostly in coastal
+districts, and although a good pasture grass when green, it soon dries
+and requires burning.
+
+There are two prominent varieties of spear grass in the north, the worst
+being the black spear grass (Andropogon contortus), which grows in sandy
+spots along the banks of creeks, or on sandy ridges; it is not of much
+use as a fodder grass, but becomes a terrible scourge to sheep when ripe
+and seeding. The seeds are barbed, and as sharp as needles, and having
+once entered the skin they work into the bone, causing intense annoyance
+and irritation, and ultimately death. The other spear grass (Andropogon
+Kennedeyii), not so dangerous, but of little use to stock, is a
+coarse-growing, strong grass, seven or eight feet high, with a reddish
+bloom, and strong seeds that penetrate saddlecloths and clothes in
+countless hundreds.
+
+Herbage fills the spaces between the tufts of grasses soon after the
+rains, and the plains develop a dense growth of pasturage; but after
+continued dry seasons, all herbage disappears, and the grasses follow in
+time, until very little is left except the roots, and a few of the more
+hardy salsolaceous plants. These form a striking feature in the economy
+of Nature in the plain country, the salt bushes are ever present in one
+variety or another, and help to keep stock in health and condition. The
+various species of "Atriplex" abound, and being very drought-resisting,
+they are reckoned amongst the most valuable fodder plants. Sir Thomas
+Mitchell was the first to make salt bush known after his first
+expedition over sixty years ago.
+
+"A. Nummularia," passing under the curious vernacular of "Old Man Salt
+Bush," is truly grey enough. Some of these plants have been propagated
+in north-west America with great success, turning the barren alkali
+lands that were never known to grow anything, into valuable pastures.
+Tons of seeds are raised annually for Utah, Arizona, and other States.
+In Africa the salt bushes are cultivated from seeds and even cuttings,
+and their value is acknowledged everywhere. They endure scorching heat,
+live without rains, are eaten by all kinds of stock, proving nutritious
+and wholesome to them, are easily raised from seed, and can, with a
+little care, be propagated from cuttings.
+
+The blue bush (Chenopodium), is common all over the Gulf of Carpentaria
+watershed, growing in swampy spots where water lies; it is a great
+favourite with all kinds of stock, and is getting scarce owing to its
+being eaten out so much.
+
+Wild rice (Oryza sativa), grows in swampy places throughout the Gulf
+country; the grain is well-defined, but small; all stock are fond of it,
+when green; it grows to a height of three or four feet. The rice of
+commerce is the produce of cultivated varieties of this grass.
+
+Edible shrubs are extremely plentiful, and are of great value when grass
+becomes too dry to be nutritive. A peculiar feature in the vegetation of
+the western plains is the "roley-poley," which is called in America the
+"tumble weed." This is an annual of quick growth after rains, growing in
+a spherical form from a common root; when the stem dries, it breaks off
+close to the ground, and the ball of dried vegetation is driven by the
+winds over the plains at a furious rate, topping the fences, and piling
+up against them in masses. It causes the greatest consternation to
+horses as it is driven across the downs. It possesses no virtue as a
+fodder plant.
+
+
+FOSSILS OF ANCIENT AUSTRALIA.
+
+The Australian continent has undergone great changes during the past
+geological ages, and most probably has been connected in remote times
+with part of Asia, and not unlikely with South America by some now
+submerged land. But whatever the connection may have been in the very
+distant past, it has been shut off from the larger northern land masses
+at so remote a period that the higher forms of mammals have not found
+their way to it, as in Africa and South America. Great changes have
+taken place in the continent itself. It is supposed that, at one time,
+in what is called the cretaceous or chalk age, a great sea spread from
+the north right across from what is now the Gulf of Carpentaria,
+covering immense tracts of level plain country in the interior of
+Australia, including Western Queensland, and part of New South Wales, so
+that the western half of the continent was separated from the eastern at
+least in the northern parts. Gradually the land rose and great lakes
+were formed in the interior, especially in the region of Lake Eyre, and
+a growth of vegetation sprang up of a more luxuriant type than is to be
+found now in those western parts, otherwise the enormous animals, such
+as the giant diprotodon, huge extinct kangaroos, birds larger than the
+moa, as well as crocodiles and turtles, could never have found
+sustenance to multiply in such numbers as their fossil remains testify
+they did in nearly every part of central Australia, and in the interior
+of North Queensland. In this sea, which washed the base of the mountains
+on the west, was deposited the sandy formation which has become the
+level inland plains. From some cause so far unknown, the land became
+desiccated, the lakes lost their freshness, and became great salt pans,
+the vegetation and the animals dependent on it became extinct, until a
+dry and arid region was produced, with a river system that fails to
+reach the sea, but becomes absorbed in the great sandy interior. The
+smaller types of marsupials of a hardier nature and capable of removing
+to greater distances for food, maintained their existence, while the
+giants of a similar race have left only their bones embedded in the
+drift to testify to the mighty changes that Nature has wrought out in
+the past ages. Fossil diprotodons of gigantic size and struthious birds
+rivalling in stature the New Zealand moa, are found in Central
+Australia. At Lake Callabonna in the great salt Lake Eyre basin, there
+are hundreds of fossil skeletons of these animals, many of which have
+been removed to the Adelaide Museum. In that locality they are found
+most frequently on the surface of the dry salt lake, and have been
+preserved by a natural coating of carbonate of lime; the bones are found
+at various depths.
+
+Nearly the whole of interior Australia, including Western Queensland, is
+one vast cemetery of extinct and fossilised species, scattered along the
+surface, or buried deep in cement or drifts, and in clays hidden beneath
+the present surface formation. The open plains of the Upper Flinders
+disclose great deposits of marine fossil shells, belemnites and
+ammonites, and also remains of extinct animals. On the Lower Leichhardt
+River, in the Gulf of Carpentaria, forty or fifty feet beneath the
+alluvial deposits forming the banks of the river, and firmly embedded in
+the hard cement, which is an ancient drift formed of water-worn stones
+in an ironstone clay, are found the bones of innumerable extinct
+gigantic species of animals that found sustenance and multiplied in
+enormous numbers over the Gulf country in some far back pre-historic
+age. On the Walsh River are found large numbers of fossils, mostly
+shells of the ammonite species. The bones that have been buried for
+countless ages in these ancient drifts are well preserved, and are not
+very dissimilar in appearance to the bones of animals dying recently on
+the surrounding plains, although they are completely fossilised and
+changed into the appearance of stone. The utter extinction of these
+gigantic species, comprising diprotodon, nototherium, and zygomaturus,
+and other species, grasseaters and flesheaters alike, can only be
+accounted for by a great change of climate, and great and long-continued
+droughts, reducing the herbage and causing the remaining living animals
+to crowd into the drying-up lagoons and lakes, there to become bogged in
+thousands, and die as the stock die in the waterholes after a long
+drought. Some of the fossils are those of animals of a gigantic size,
+much larger than any existing native animals; the teeth found are twice
+the size of an ordinary bullock's, and the jaws carrying them are of
+enormous size and strength. There are remains of alligators over thirty
+feet long, and turtles of much greater dimensions than any existing in
+the present day. The vegetation in the marshes and territory forming
+North Queensland must have been of a luxuriant and tropical description
+in those days to have supported such large types of marsupials--animals
+that would require a more abundant moisture, larger rainfall, and
+heavier foliage, than are now to be found on the western slopes of the
+ranges. Deeply interesting is the study of the ancient forms of life
+that roamed over the densely-wooded marshes of the interior, when the
+flora represented a type found now only along the rich alluvial banks of
+the rivers on the east coast.
+
+
+GEOLOGY OF QUEENSLAND.
+
+The following facts are summarised from the geology of Queensland
+written by Mr. Daintree, as the result of his investigations, whilst
+prosecuting the search for new goldfields on behalf of the Queensland
+Government in the northern portion of their territory, as also from the
+official reports of the Geologist of Southern Queensland, and other
+sources.
+
+The consideration and history of the different formations will be taken
+in their sequence of time, as far as the stratified or sedimentary rocks
+are concerned. The igneous rocks will be described under the various
+groups of Granitic, Trappean, and Volcanic.
+
+  _Aqueous_:--
+      Alluvial (recent).
+      Alluvial, containing extinct faunas.
+      Desert sandstone, Cainozoic.
+      Cretaceous    }
+      Oolitic       } Mesozoic
+      Carbonaceous  }
+      Carboniferous } Palæozoic
+      Devonian      }
+      Silurian      }
+  _Metamorphic._
+
+Alluvial.--Fresh-water deposits skirt all the present watercourses, but
+the accumulations are insignificant on the eastern watershed, except
+near the embouchures of large rivers, such as the Burdekin, Fitzroy,
+etc. On the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria, however, and in the
+south-western portions of the colony, where the watercourses have
+scarcely any fall, and where in seasons of excessive rain the country is
+nearly all inundated, fluviatile deposits are very extensive. Though the
+dense lavas of the Upper Burdekin (volcanic outbursts of a late Tertiary
+epoch) are traversed by valleys of erosion, in some cases 200 feet deep,
+and five miles broad, yet very narrow and shallow alluvial deposits
+skirt the immediate margin of the watercourses draining such valleys. It
+is only near the mouths of the larger rivers that any extent of alluvium
+has been deposited, and even these areas are at the present time in
+seasons of excessive rain, liable to inundation, showing that little
+upheaval of this portion of Australia has taken place since the last
+volcanic disturbances terminated.
+
+The meteorological or climatic conditions during this period were nearly
+identical with those of the present time, heavy rains during the summer
+months causing violent floods, removing seaward the aërial
+decompositions and denuded materials from year to year.
+
+What lapse of time is represented during this period of erosion is a
+matter of speculation, but it seems certain that the mollusca of the
+present creeks were also the inhabitants of the waters during the whole
+period of denudation since the last volcanic eruption.
+
+From the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north, to Darling Downs in the
+south, however, the fossil remains of extinct mammalia have been found
+in breccias and indurated muds, which are the representatives of the
+beds of old watercourses through which the present creeks cut their
+channels. At Maryvale Creek, in latitude 19 deg. 30 sec. S., good
+sections of these old brecciated alluvia occur. The fossils from this
+section, as determined by Professor Owen, are "Diprotodon Australis,
+Macropus titan, Thylacoles, Phascolomys, Nototherium," crocodile teeth,
+etc.
+
+Imbedded in the same matrix occur several genera of mollusca
+undistinguishable from those inhabiting Maryvale Creek.
+
+The fact of these older alluvia forming both the bed and the banks of
+the present watercourse, goes to prove that Diprotodon and its allies
+inhabited the Queensland valleys when they presented little difference
+in physical aspect or elevation from that of the present time. The
+crocodile (Crocodilus Australis), however, had then a greater range
+inland than it has now. A study of these Diprotodon breccias leads to
+the conclusion that the remains are chiefly entombed in what were the
+most permanent waterholes in seasons of excessive drought, and that the
+animals came there in a weak and exhausted state to drink and die, just
+as bullocks do under similar conditions at the present time.
+
+No human bones, flint flakes, or any kind of native weapons have yet
+been discovered with the extinct mammalia of Queensland.
+
+
+CAINOZOIC.
+
+Desert Sandstone.--On the eastern branches of the Upper Flinders and
+elsewhere, fine sections are exposed of lava resting on horizontal beds
+of coarse grit and conglomerate, which lie in turn unconformably on
+olive-coloured and gray shales with interstratified bands and nodules of
+argillaceous limestone containing fossils of cretaceous affinities. I
+have called this upper conglomerate series "Desert Sandstone," from the
+sandy barren character of its disintegrated soil, which makes the term
+particularly applicable.
+
+Without doubt, it is the most recent widely-spread stratified deposit
+developed in Queensland. The denudation of the "Desert Sandstone" since
+it became dry land has been excessive, but there still remains a large
+tract "in situ," and all the available evidence tends to show that this
+"Desert Sandstone" did at one time cover nearly, if not quite, the whole
+of Australia. The journals of the two Gregory's description of the new
+settlement of Port Darwin, all bear evidence to the continuity of this
+so-called "Desert Sandstone" over all the extended areas investigated by
+them.
+
+Augustus Gregory's description of the sandstones of the Victoria River
+agrees with those of the "Desert Sandstone" of Queensland, the specimens
+from either locality being undistinguishable the one from the other,
+while the same barren soil, the same hostile spinifex, the same fatal
+poison plant, mark its presence from Perth to Cape York.
+
+In Queensland, the upper beds are ferruginous, white and mottled sandy
+clays, the lower being coarse alternating grits and conglomerates; the
+extreme observed thickness has not exceeded 400 feet. A characteristic
+view of the upper "Desert Sandstone" beds is shown in Betts' Creek, on
+the Upper Flinders. Whether these are marine, lacustrine, or estuarine
+deposits, there is hardly sufficient evidence to show.
+
+What may be the value of this "Desert Sandstone" for free gold, is at
+present unsolved; but the very nature of its deposition seems to
+preclude the idea that that metal will be found in paying quantities,
+except where direct local abrasion of a rich auriferous veinstone has
+furnished the supply.
+
+
+MESOZOIC.
+
+Cretaceous.--As early as 1866 a suite of fossils was collected by
+Messrs. Sutherland and Carson, of Marathon station, Flinders River, and
+forwarded for determination to Professor McCoy, in Melbourne. They were
+never figured, but his manuscript names are as follows:--
+
+  _Reptilia._
+
+  Ichthyosaurus Australis. "M'Coy."
+  Plesiosaurus Sutherlandi.
+  Plesiosaurus macrospondylus. "M'Coy."
+
+  _Cephalopoda._
+
+  Ammonites Sutherlandi. "M'Coy."
+  Ammonites Flindersi. "M'Coy."
+  Belemnitella diptycha. "M'Coy."
+  Ancyloceras Flindersi.
+
+  _Lamellibranchiata._
+  Inoceramus Carsoni. "M'Coy."
+  Inoceramus Sutherlandi. "M'Coy"
+    (identical with the English species I. Cuvieri).
+
+In company with Mr. Sutherland, who supplied McCoy with the
+before-mentioned materials, Mr. R. Daintree visited the Upper Flinders,
+and carefully collected the fossils from three localities, viz.,
+Marathon station, Hughenden station, and Hughenden cattle station.
+
+At Marathon, which is some forty miles further down the Flinders than
+Hughenden, there is, close to the homestead, an outcrop of fine-grained
+yellow sandstone, which has been quarried for building purposes, and
+below this, to the edge of the waterhole supplying the house, is a
+series of sandstones and argillaceous limestones, containing numerous
+organic remains. These were submitted to Mr. Etheridge for examination
+and correlation, the result of which appears in the appendix to his
+work. The Hughenden cattle station is twenty miles further up the
+Flinders than the Hughenden head station. Here hundreds of Belemnites
+are strewn over the surface of the two ridges which front the cattle
+station huts, but they are rarely found in the soft shales which crop
+out from under an escarpment of "Desert Sandstone." The lithological
+character of these cretaceous strata is such that decomposition is
+rapid; the resulting physical aspect being that of vast plains, which
+form the principal feature of Queensland scenery west of the Main
+Dividing Range; but that the "Desert Sandstone" has extended over all
+this country is evidenced by its existence either in the form of
+outliers, or as a marked feature "in situ" in all main watersheds, or by
+its pebbles of quartz and conglomerate, which are strewn everywhere over
+the surface of the plains. The height of the watershed between the
+Thomson and Flinders Rivers is locally not more than 1,400 feet above
+sea level, and as the former river has to travel as many miles before
+reaching the sea, it is easy to understand why, in a country subject to
+heavy tropical rains at one period of the year, followed by a long dry
+season, the river channels are ill-defined, and vast tracts of country
+covered by alluvial deposits. Down the Thomson and its tributaries,
+these mesozoic rocks are known to extend, though much obscured by flood
+drifts. That this portion of the mesozoic system extends throughout the
+whole of Western Queensland to Western Australia is also more than
+probable, hidden, however, over large areas by "Desert Sandstone."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mineral Springs.--There is one other subject of practical interest
+connected with the great mesozoic western plains, and that is the
+occurrence of hot alkaline springs, which suggest the possibility of
+obtaining supplies of water on the artesian principle over some portion
+at least of this area.
+
+At Gibson's cattle station, Taldora, on the Saxby River, a tributary of
+the Flinders, a spring of hot water rises above the surface of the
+plain, and its overflow deposits a white encrustation, which on analysis
+by Dr. Flight, under the direction of Professor Maskelyne, afforded:--
+
+  Water                     27.793
+  Silica                     0.600
+  Chlorine                   3.369
+  Sodium                     2.183
+  Carbonic Acid             33.735
+  Soda                      31.690
+                            ------
+                            99.370
+
+Apart, therefore, from the 5.552 per cent. of chloride of sodium, the
+deposit consists of sequi carbonate of soda or native "Trona," and as
+such is used by the settlers for culinary purposes, etc.
+
+
+PALÆOZOIC.
+
+"Carboniferous."--Whilst the affinities of the southern coalfield of
+Queensland are mesozoic, a northern field, of even larger extent, has a
+distinct fauna more resembling the Palæozoic Carboniferous areas of
+Europe.
+
+The Dawson, Comet, Mackenzie, Isaacs, and Bowen Rivers drain this
+carboniferous area; and numerous outcrops of coal have been observed on
+these streams. No commercial use, however, has yet been made of any of
+these deposits, as the measures generally are too far inland to be made
+available until the railway system of the country is extended in that
+direction.
+
+"Devonian."--From the southern boundary of Queensland up to latitude 18
+deg. S., a series of slates, sandstones, coral limestones, and
+conglomerates extend to a distance 200 miles inland; these are sometimes
+overlain by coal measures, sometimes by volcanic rocks, and consequently
+do not crop out on the surface over such districts. North of latitude 18
+deg. S., however, over the Cape York Peninsula, this series (so far as
+we have any evidence), is absent, granites and porphyries capped by
+"Desert Sandstone" forming the ranges on the eastern, and their abraded
+ingredients the sandy ti-tree flats, those on the western side of that
+inhospitable tract of country, a never-ending flat of poor
+desert-looking sandy ti-tree country, stretching away to the shores of
+the Gulf of Carpentaria.
+
+In the limestone bands, which form the lower portion of the series,
+corals are very numerous; in fact, the limestones, where little
+alteration has taken place, are a mass of aggregated corals; and as this
+class of rock has resisted aerial destruction better than the associated
+slates and sandstones, the barriers thus formed mark the trend of the
+rock system to which they belong, in a very picturesque and decided
+manner; their bold, massive, and varied outline chiselled into the most
+delicate fretwork by Nature's hand, is relieved by a wealth of
+richly-tinted foliage, unknown in the surrounding bush; and the eye
+jaded with the monotony of the eternal gum tree turns with delight to
+the changing tints and varied scenery presented by these barrier-like
+records of the past. This class of country is very much in evidence at
+Chillagoe. On the track from the Broken River to the Gilbert diggings,
+Devonian rocks several thousand feet thick may be observed, as they are
+continuous in dip, without being repeated, for at least five miles
+across the strike, with an average inclination of 60 deg.
+
+Although on the Broken River and its tributaries a breadth of thirty
+miles with a length of sixty miles, is occupied by a persistent outcrop
+of Devonian strata, gold has only been discovered in remunerative
+quantities in a small gully, where a trapdyke has penetrated the
+Palæozoic rocks of the district.
+
+The following districts, however, where Devonian rocks prevail, have
+been the centres of gold mining enterprise:--Lucky Valley, Talgai,
+Gympie, Calliope, Boyne, Morinish, Rosewood, Mount Wyatt, Broken River,
+portion of Gilbert.
+
+In every case here cited, the country is traversed by trap rocks of a
+peculiar character, either diorite, diabase, or porphyrite; and
+tufaceous representatives of these are also found interstratified in the
+upper portion of the same formation, and occasionally throughout the
+other beds.
+
+At Gympie, the auriferous area is confined to veins traversing a
+crystalline diorite, or within a certain limit of its boundary, marked by
+the presence of fossiliferous diabase tufas.
+
+Whatever may have been the solvent and precipitant of the nobler metals
+in the auriferous veinstones associated with trap intrusions, all other
+but hydrothermal action may safely be eliminated, the very nature of the
+reefs, composed as they are of alternating layers of a promiscuous
+mixture of quartz, calcspar, pyrites, etc., affording unmistakable
+evidence on this point. The gold also contained in the trap dykes
+themselves is always accompanied by pyrites, both (according to
+Daintree), hydrothermal products separating out during the cooling down
+of the trap intrusions. Auriferous lodes, occurring in areas where
+hydrothermal action has attended trap disturbances of a special
+character in Queensland, are generally thin--to be estimated by inches
+rather than feet; but taken as a whole they are far richer in gold than
+those enclosed by sedimentary rocks.
+
+
+GRANITIC.
+
+Outcrops of granite extend along the eastern coast of Queensland from
+Broad Sound to Cape York, and inland as far as the heads of streams
+running direct from the inner coast range to the sea.
+
+Very little rock of this character is met with west and south of the
+Dividing Range which separates rivers flowing to the eastern and
+northern coast, and those trending south to the Murray or Cooper's
+Creek.
+
+The granites of Queensland vary very much in their crystalline texture,
+passing from true granites into porphyry and quartz porphyry.
+
+
+TRAPPEAN.
+
+Much stress has been laid on the value of certain intrusive trap rocks
+as specially influencing the production of auriferous veinstones in
+Queensland.
+
+The petrology of these may be divided into four type classes:--1.
+Pyritous porphyrites and porphyries. 2. Pyritous diroites and diabases.
+3. Chrome iron serpentines. 4. Pyritous felsites.
+
+
+VOLCANIC.
+
+Whilst the older trappean rocks have apparently had so much influence on
+the disturbance and fracture of the sedimentary strata older than the
+Carboniferous, and by a secondary process have evidently been centres of
+mineralising action, the volcanic seem to have played the most important
+part in determining the elevation and present physical outline of
+north-eastern Queensland. The main outbursts of lava have taken place
+along the Dividing Range which separates the eastern and western waters,
+and therefore on the line of the highest elevation of the country. The
+more northern volcanic areas, are probably contemporaneous with the
+upper volcanic series of Victorian geologists, so extensively developed
+in the western districts of that colony. These have issued from
+well-defined craters still in existence, and are probably of Pliocene
+Tertiary age.
+
+The southern areas, viz., Peak and Darling Downs, etc., are older,
+agreeing with the lower volcanic of Victoria, which have been ejected
+through fissures, and have in no case a very extensive flow beyond the
+lines of fracture through which they issued. These may be referred to
+the Miocene Tertiary epoch. The rock masses forming both the upper and
+lower volcanic are basic in character, and may be all termed or grouped
+under the general term "dolorites."
+
+The volcanic soils of Queensland are those best adapted for the grazier
+and agriculturist.
+
+To epitomise:--With the exception of the McKinlay Ranges, a line drawn
+parallel to the eastern coast, at a distance of 250 miles, would include
+all the palæozoic, metamorphic, granitic, trappean, and volcanic rocks
+represented in the colony, both coal groups lying within the same area.
+
+The mesozoic and cainozoic systems occupy the surface area to the
+westward. The volcanic rocks follow the line of greatest elevation on
+the main watershed at altitudes from 1,500 to 2,000 feet above sea
+level. The chief granitic mass extends from Broad Sound to Cape York,
+with an occasional capping of "Desert Sandstone." Westward from the
+Dividing Range, "Desert Sandstone" and the cretaceous and oolitic groups
+alternate one with the other to the extreme limit of the colony.
+
+
+AREA OF FORMATIONS.
+
+Estimating the entire extent of the colony at 600,000 square miles, a
+rough approximation to the areas occupied by the different geological
+formations is as follows:--
+
+                                                        Square Miles.
+
+  Valueless land, "Desert Sandstone"                         150,000
+
+  Scrubby and thickly timbered
+    inferior pastoral,               { Carbonaceous }
+    but valuable as containing       { Mesozoic and }         24,000
+    coal, iron ore, &c.              { Palæozoic    }
+
+  Fair pastoral, and valuable        { Devonian     }
+    for its associated minerals      { Silurian     }         60,000
+    and metals                       { Metamorphic  }
+
+  Fair pastoral                        Granitic              114,000
+
+  Good pastoral                      { Cretaceous  }
+                                     { and Oolitic }         200,000
+
+  First-class pastoral and           { Alluvial    }
+  agricultural                       { Volcanic    }          52,000
+                                     { Trappean    }
+                                                             -------
+                                                             600,000
+
+Looking at the matter from an economical point of view, we find that
+one-fourth of the Colony of Queensland is valueless, whereas
+three-fourths furnish good pastoral land. Of this latter 60,000 square
+miles contain extensive and very valuable mines of gold, with numerous
+outcrops of copper and lead ores, to which may be added rich deposits of
+tin ore; 24,000 square miles are capable of producing illimitable
+supplies of coal and iron; 52,000 square miles are, as far as soil is
+concerned, best adapted for the agriculturist and squatter. In
+conclusion, it may be asserted that there is here a wealth of material
+resource which compares favourably with that of any other Australian
+colony.
+
+
+THE GREAT BARRIER REEF.
+
+North Queensland owes one of its chief claims to distinction to its
+numerous ports and harbours. In fact, the whole coast from Lady Elliott
+Island northwards to Cape York is one large harbour; protected as it is
+from the ocean swell by the Great Barrier Reef, a natural breakwater,
+extending for nearly a thousand miles, with a depth from ten to twenty
+fathoms, and a distance from the main land which varies from twenty to
+fifty miles. The sea outside is profoundly deep, and a few islets are
+found on the line of reef, also a few ship canals through the Barrier
+Reef. "The Great Barrier Reef of Australia; its products and
+potentialities," by W. Saville Kent, F.L.S., is a splendid work, and
+beautifully illustrated. This work shows the reef to be full of marine
+wonders and is intensely interesting; its various forms of life and
+marine vegetation would fill volumes. The Great Barrier Coral Reef of
+Australia, the marvellous extent of which was first made known by
+Captain Cook, is one of the wonders of the universe. Its linear
+measurement is no less than 1,250 miles, extending from 9-1/2 deg. of
+south latitude to Lady Elliott's Island, the most southern true coral
+islet in the chain or system. Its whole area lies within the territorial
+jurisdiction of Queensland, and the greater portion in North Queensland
+of which it forms one of the most valuable possessions. Raw material to
+the value of over £100,000 annually is obtained from the reefs and
+waters for exportation. The distance from the main land to the outer
+edge or boundary of this gigantic reef varies from ten or twelve miles
+to thirty. It is mostly formed of a chain of detached reefs and coral
+islets, many submerged or partially exposed at low water, with several
+openings, a few of which offer secure passage for large vessels.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+SOME LITERARY REMAINS.
+
+
+The late Mr. Palmer had some skill as a versifier, although the
+exigencies of his arduous life in the pioneering days would not permit
+of his adding the extra finish to the lines which, more often than not,
+were as he himself phrased it, "strung together as the result of
+sleepless hours passed during the nights while camping out on a large
+cattle run in the west." A few of his efforts are here preserved:--
+
+
+THE GIDYA TREE.
+
+(Acacia Homoeophylla.)
+
+  Where roll the great plains to the west,
+    Near a homestead pleasant to see,
+  With far-stretching limbs and spreading crest,
+    Grows a grand old acacia tree.
+  Nor winter winds, nor sun's fierce heat
+    Can change its staunch solidity,
+  For many a century's storms have beat
+    On this great, grey, gidya tree.
+
+  At early morn, their joyous lay,
+    The butcher-birds sing in melody.
+  And merrily pass the hours away,
+    All under the gidya tree.
+  The grey doves in its shade rejoice,
+    From eyes of kites they're free,
+  And call their loves in plaintive voice,
+    From under the gidya tree.
+
+  In scarlet bloom, the mistletoe swings,
+    From its branches droopingly;
+  And all around its odour flings,
+    Right under the gidya tree.
+  The milk-plant twines its length along,
+    As if 'twould hidden be;
+  Creeping its way 'mong the leaves so strong,
+    Of this ancient gidya tree.
+
+  The panting cattle gladly come,
+    And sheltered fain would be,
+  From burning heat of noonday sun,
+    Camped under the gidya tree.
+  Like the shade from a great rock cast
+    O'er the land so soothing lay;
+  All Nature seeks some rest at last,
+    Far under the gidya tree.
+
+  When life is o'er and troubles past,
+    How sweet that rest will be,
+  For weary ones who come at last,
+    Safe under the gidya tree.
+  "Nunc dimittis," my work is done,
+    And soon from care set free;
+  That peace I wish will soon be won,
+    Deep under the gidya tree.
+
+
+MY OLD STOCK HORSE.
+
+(Norman.)
+
+"Norman," a large bay horse, bred on Conobie about 1870, broken in three
+or four years after, and worked on till twenty-four or twenty-five years
+old as a stock horse, and then nearly as good and safe to ride as ever.
+A surer, better stock horse was never ridden, and always ridden by the
+writer.
+
+  I have a friend--I've proved him so
+    By many a task and token;
+  I've ridden him long and found him true,
+    Since first that he was broken.
+
+  For twenty years we both have been
+    In storm and sunny weather,
+  And many a thousand miles we've seen,
+    Just he and I together.
+
+  From Cooktown's breezy seaborn site,
+    By Palmer's golden river;
+  Where Mitchell's waters clear and bright,
+    Roll on their course for ever.
+
+  Across the Lynd and Gilbert's sands,
+    And many a rocky river;
+  Through trackless desert, forest lands,
+    We've journeyed oft together.
+
+  Then on the great grey plains so vast,
+    Where the sun's rays dance and quiver,
+  Through scorching heat and south-east blast,
+    We've toiled on Flinders River.
+
+  Through tangled scrubs and broken ground,
+    We have often had to scramble;
+  To wheel the cunning brumbie's round,
+    From where they love to ramble.
+
+  Old Norman ne'er was known to fail,
+    Or in the camp to falter,
+  And just as sound to-day and hale,
+    As when he first wore halter.
+
+  Good horse, you well have earned your rest,
+    Your mustering days are over;
+  For all your time you'll have the best,
+    And pass your life in clover.
+
+  The Indian's simple faith is plain,
+    That in the land of shadows,
+  He'll have his faithful dog again
+    To hunt in misty meadows.
+
+  And should a steed a soul attain,
+    This surely then will follow--
+  I'll meet that grand old horse again,
+    And hail him "Good old fellow!"
+
+Conobie, October 8th, 1894.
+
+
+THE WATCHER.
+
+  The night wind keen and chill is creeping
+    Across the plains with moaning sound;
+  A rider there his watch is keeping,
+    Where cattle camp in peace around.
+
+  The Southern Cross shines clear and bright,
+    And marks the hour that speeds;
+  While Nature's sounds, borne on the night,
+    Accustomed to, he little heeds.
+
+  The hooting of the mopoke owl
+    Floats on the midnight air;
+  The prowling dingoe's dismal howl
+    Is chorused wide and far.
+
+  The curlew's cry, so wild and shrill,
+    Pierces the air with startling sound;
+  While o'er the waters calm and still,
+    The wild fowl chase each other round.
+
+  He cares not for the keen wind cold,
+    Nor for the hour that's past;
+  For thoughts of other days still hold
+    His memory to the last.
+
+  He minds him of his youth time ever,
+    And the farm where he was born;
+  The meadows green, and the flowing river,
+    And the fields of tasselled corn.
+
+  The sweet perfume of the apple's bloom,
+    The sight of the mountain's blue,
+  The drooping willows and yellow broom,
+    And waving wheatfields too.
+
+  He sees the cows from the pasture land,
+    As down the lane they come,
+  And sister Nell, with pail in hand,
+    To wait their coming home.
+
+  He sees again his father ploughing,
+    In the old-fashioned sturdy way,
+  He hears again the cock's shrill crowing,
+    That waked him oft at break of day.
+
+  His memory takes him back apace,
+    To early manhood's prime,
+  When a gentle voice and pleasant face
+    Impressed him for all time.
+
+  For loving lass and wandering lad,
+    Since ever the world began,
+  Though parted in grief, the love they had,
+    Will come to each again.
+
+  His wayward life he ponders on
+    With anguish deep and keen,
+  And as the past he looks upon,
+    Sadly thinks--it might have been.
+
+  But vain regrets will help him not.
+    Nor vanished hopes renew;
+  He only knows his present lot
+    Has duties stern to do.
+
+  He cares not now whate'er befalls,
+    His faith he still will keep;
+  The next on watch in turn he calls,
+    And folds himself in sleep.
+
+
+Conobie, June 21st, 1894.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+  LIST OF BOOKS
+
+  PUBLISHED BY
+
+  ANGUS & ROBERTSON
+
+  89 CASTLEREAGH STREET, SYDNEY
+
+  205 SWANSTON STREET, MELBOURNE
+
+
+
+
+  SOLD IN ENGLAND BY
+
+  THE AUSTRALIAN BOOK COMPANY
+
+  38 WEST SMITHFIELD, LONDON, E.C.
+
+
+
+
+THE COMMONWEALTH SERIES
+
+  Crown 8vo., 1s. each (_post free 1s. 3d. each_).
+
+  =ON THE TRACK: New Stories.=                       _By HENRY LAWSON_
+
+  =OVER THE SLIPRAILS: New Stories.=                    _By H. LAWSON_
+
+  =POPULAR VERSES.=                                  _By HENRY LAWSON_
+        _Now first published in book form._
+
+  =HUMOROUS VERSES.=                                 _By HENRY LAWSON_
+        _Now first published in book form._
+
+  =WHILE THE BILLY BOILS: Australian Stories.=
+        =First Series.=                              _By HENRY LAWSON_
+
+  =WHILE THE BILLY BOILS: Australian Stories.=
+        =Second Series.=                             _By HENRY LAWSON_
+
+  =MY CHINEE COOK AND OTHER HUMOROUS VERSES.=    _By BRUNTON STEPHENS_
+
+  =HISTORY OF AUSTRALASIA: From the Earliest Times
+   to the Inauguration of the Commonwealth.            _By A. W. JOSE_
+
+  =HISTORY OF AUSTRALIAN BUSHRANGING.=              _By CHARLES WHITE_
+
+        Part   I.--THE EARLY DAYS.
+        Part  II.--1850 to 1862.
+        Part III.--1863 to 1869.
+        Part  IV.--1869 to 1878.
+
+[Symbol: asterism] For press notices of these books see the
+cloth-bound editions on pages 4, 5, 6, 9 and 13 of this catalogue.
+
+
+JOE WILSON AND HIS MATES.
+
+     By HENRY LAWSON, Author of "While the Billy Boils;" "When
+     the World was Wide and Other Verses;" "Verses, Popular
+     and Humorous;" "On the Track and Over the Sliprails."
+
+     Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. (_post free 4s._) in
+     paper covers, 2s. 6d. (_post free 3s._)
+
+=The Athenæum= (London): "This is a long way the best work Mr. Lawson
+has yet given us. These stories are so good that (from the literary
+point of view, of course) one hopes they are not autobiographical. As
+autobiography they would be good; as pure fiction they are more of an
+attainment."
+
+=Pall Mall Gazette:= "We can see in these rough diamonds the men who
+have of late so distinguished themselves at Eland's River and
+elsewhere."
+
+=The Argus:= "More tales of the Joe Wilson series are promised, and this
+will be gratifying to Mr. Lawson's admirers, for on the whole the
+sketches are the best work the writer has so far accomplished."
+
+=The Academy:=--"I have never read anything in modern English literature
+that is so absolutely democratic in tone, so much the real thing, as
+_Joe Wilson's Courtship_. And so with all Lawson's tales and sketches.
+Tolstoy and Howells, and Whitman and Kipling, and Zola and Hauptmann and
+Gorky have all written descriptions of 'democratic' life; but none of
+these celebrated authors, not even Maupassant himself, has so absolutely
+taken us inside the life as do the tales _Joe Wilson's Courtship_ and _A
+Double Buggy at Lahey's Creek_, and it is this rare convincing tone of
+this Australian writer that gives him a great value. The most casual
+'newspapery' and apparently artless art of this Australian writer
+carries with it a truer, finer, more delicate commentary on life than
+all the idealistic works of any of our genteel school of writers."
+
+
+VERSES: POPULAR AND HUMOROUS.
+
+     By HENRY LAWSON, Author of "When the World was Wide, and
+     Other Verses," "Joe Wilson and His Mates," "On the Track
+     and Over the Sliprails," and "While the Billy Boils."
+
+
+     Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. (_post free 4s._).
+
+
+_For Cheaper Edition see Commonwealth Series, page 2._
+
+
+FRANCIS THOMPSON, in =The Daily Chronicle=: "He is a writer of strong
+and ringing ballad verse, who gets his blows straight in, and at his
+best makes them all tell. He can vignette the life he knows in a few
+touches, and in this book shows an increased power of selection."
+
+=Academy=: "Mr. Lawson's work should be well known to our readers; for
+we have urged them often enough to make acquaintance with it. He has the
+gift of movement, and he rarely offers a loose rhyme. Technically, short
+of anxious lapidary work, these verses are excellent. He varies
+sentiment and humour very agreeably."
+
+=New York Evening Journal:= "Such pride as a man feels when he has true
+greatness as his guest, this newspaper feels in introducing to a million
+readers a man of ability hitherto unknown to them. Henry Lawson is his
+name."
+
+=The Book Lover:= "Any book of Lawson's should be bought and treasured
+by all who care for the real beginnings of Australian literature. As a
+matter of fact, he is the one Australian literary product, in any
+distinctive sense."
+
+
+
+
+ON THE TRACK AND OVER THE SLIPRAILS.
+
+     Stories by HENRY LAWSON, Author of "While the Billy
+     Boils," "Joe Wilson and his Mates," "When the World Was
+     Wide and Other Verses," and "Verses, Popular and
+     Humorous."
+
+     Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. (_post free 4s._).
+
+_For Cheaper Edition see Commonwealth Series, page 2._
+
+=Daily Chronicle:= "Will well sustain the reputation its author has
+already won as the best writer of Australian short stories and sketches
+the literary world knows. Henry Lawson has the art, possessed in such
+eminent degree by Mr. J. M. Barrie, of sketching in a character and
+suggesting a whole life-story in a single sentence."
+
+=Pall Mall Gazette:= "The volume now received will do much to enhance
+the author's reputation. There is all the quiet irresistible humour of
+Dickens in the description of 'The Darling River,' and the creator of
+'Truthful James' never did anything better in the way of character
+sketches than Steelman and Mitchell. Mr. Lawson has a master's sense of
+what is dramatic, and he can bring out strong effects in a few touches.
+Humour and pathos, comedy and tragedy, are equally at his command."
+
+=Glasgow Herald:= "Mr. Lawson must now be regarded as facile princeps in
+the production of the short tale. Some of these brief and even slight
+sketches are veritable gems that would be spoiled by an added word, and
+without a word that can be looked upon as superfluous."
+
+=Melbourne Punch:= "Often the little stories are wedges cut clean out of
+life, and presented with artistic truth and vivid colour."
+
+
+WHILE THE BILLY BOILS.
+
+     Stories by HENRY LAWSON, Author of "When the World Was
+     Wide and Other Verses," "Joe Wilson and his Mates," "On
+     the Track and Over the Sliprails," and "Verses, Popular
+     and Humorous."
+
+     Twenty-third Thousand. With eight plates and vignette
+     title, by F. P. Mahony. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d.
+     (_post free 4s._).
+
+_For Cheaper Edition see Commonwealth Series, page 2._
+
+=The Academy:= "A book of honest, direct, sympathetic, humorous writing
+about Australia from within is worth a library of travellers' tales....
+The result is a real book--a book in a hundred. His language is terse,
+supple, and richly idiomatic. He can tell a yarn with the best."
+
+=Literature:= "A book which Mrs. Campbell Praed assured me made her feel
+that all she had written of bush life was pale and ineffective."
+
+=The Spectator:= "It is strange that one we would venture to call the
+greatest Australian writer should be practically unknown in England. Mr.
+Lawson is a less experienced writer than Mr. Kipling, and more unequal,
+but there are two or three sketches in this volume which for vigour and
+truth can hold their own with even so great a rival."
+
+=The Times:= "A collection of short and vigorous studies and stories of
+Australian life and character. A little in Bret Harte's manner, crossed,
+perhaps, with that of Guy de Maupassant."
+
+=The Scotsman:= "There is no lack of dramatic imagination in the
+construction of the tales; and the best of them contrive to construct a
+strong sensational situation in a couple of pages."
+
+
+WHEN THE WORLD WAS WIDE AND OTHER VERSES.
+
+     By HENRY LAWSON, Author of "While the Billy Boils;" "Joe
+     Wilson and his Mates," "On the Track and Over the
+     Sliprails," and "Verses, Popular and Humorous."
+
+     Eleventh Thousand. With photogravure portrait and
+     vignette title. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, gilt top, 5s.
+     (_post free 5s. 5d._).
+
+_Presentation edition, French Morocco, gilt edges, 9s._
+
+=The Speaker= (LONDON): "There are poems in 'In the Days when the World
+was Wide' which are of a higher mood than any yet heard in distinctively
+Australian poetry."
+
+=The Academy:= "These ballads (for such they mostly are) abound in
+spirit and manhood, in the colour and smell of Australian soil. They
+deserve the popularity which they have won in Australia, and which, we
+trust, this edition will now give them in England."
+
+=Newcastle Weekly Chronicle:= "Swinging, rhythmic verse."
+
+=Sydney Morning Herald:= "The verses have natural vigour, the writer has
+a rough, true faculty of characterisation, and the book is racy of the
+soil from cover to cover."
+
+=Bulletin:= "How graphic he is, how natural, how true, how strong."
+
+=Otago Witness:= "It were well to have such books upon our shelves....
+They are true history."
+
+
+THE MAN FROM SNOWY RIVER AND OTHER VERSES.
+
+     By A. B. PATERSON.
+
+     Twenty-Seventh Thousand. With photogravure portrait and
+     vignette title. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, gilt top, 5s.
+     (_post free 5s. 5d._).
+
+_Presentation edition, French Morocco, gilt edges, 9s._
+
+=The Literary Year Book:= "The immediate success of this book of bush
+ballads is without parallel in Colonial literary annals, nor can any
+living English or American poet boast so wide a public, always excepting
+Mr. Rudyard Kipling."
+
+=The Times:= "At his best he compares not unfavourably with the author
+of 'Barrack Room Ballads.'"
+
+=Spectator:= "These lines have the true lyrical cry in them. Eloquent
+and ardent verses."
+
+=Athenæum:= "Swinging, rattling ballads of ready humour, ready pathos,
+and crowding adventure.... Stirring and entertaining ballads about great
+rides, in which the lines gallop like the very hoofs of the horses."
+
+Mr. A. PATCHETT MARTIN, in =Literature= (London): "In my opinion it is
+the absolutely un-English, thoroughly Australian style and character of
+these new bush bards which has given them such immediate popularity,
+such wide vogue, among all classes of the rising native generation."
+
+
+_London: Macmillan & Co., Limited._
+
+
+THE POETICAL WORKS OF BRUNTON STEPHENS.
+
+     New edition, with photogravure portrait. Crown 8vo, cloth
+     gilt, gilt top, 5s.
+
+_See also Commonwealth Series, page 2._
+
+=Sydney Morning Herald (N.S.W.):= "'The Poetical Works of Brunton
+Stephens' is a book which every Australian should have on his
+bookshelves, whether these bookshelves cover walls or are merely the
+small collection which the man of taste, however shrunken his purse, is
+bound to make. Brunton Stephens deserves his place in even the smallest
+of collections. The chief of Australian poets he has contributed to
+English literature work of distinguished merit. He is many-sided,
+embracing all sorts and conditions of men and things."
+
+=The Melbourne Argus:= "Mr. Brunton Stephens has for some years enjoyed
+an established reputation as one of the best among the small and select
+cluster of Australian poets.... Mr. Stephens is specially favoured, in
+that he not only has at command a vein of true pathos, but he has
+moments of real humour. In more than one poem, too, he has made good his
+right to be regarded as the poet of brotherhood and the prophet of
+federation."
+
+=The Melbourne Age:= "It is certainly one of the happiest of his
+efforts, and exhibits alike his copious vocabulary and his mastery of a
+most attractive form of metre.... A poet, both in thought and feeling."
+
+=Newcastle (N.S.W.) Morning Herald:= "Of the rapidly lengthening roll of
+Australian writers, none deserves a higher place than Brunton Stephens.
+For more than a generation he has charmed his countrymen with his
+exquisite verse."
+
+
+RHYMES FROM THE MINES AND OTHER LINES.
+
+     By EDWARD DYSON, Author of "A Golden Shanty."
+
+     Second Thousand. With photogravure portrait and vignette
+     title. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, gilt top, 5s. (_post free,
+     5s. 5d._).
+
+_Presentation edition, French Morocco, gilt edges, 9s._
+
+
+FOR THE TERM OF HIS NATURAL LIFE.
+
+     By MARCUS CLARKE.
+
+     With a Memoir of the Author, by A. B. PATERSON, Portrait
+     of the Author, Map of Eagle Hawk Neck and the vicinity,
+     and 14 full-page views of places mentioned in the book.
+     Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, gilt top, 3s. 6d. (_post free,
+     4s._)
+
+
+RIO GRANDE'S LAST RACE AND OTHER VERSES.
+
+     By A. B. PATERSON.
+
+     This is issued uniform with the Snowy River Series at 5s.
+     The contents are quite up to the standard of "The Man
+     from Snowy River," and as the demand is certain to be
+     very large we would ask the Trade to place their orders
+     at once.
+
+
+FLOOD-TIDE.
+
+     By SARAH P. McL. GREENE, Author of "Vesty of the Basins,"
+     &c.
+
+     Cloth, 3s. 6d.; paper, 2s. 6d.
+
+
+=The Argus= (ALBANY, N.Y.): "'Flood-Tide' is a strong dramatic story of
+primitive life in a hamlet coast town in Maine. It is a study of human
+nature set in primitive surroundings, and is full of the pathos and
+humour of life's little comedies. 'Flood-Tide' is full of 'characters.'
+There is Johnny Dinsmore, whose wayward humours and mischievous pranks
+keep his mother and the whole neighbourhood on thorns, and who is one of
+the most delightful young imps ever turned loose in fiction, not even
+excepting Sentimental Tommy. Captain Shale, with his scraps of rustic
+philosophy, is a quaint original, worthy of David Harum's companionship.
+His reflections on the subject of clothes are of a piece with those of
+Teufelsdrochk: 'The world's a-dyin' of clo's. So fur as I can see, the
+sons o' men is pretty much all a-strugglin' for one kind and another o'
+clo's; that's what it amounts to...."
+
+
+THE SPIRIT OF THE BUSH FIRE AND OTHER AUSTRALIAN FAIRY TALES. BY J. M.
+WHITFELD.
+
+     Second Thousand. With 32 illustrations by G. W. Lambert.
+     Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 2s. 6d. (_post free, 3s._).
+
+
+TEENS. A Story of Australian Schoolgirls.
+
+     BY LOUISE MACK.
+
+     Fourth Thousand. With 14 full-page illustrations by F. P.
+     Mahony. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 2s. 6d.
+
+=Sydney Morning Herald:= "Ought to be welcome to all who feel the
+responsibility of choosing the reading books of the young ... its
+gaiety, impulsiveness, and youthfulness will charm them."
+
+=Sydney Daily Telegraph:= "Nothing could be more natural, more
+sympathetic."
+
+=The Australasian:= "'Teens' is a pleasantly-written story, very
+suitable for a present or a school prize."
+
+=Bulletin:= "It is written so well that it could not be written better."
+
+
+GIRLS TOGETHER.
+
+A Sequel to "Teens." BY LOUISE MACK.
+
+     Third Thousand. Illustrated by G. W. Lambert. Crown 8vo,
+     cloth gilt, 2s. 6d.
+
+=Sydney Morning Herald:= "'Girls Together' should be in the library of
+every girl who likes a pleasant story of real life.... Older people will
+read it for its bright touches of human nature."
+
+=Queenslander:= "A story told in a dainty style that makes it attractive
+to all. It is fresh, bright, and cheery, and well worth a place on any
+Australian bookshelf."
+
+
+THE ANNOTATED CONSTITUTION OF THE AUSTRALIAN COMMONWEALTH.
+
+     By Sir JOHN QUICK AND R. R. GARRAN, C.M.G. Royal 8vo,
+     cloth gilt, 21s.
+
+=The Times:= "The Annotated Constitution of the Australian Commonwealth
+is a monument of industry.... Dr. Quick and Mr. Garran have collected,
+with patience and enthusiasm, every sort of information, legal and
+historical, which can throw light on the new measure. The book has
+evidently been a labour of love."
+
+
+HISTORY OF AUSTRALIAN BUSHRANGING. BY CHARLES WHITE.
+
+     To be completed in two vols. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s.
+     6d. each.
+
+[_Vol. I. now ready. Vol. II. now ready_
+
+_For Cheaper Edition see Commonwealth Series, page 2._
+
+Press Notices of Volume I.
+
+=Year Book of Australia:= "There is 'romance' enough about it to make it
+of permanent interest as a peculiar and most remarkable stage in our
+social history."
+
+=Queenslander:= "Mr. White has supplied material enough for twenty such
+novels as 'Robbery Under Arms.'"
+
+
+THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE.
+
+A Handbook to the History of Greater Britain.
+
+     BY ARTHUR W. JOSE, Author of "A Short History of
+     Australasia."
+
+     Second Edition. With 14 Maps. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 5s.
+     (_post free, 5s. 6d._).
+
+=Morning Post:= "This book is published in Sydney, but it deserves to be
+circulated throughout the United Kingdom. The picture of the fashion in
+which British enterprise made its way from settlement to settlement has
+never been drawn more vividly than in these pages. Mr. Jose's style is
+crisp and pleasant, now and then even rising to eloquence on his grand
+theme. His book deserves wide popularity, and it has the rare merit of
+being so written as to be attractive alike to the young student and to
+the mature man of letters."
+
+=Literature:= "He has studied thoroughly, and writes vigorously....
+Admirably done.... We commend it to Britons the world over."
+
+=Saturday Review:= "He writes Imperially; he also often writes
+sympathetically.... We cannot close Mr. Jose's creditable account of our
+misdoings without a glow of national pride."
+
+=Yorkshire Post:= "A brighter short history we do not know, and this
+book deserves for the matter and the manner of it to be as well known as
+Mr. McCarthy's 'History of Our Own Times.'"
+
+=The Scotsman:= "This admirable work is a solid octavo of more than 400
+pages. It is a thoughtful, well written, and well-arranged history.
+There are fourteen excellent maps to illustrate the text."
+
+
+HISTORY OF AUSTRALASIA.
+
+From the Earliest Times to the Inauguration of the Commonwealth.
+
+     BY ARTHUR W. JOSE, Author of "The Growth of the Empire."
+     The chapter on Federation revised by R. R. Garran, C.M.G.
+
+     With 6 maps and 64 portraits and illustrations. Crown
+     8vo, cloth, 1s. 6d. (_post free 1s. 10d._). _For Cheaper
+     Edition see Commonwealth Series, page 2._
+
+=The Book Lover:= "The ignorance of the average Australian youth about
+the brief history of his native land is often deplorable.... 'A Short
+History of Australasia,' by Arthur W. Jose, just provides the thing
+wanted. Mr. Jose's previous historical work was most favourably received
+in England, and this story of our land is capitally done. It is not too
+long, and it is brightly written. Its value is considerably enhanced by
+the useful maps and interesting illustrations. A very good book to give
+to a boy."
+
+=Victorian Education Gazette:= "The language is graphic and simple, and
+there is much evidence of careful work and acquaintance with original
+documents, which give the reader confidence in the accuracy of the
+details. The low price of the book leaves young Australia no excuse for
+remaining in ignorance of the history of their native land."
+
+=Town and Country Journal:= "His language is graphic and simple, and he
+has maintained the unity and continuity of the story of events despite
+the necessity of following the subject along the seven branches
+corresponding with the seven separate colonies."
+
+
+THE GEOLOGY OF SYDNEY AND THE BLUE MOUNTAINS.
+
+A Popular Introduction to the Study of Australian Geology.
+
+     BY REV. J. MILNE CURRAN, Lecturer in Chemistry and
+     Geology, Technical College, Sydney.
+
+     Second Edition. With a Glossary of Scientific terms, a
+     Reference List of commonly-occurring Fossils, 2 coloured
+     maps, and 83 illustrations. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 6s.
+     (_post free, 6s. 6d._)
+
+=Nature:= "This is, strictly speaking, an elementary manual of geology.
+The general plan of the work is good; the book is well printed and
+illustrated with maps, photographic pictures of rock structure and
+scenery, and figures of fossils and rock sections."
+
+=Saturday Review:= "His style is animated and inspiring, or clear and
+precise, as occasion demands. The people of Sydney are to be
+congratulated on the existence of such a guide to their beautiful
+country."
+
+=Literary World:= "We can heartily recommend the book as a very
+interesting one, written in a much more readable style than is usual in
+works of this kind."
+
+=South Australian Register:= "Mr. Curran has extracted a charming
+narrative of the earth's history out of the prosaic stone. Though he has
+selected Sydney rocks for his text, his discourse is interestingly
+Australian."
+
+
+SIMPLE TESTS FOR MINERALS; Or, Every Man his Own Analyst.
+
+     BY JOSEPH CAMPBELL, M.A., F.G.S., M.I.M.E.
+
+     Fourth Edition, revised and enlarged (completing the
+     ninth thousand). With illustrations. Cloth, round
+     corners, 3s. 6d. (_post free 3s. 9d._).
+
+
+THE KINGSWOOD COOKERY BOOK.
+
+     BY MRS. WICKEN, M.C.A., Late Teacher of Cookery,
+     Technical College, Sydney.
+
+     Fifth edition, revised, completing the Nineteenth
+     Thousand. 382 pages, crown 8vo, paper cover, 1s; cloth,
+     1s. 6d. (_postage 4d._).
+
+
+ANSWERS TO TAYLOR'S METRIC SYSTEM. 6d. (_post free 7d._).
+
+
+PRESBYTERIAN WOMEN'S MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION COOKERY BOOK.
+
+     Seventh Edition, enlarged, completing the 45th Thousand.
+     Crown 8vo, cloth, 1s. (_post free 1s. 2d._).
+
+
+THE METRIC SYSTEM OF WEIGHTS AND MEASURES, AND DECIMAL COINAGE.
+
+     BY J. M. TAYLOR, M.A., LL.B.
+
+     With Introductory Notes on the nature of Decimals, and
+     contracted methods for the Multiplication and Division of
+     Decimals. Crown 8vo, 6d. (_post free 7d._).
+
+=N.S.W. Educational Gazette:= "A masterly and elaborate treatise for the
+use of schools on a subject of world-wide interest and importance.... In
+commercial life a knowledge of the metric system has been for some years
+essential, and it is, therefore, fitting that its underlying principles
+should be taught in our schools concurrently with reduction, and
+practised systematically in the more advanced grades. For this purpose
+the book is unquestionably the best we have seen."
+
+
+A NEW BOOK OF SONGS FOR SCHOOLS AND SINGING CLASSES.
+
+     BY HUGO ALPEN, Superintendent of Music Department of
+     Public Instruction, New South Wales.
+
+     8vo, paper cover. 1s. (_post free 1s. 2d._).
+
+
+THE ELEMENTS OF EUCLID.
+
+With Historical Introduction, Notes, Appendices and Miscellaneous
+Examples.
+
+     BY J. D. ST. CLAIR MACLARDY, M.A., Lecturer at the
+     Training Colleges and Examiner for the New South Wales
+     Department of Public Instruction.
+
+     Books I.-IV. Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. (_post free 3s.
+     10d._). Book I., separately, cloth, 1s. 6d. (_post free
+     1s. 9d._).
+
+     Books V.-VI. Cloth, 1s. 6d. (_post free 1s. 9d._).
+
+=N.S.W. Educational Gazette:= "The most complete and logical discussion
+of this part of the works of the great geometer that we have seen. An
+unusual amount of care has been bestowed on the initiatory stages, the
+definitions, axioms, and postulates being treated with commendable
+fulness.... The brevity, simplicity, and perspicuity of his methods will
+appeal forcibly to students.... Mr. Maclardy adheres to the plan of
+simplifying the proofs and reducing the verbiage to a minimum, and has
+added a contribution to mathematical literature which we regard as
+indispensable."
+
+=Victorian Educational Gazette:= "Among the legion of editions of
+Euclid, Mr. Maclardy's takes an honourable place. There are many
+features that are the result of the author's long experience as a
+lecturer and examiner in mathematics. He has evidently taken a pride in
+making his work as perfect as possible."
+
+
+ENGLISH GRAMMAR, COMPOSITION, AND PRÉCIS WRITING.
+
+For Use by Candidates for University and Public Service Exams.
+
+     BY JAMES CONWAY, Headmaster at Cleveland-street Superior
+     Public School, Sydney.
+
+     Prescribed by the Department of Public Instruction,
+     N.S.W., for First and Second Class Teachers' Certificate
+     Examinations. New edition, revised and enlarged. Crown
+     8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. (_post free 3s. 10d._).
+
+=Sydney Morning Herald:= "To its concise and admirable arrangement of
+rules and definitions, which holds good wherever the English language is
+spoken or written, is added special treatment of special difficulties.
+Mr. Conway adopts the excellent plan of taking certain papers, and of
+answering the questions in detail.... Should be in the hands of every
+teacher."
+
+=Victorian Educational News:= "A book which we can heartily recommend as
+the most suitable we have yet met with to place in the hands of students
+for our intermediate examinations, and also for matriculation, pupil
+teachers' and certificate of competency examinations. We should be glad
+to see the work set down in the syllabus of the Department so that it
+would reach the hands of all the students and teachers engaged in
+studying the subject in our State schools."
+
+
+A SMALLER ENGLISH GRAMMAR, COMPOSITION, AND PRÉCIS WRITING.
+
+     BY JAMES CONWAY.
+
+     Prescribed by the Department of Public Instruction,
+     N.S.W., for Third Class and Pupil Teachers' Examinations.
+     New edition, revised and enlarged. Crown 8vo, cloth, 1s.
+     6d. (_post free 1s. 9d._).
+
+     =N.S.W. Educational Gazette:= "The abridgment is very
+     well done. One recognises the hand of a man who has had
+     long experience of the difficulties of this subject."
+
+
+GEOGRAPHY OF NEW SOUTH WALES. BY J. M. TAYLOR, M.A., LL.B.
+
+     New Edition, revised. With 37 illustrations and 6 folding
+     maps. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. (_post free 3s.
+     10d._).
+
+=Sydney Morning Herald:= "Something more than a school book; it is an
+approach to an ideal geography."
+
+=Review of Reviews:= "It makes a very attractive handbook. Its geography
+is up to date; it is not overburdened with details, and it is richly
+illustrated with geological diagrams and photographs of scenery
+reproduced with happy skill."
+
+
+CAUSERIES FAMILIÈRES; OR, FRIENDLY CHATS. A Simple and Deductive French
+Course. BY MRS. S. C. BOYD.
+
+     Prescribed for use in schools by the Department of Public
+     Instruction, New South Wales. Pupils' Edition, containing
+     all that need be in the hands of the learner. Crown 8vo,
+     cloth, limp, 1s. 6d. (_post free 1s. 8d._). Teachers'
+     Edition, containing grammatical summaries, exercises, a
+     full treatise on pronunciation, French-English and
+     English-French Vocabulary, and other matter for the use
+     of the teacher or of a student without a master. Crown
+     8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. (_post free, 3s. 10d._).
+
+=The London Spectator:= "A most excellent and practical little volume,
+evidently the work of a trained teacher. It combines admirably and in an
+entertaining form the advantages of the conversational with those of the
+grammatical method of learning a language."
+
+
+THE AUSTRALIAN OBJECT LESSON BOOK.
+
+     Part I.--For Infant and Junior Classes. With 43
+     illustrations. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d.; paper
+     cover, 2s. 6d. (_postage, 4d._).
+
+=N.S.W. Educational Gazette:= "Mr. Wiley has wisely adopted the plan of
+utilising the services of specialists. The series is remarkably
+complete, and includes almost everything with which the little learners
+ought to be made familiar. Throughout the whole series the lessons have
+been selected with judgment and with a due appreciation of the capacity
+of the pupils for whose use they are intended."
+
+
+AUSTRALIAN SONGS FOR AUSTRALIAN CHILDREN.
+
+     BY MRS. MAYBANKE ANDERSON.
+
+     All the songs are set to music, while to some of them
+     appropriate calisthenic exercises are given. Demy 4to,
+     picture cover, 1s.
+
+=Sydney Morning Herald:= "This is a prettily got up little book, in
+which the music of old songs or old melodies has been set to verses
+having reference to this country. The verses are in every case simple
+and good, suited to children and to the illustration by action for which
+directions are given in a foot note. 'Australia Fair,' to a melody by
+Gluck, is the tune which the late Carl Formes and Signor Foli made
+popular as 'The Mill Wheel.' 'The Gum Tree,' to the tune of 'Banker's
+Wallet,' is a capital song for little children, and 'The Bonnie Orange
+Tree,' to the tune of 'Come, Landlord, Fill your Flowing Bowl,' has
+really charming verses. 'The Little Grey Bandicoot,' again, has
+first-rate verse. The publication as a whole should prove popular."
+
+
+THE AUSTRALIAN LETTERING BOOK.
+
+     Containing the Alphabets most useful in Mapping, Exercise
+     Headings, &c., with practical applications, Easy Scrolls,
+     Flourishes, Borders, Corners, Rulings, &c. Second
+     Edition. New Edition, revised and enlarged, cloth limp,
+     6d. (_post free 7d._).
+
+
+THE AUSTRALIAN OBJECT LESSON BOOK.
+
+     Part II.--For advanced classes. With 113 illustrations.
+     Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d.; paper cover, 2s. 6d.
+     (_postage 4d._).
+
+=Victorian Education Gazette:= "Mr. Wiley and his colleagues have
+provided a storehouse of useful information on a great number of topics
+that can be taken up in any Australian school."
+
+=N.S.W. Educational Gazette:= "The Australian Object Lesson Book is
+evidently the result of infinite patience and deep research on the part
+of its compiler, who is also to be commended for the admirable
+arrangement of his matter."
+
+
+THE AUSTRALIAN PROGRESSIVE SONGSTER.
+
+     By S. MCBURNEY, Mus. Doc., Fellow T.S.F. College.
+
+     Containing graded Songs, Rounds and Exercises in Staff
+     Notation, Tonic Sol-fa and Numerals, with Musical Theory.
+     Price, 6d. each part; combined, 1s. (_postage 1d. each
+     part_).
+
+     =No. 1.=--For Junior Classes.
+
+     =No. 2.=--For Senior Classes.
+
+
+GEOGRAPHY OF AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND.
+
+With Definitions of Geographical Terms.
+
+     Second Edition, with 8 maps and 19 illustrations. 64
+     pages. 6d. (_post free 7d._).
+
+
+GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE, ASIA AND AMERICA.
+
+     Second Edition, with 14 relief and other maps, and 18
+     illustrations of transcontinental views, distribution of
+     animals, &c. 84 pages. 6d. (_post free 7d._).
+
+
+GEOGRAPHY OF NEW SOUTH WALES.
+
+     With five folding maps. 48 pages. 6d. (_post free 7d._).
+
+
+GEOGRAPHY OF AFRICA.
+
+     With five maps in relief, &c. 64 pages. 6d. (_post free
+     7d._).
+
+
+AUSTRALIAN SCHOOL SERIES.
+
+    =Grammar and Derivation Book.= 64 pages. 2d.
+
+    =Test Exercises in Grammar for 3rd Class, 1st Year.= 64
+    pages. 2d.
+
+    =Test Exercises in Grammar for 3rd Class, 2nd Year.= 64
+    pages. 2d.
+
+    =Table Book and Mental Arithmetic.= 48 pages. 1d.
+
+    =Chief Events and Dates in English History.= Part I. From
+    55 B.C. to 1485 A.D. 50 pages. 2d.
+
+    =Chief Events and Dates in English History.= Part II. From
+    Henry VII. (1486) to Victoria (1900). 64 pages. 2d.
+
+    =History of Australia.= 80 pages. 4d. Illustrated.
+
+    =Geography.= Part I. Australasia and Polynesia. 64 pages.
+    2d.
+
+    =Geography.= Part II. Europe, Asia, America, and Africa.
+    66 pages. 2d.
+
+    =Euclid.= Book I. With Definitions, Postulates, Axioms,
+    &c. 64 pages. 2d.
+
+    =Euclid.= Book II. With Definitions and Exercises on Books
+    I. and II. 32 pages. 2d.
+
+    =Euclid.= Book III. With University "Junior" Papers
+    1891-1897. 60 pages. 2d.
+
+    =Arithmetic--Exercises for Class II.= 49 pages. 2d.
+    Answers, 2d.
+
+    =Arithmetic--Exercises for Class III.= 66 pages. 2d.
+    Answers, 2d.
+
+    =Arithmetic--Exercises for Class IV.= 65 pages. 2d.
+    Answers, 2d.
+
+    =Arithmetic and Mensuration--Exercises for Class V.= With
+    the Arithmetic Papers set at the Sydney University Junior,
+    the Public Service, the Sydney Chamber of Commerce, and
+    the Bankers' Institute Examinations to 1900, &c. 112
+    pages. 4d. Answers, 4d.
+
+    =Algebra.= Part I. 49 pages. 2d. Answers, 2d.
+
+    =Algebra.= Part II. To Quadratic Equations. Contains over
+    twelve hundred Exercises, including the University Junior,
+    the Public Service, the Sydney Chamber of Commerce, and
+    the Bankers' Institute Examination Papers to 1900, &c. 112
+    pages. 4d. Answers, 4d.
+
+    =Full Solutions of all Algebra Papers= set at 1st and 2nd
+    Class Teachers' Examinations from 1894 to 1901
+    (inclusive), by W. L. Atkins, B.A. (_Post free 5s._).
+
+    =Full Solution of all Arithmetic Papers= set at 1st, 2nd
+    and 3rd Class Teachers' Examinations from 1894 to 1901
+    (inclusive), by J. M. Taylor, M.A., LL.B. (_Post free 2s.
+    6d._)
+
+=N.S.W. Educational Gazette:= "Messrs. Angus and Robertson forward us
+'Solutions of the First, Second and Third Class Teachers' Arithmetic
+Papers,' and 'Solutions of the First and Second Class Teachers' Algebra
+Papers.' Both may be at once pronounced indispensable to teachers
+preparing for any of these grades. The solutions throughout are neat,
+clear, and concise, and will show intending candidates not only how to
+obtain the desired results, but how to do so in a manner calculated to
+secure full marks from the examiners."
+
+
+THE AUSTRALASIAN CATHOLIC SCHOOL SERIES.
+
+    =History of Australia and New Zealand for Catholic
+    Schools=, 128 pages. 4d.
+
+    =Pupil's Companion to the Australian Catholic First
+    Reader=, 32 pages. 1d.
+
+    =Pupil's Companion to the Australian Catholic Second
+    Reader=, 64 pages. 2d.
+
+    =Pupil's Companion to the Australian Catholic Third
+    Reader=, 112 pages. 3d.
+
+    =Pupil's Companion to the Australian Catholic Fourth
+    Reader=, 160 pages. 4d.
+
+
+THE AUSTRALIAN DRAWING BOOK.
+
+     By F. W. WOODHOUSE, Superintendent of Drawing, Department
+     of Public Instruction, New South Wales.
+
+     Approved by the Department of Public Instruction for use
+     in the Public Schools of New South Wales. Price, 3d.
+     each.
+
+    No. 1A--Elementary, Straight Lines, Curves and Simple
+    Figures.
+
+    Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4--Graduated Elementary Freehand, Regular
+    Forms, Simple Designs, &c.
+
+    Nos. 5 and 6--Foliage, Flowers, Ornaments, Vase Forms, &c.
+
+    No. 7--Book of Blank Pages.
+
+=N.S.W. Educational Gazette:= "This series of drawing books has been
+arranged by the Superintendent of Drawing for the purpose of enabling
+teachers and pupils to meet fully the requirements of the Public School
+Syllabus of 1899. It consists of seven numbers, designed for the third,
+fourth and fifth classes respectively, and there is also a book of blank
+pages (No. 7). Nos. 1 to 4 treat of elementary freehand, simple designs,
+pattern drawing, &c.; Nos. 5 and 6 of foliage, flowers and ornaments.
+The copies are excellently designed and executed, and carefully
+graduated, and the books are printed on superior drawing paper. 'The
+Australian Drawing Books' should be used in every public school in the
+colony, first on account of their intrinsic merit, and secondly because
+they are the only books that accurately fit our standard."
+
+
+THE AUSTRALIAN COPY BOOK.
+
+     Approved by the Departments of Public Instruction in New
+     South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania, by the Public
+     Service Board of New South Wales, and by the Chief
+     Inspector of Catholic Schools. Price, 2d. each.
+
+     No. 1, Initiatory, Short Letters, Short Words; 2,
+     Initiatory, Long Letters, Words; 3, Text, Capitals,
+     Longer Words; 4, Half-Text, Short Sentences; 5,
+     Intermediate, Australian and Geographical Sentences; 6,
+     Small Hand, Double Ruling, Australian and Geographical
+     Sentences, Prefixes and Examples; 6A, Text. Half-Text,
+     Intermediate, Small Hand; 7, Small Hand, Single Ruling,
+     Maxims, Quotations, Proverbs; 8, Advanced Small Hand,
+     Abbreviations and Contractions commonly met with; 9,
+     Commercial Terms and Forms, Addresses; 10, Commercial
+     Forms, Correspondence, Addresses; 11, Plain and
+     Ornamental Lettering, Mapping, Flourishes, &c.
+
+_Numerals are given in each number._
+
+
+THE AUSTRALIAN PUPIL TEACHERS' COPY BOOK.
+
+     A selection of pages from the Australian Copy Book,
+     arranged for use of Pupil Teachers. 48 pages. Price, 6d.
+
+
+ANGUS AND ROBERTSON'S PENCIL COPY BOOK.
+
+     Approved by the N.S.W. Department of Public Instruction.
+     In nine numbers. 1d. each.
+
+     No. 1, Initiatory lines, curves, letters, figures; 2 and
+     3, Short letters, easy combinations, figures; 4, Long
+     letters, short words, figures; 5, Long letters, words,
+     figures; 6, 7, and 8, Capitals, words, figures; 9, Short
+     sentences, figures.
+
+
+GUIDES TO THE NEW SOUTH WALES PUBLIC SERVICE EXAMINATIONS.
+
+     No. I.--Containing the Papers set in March, 1899 and Keys
+     thereto, together with the Regulations and Hints on
+     suitable Text-books. Cheaper edition. 8vo., paper cover,
+     1s. (_post free 1s. 1d._).
+
+     No. II.--Containing the Papers set in August, 1900 and
+     Keys thereto, together with the revised Regulations and
+     Hints on suitable Text-books, and the Papers set at the
+     examination held in December, 1899. Cheaper edition. 8vo,
+     paper cover, 1s. (_post free 1s. 1d._).
+
+
+CHAMBERS'S GOVERNMENT HAND COPY BOOKS.
+
+     Approved by Department of Public Instruction.
+
+     The Letters are continuously joined to each other, so
+     that the pupil need not lift the pen from the beginning
+     to the end of each word. The Spaces between the letters
+     are wide, each letter thus standing out boldly and
+     distinctly by itself. The Slope is gentle, but sufficient
+     to prevent the pupil from acquiring a back hand. The
+     Curves are well rounded, checking the tendency to too
+     great angularity. The Writing is not cramped and
+     confined, plenty of space being allowed for each word.
+     The Words are spaced by perpendicular lines, and the
+     lengths of the letters are indicated by horizontal lines
+     in the early numbers of the series. These books are now
+     printed in N.S.W. on paper which has been specially
+     manufactured for the series, and is of unusually good
+     quality. Price, 2d. each.
+
+     No. 1, Large Hand, Elements, Letters, and Short Words; 2,
+     Half-Text, Short Words without Capitals; 3, Half-Text,
+     Sentences with Capitals, Figures; 4, Half-Text, Proper
+     Names with Capitals; 5, Half-Text, Sentences with
+     Capitals, Figures; 6, Small Round--Double Ruling,
+     Figures; 7, Small, Double Ruling with Intermediate Lines;
+     8, Small, Double Ruling without Intermediate Lines; 9,
+     Small, Single Ruling--Historical; 10, Small, Single
+     Ruling--Geographical; 11, Small, with Partial
+     Ruling--Poetical; 12, Small, Commercial--Business Forms,
+     &c.; 13, For Pupil Teachers.
+
+
+CALENDAR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY.
+
+     8vo, linen, 2s. 6d.; paper cover, 1s. (_postage 8d._)
+
+
+MANUAL OF PUBLIC EXAMINATIONS HELD BY THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY.
+
+     8vo, paper cover, 1s. (_post free 1s. 3d._).
+
+
+QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS; Notes and Tables for the Use of Students.
+
+     BY REV. J. MILNE CURRAN, Lecturer in Chemistry and
+     Geology, Technical College, Sydney, Author of "The
+     Geology of Sydney and the Blue Mountains."
+
+     With illustrations. Demy 8vo, cloth gilt, 4s. 6d. (_post
+     free 5s._).
+
+
+THE POSSIBILITY OF A SCIENCE OF CASUISTRY.
+
+     By ERNEST NORTHCROFT MERRINGTON, B.A. Crown 8vo, cloth,
+     2s. 6d.
+
+
+A SHORT HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY.
+
+     By H. E. BARFF, M.A. Demy 8vo, cloth gilt, 7s. 6d. (_post
+     free, 8s._).
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    TRANSCRIBER NOTES:
+
+    Punctuation has been normalized.
+
+    Alternate and/or archaic spellings have been retained.
+
+    _x_ denotes italic script, =x= denotes bold print, and ^ denotes a
+    superscript.
+
+    Page 72: "horse's" changed to "horses'" (so hard on the
+    horses' feet).
+
+    Page 175: "resouces" changed to "resources" (for its
+    mineral resources.)
+
+    Page 177: "supples" changed to "supplies" (enabled the
+    early settlers to obtain supplies).
+
+    Page 193: "suppresssion" changed to "suppression" (wanton
+    impertinence that would require suppression.)
+
+    Page 195: "swagsmen" changed to "swagmen" (to ration the
+    swagmen as they pass along).
+
+    Page 241: "dessicated" changed to "desiccated" (the land
+    became desiccated, the lakes lost their freshness).
+
+    Page 254: "crystaline" changed to "crystalline" (the
+    auriferous area is confined to veins traversing a crystalline
+    diorite).
+
+    Page 257: duplicate "the" removed (would include all the
+    palæozoic, metamorphic).
+
+    Advertisement Section:
+
+    Page 14: "setlement" changed to "settlement" (made its way
+    from settlement to settlement).
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Early Days in North Queensland, by Edward Palmer
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EARLY DAYS IN NORTH QUEENSLAND ***
+
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+Project Gutenberg's Early Days in North Queensland, by Edward Palmer
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Early Days in North Queensland
+
+Author: Edward Palmer
+
+Release Date: January 23, 2012 [EBook #38649]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EARLY DAYS IN NORTH QUEENSLAND ***
+
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+Produced by Pat McCoy, Nick Wall and the Online Distributed
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+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 1]</span></p>
+
+<h1>
+EARLY DAYS<br />
+IN<br />
+NORTH QUEENSLAND</h1>
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 2]<br />[Pg 3]<br />[Pg 4]</span></p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 446px;">
+<img src="images/illus_001.png" width="446" height="600" alt="" title="Edward Palmer" />
+<span class="caption">Edward Palmer<br /><i>From photo, by &#8220;Tosca,&#8221; Brisbane.</i></span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 5]</span></p>
+
+<h1>
+EARLY DAYS<br />
+IN<br />
+NORTH QUEENSLAND<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<small>BY</small><br />
+THE LATE<br />
+EDWARD PALMER</h1>
+
+<p class="title">SYDNEY<br />
+ANGUS &amp; ROBERTSON<br />
+MELBOURNE: ANGUS, ROBERTSON &amp; SHENSTONE<br />
+1903</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 6]<br />[Pg 7]</span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>TO THE NORTH-WEST.</h2>
+
+<div class="poem" style="width: 28em;"><div class="stanza">
+<i><span class="i0">I know the land of the far, far away,</span>
+<span class="i0">Where the salt bush glistens in silver-grey;</span>
+<span class="i0">Where the emu stalks with her striped brood,</span>
+<span class="i0">Searching the plains for her daily food.</span></i>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<i><span class="i0">I know the land of the far, far west,</span>
+<span class="i0">Where the bower-bird builds her playhouse nest;</span>
+<span class="i0">Where the dusky savage from day to day,</span>
+<span class="i0">Hunts with his tribe in their old wild way.</span></i>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<i><span class="i0">&#8217;Tis a land of vastness and solitude deep,</span>
+<span class="i0">Where the dry hot winds their revels keep;</span>
+<span class="i0">The land of mirage that cheats the eye,</span>
+<span class="i0">The land of cloudless and burning sky.</span></i>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<i><span class="i0">&#8217;Tis a land of drought and pastures grey,</span>
+<span class="i0">Where flock-pigeons rise in vast array;</span>
+<span class="i0">Where the &#8220;nardoo&#8221; spreads its silvery sheen</span>
+<span class="i0">Over the plains where the floods have been.</span></i>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<i><span class="i0">&#8217;Tis a land of gidya and dark boree,</span>
+<span class="i0">Extended o&#8217;er plains like an inland sea,</span>
+<span class="i0">Boundless and vast, where the wild winds pass,</span>
+<span class="i0">O&#8217;er the long rollers and billows of grass.</span></i>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<i><span class="i0">I made my home in that thirsty land,</span>
+<span class="i0">Where rivers for water are filled with sand;</span>
+<span class="i0">Where glare and heat and storms sweep by,</span>
+<span class="i0">Where the prairie rolls to the western sky.</span></i>
+</div></div>
+<p class="center">&mdash;&#8220;<i>Loranthus</i>.&#8221;</p>
+<p class="indent"><i>Cloncurry, 1897.</i></p>
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 8]</span></p>
+
+<p class="center gap4">
+
+<i>W. C. Penfold &amp; Co., Printers, Sydney.</i><br />
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 9]</span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>PREFACE.</h2>
+
+<p>The writer came to Queensland two years before
+separation, and shortly afterwards took part in
+the work of outside settlement, or pioneering,
+looking for new country to settle on with stock. Going
+from Bowen out west towards the head of the Flinders
+River in 1864, he continued his connection with this
+outside life until his death in 1899. Many of the original
+explorers and pioneers were known to him personally;
+of these but few remain. This little work is merely
+a statement of facts and incidents connected with the
+work of frontier life, and the progress of pastoral occupation
+in the early days. It lays no claim to any
+literary style. Whatever faults are found in it, the indulgence
+usually accorded to a novice is requested.
+It has been a pleasant task collecting the information
+from many of the early settlers in order to place on
+record a few of the names and incidents connected with
+the foundation of the pastoral industry in the far north,
+an industry which was the forerunner of all other settlement
+there, and still is the main source of the State&#8217;s
+export trade.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 10]</span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>NOTE BY MR. G. PHILLIPS, C.E.</h2>
+
+<p>The author of this book, the late Edward Palmer,
+was himself one of that brave band of pioneer
+squatters who in the early sixties swept across
+North Queensland with their flocks and herds, settling,
+as if by magic, great tracts of hitherto unoccupied
+country, and thereby opening several new ports on the
+east coast and on the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria,
+to the commerce of the world. In writing of these
+stirring times in the history of Queensland, Mr. Palmer
+has dealt with a subject for which he was peculiarly
+qualified as an active participant therein.</p>
+
+<p>Very few of those energetic and indomitable men
+are now left&mdash;veritable giants they were&mdash;great because
+they attempted great things, and though few of them
+achieved financial success for themselves individually,
+they added by their self-denying labours a rich province
+to Queensland, which has become the home of
+thousands, and will yet furnish homes for ten of thousands
+under conditions of settlement and occupation
+adapted to the physical and climatic characteristics of
+North Queensland.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Palmer was a native of Wollongong, in New
+South Wales, and came to Queensland in 1857. He
+took up and formed his well-known station, Conobie,
+on the western bank of the Cloncurry River, situated
+about midway between Normanton and Cloncurry, in
+1864, first with sheep, but subsequently, like most of<span class="pagenum">[Pg 11]</span>
+the Gulf squatters, he substituted cattle therefor, which
+by the year 1893 had grown into a magnificent herd.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Palmer also took part in the political life of
+Queensland, representing his district, then known as
+the Burke, but afterwards as Carpentaria, until the
+general election of 1893, when he retired in favour of
+Mr. G. Phillips, C.E., who held the seat for three years.</p>
+
+<p>In the financial crisis of 1893 and subsequent years
+when the value of cattle stations in North Queensland
+owing to the ravages of ticks and the want of
+extraneous markets, gradually dwindled almost to the
+vanishing point, Mr. Palmer was a great sufferer, and
+he was compelled to leave his old home at Conobie,
+which was bound to him by every tie dear to the human
+breast, and most dear to the man who had carved that
+home out of the wilderness by sheer courage and indomitable
+endurance.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Palmer&#8217;s constitution, originally a very good
+one, was undermined partly by a long life of exposure
+and hardship under a tropical sun, but chiefly owing
+to the misfortunes which latterly overtook him, and
+after a few years of service under the State in connection
+with the tick plague, he died in harness at
+Rockhampton on the 4th day of May, 1899.</p>
+
+<p>Edward Palmer was essentially a lovable man,
+kind-hearted and genial, a great lover of Nature, as his
+poems prove, a true comrade, and a right loyal citizen
+of Queensland, which he loved so well, and which, in
+the truest sense of the word, he helped to found.</p>
+
+<p class="center">GEO. PHILLIPS.</p>
+
+<p>Brisbane, February 12, 1903.
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 12]<br />[Pg 13]</span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="left"></td><td align="left"></td><td align="right">PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Chapter</span></td><td align="right"><span class="smcap">I</span></td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">&mdash;<a href="#I">Introductory</a></span></td><td align="right">1</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="right"><span class="smcap">II</span></td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">&mdash;<a href="#II">The Navigators</a></span></td><td align="right">21</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="right"><span class="smcap">III</span></td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">&mdash;<a href="#III">Inland Exploration</a></span></td><td align="right">32</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="right"><span class="smcap">IV</span></td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">&mdash;<a href="#IV">Explorers in North Queensland</a></span></td><td align="right">61</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="right"><span class="smcap">V</span></td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">&mdash;<a href="#V">Pioneering Work in Queensland</a></span></td><td align="right">85</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="right"><span class="smcap">VI</span></td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">&mdash;<a href="#VI">The Spread of Pastoral Occupation</a></span></td><td align="right">110</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="right"><span class="smcap">VII</span></td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">&mdash;<a href="#VII">The Rise of the Northern Towns</a></span></td><td align="right">144</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="right"><span class="smcap">VIII</span></td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">&mdash;<a href="#VIII">The Mineral Wealth</a></span></td><td align="right">168</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="right"><span class="smcap">IX</span></td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">&mdash;<a href="#IX">Incidents of the Early Days</a></span></td><td align="right">177</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="right"><span class="smcap">X</span></td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">&mdash;<a href="#X">The Men of the North</a></span></td><td align="right">185</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="right"><span class="smcap">XI</span></td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">&mdash;<a href="#XI">Aboriginals of North Queensland</a></span></td><td align="right">208</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="right"><span class="smcap">XII</span></td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">&mdash;<a href="#XII">Physical Features</a></span></td><td align="right">226</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="right"><span class="smcap">XIII</span></td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">&mdash;<a href="#XIII">Some Literary Remains</a></span></td><td align="right">260</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 14]<br />[Pg 15]<br />[Pg 1]</span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>CHAPTER I.&mdash;INTRODUCTORY.</h2>
+
+<p>The pioneers of Australian civilisation in the
+territory known as North Queensland have
+mostly passed away; they were too busy with
+other activities and interests and more absorbing local
+topics to make notes of the days that are gone. A
+record of the work they did, and their march of progress
+through the unknown land, was a matter that
+no one recognised as of any importance to themselves
+or others. &#8220;The daily round and common task&#8221; took
+up most of their time, and sufficient for the day was
+the work thereof. If one (however unqualified)
+should record a few of those early steps of settlement,
+and thus help to preserve the remembrance of events
+connected with the occupation of a prosperous country,
+the facts would remain, and be available for those
+more competent to utilise them in other ways and for
+other purposes. It is well that some one should do it,
+and one who has experienced the vicissitudes of
+Northern pioneer life, with its calls on active endurance
+and its ceaseless worries would not be altogether
+unfit to note the progress of a great movement, or
+to place on record some of those events that helped
+to make up the early life of Queensland, however un<span class="pagenum">[Pg 2]</span>qualified
+the writer might be, in a literary sense. A
+pioneer is one who prepares the path for others to
+follow, one who first leads the way. The life of the
+pioneer in the early days of Northern settlement,
+from want of ready communication with seaports, and
+the lack of means of obtaining supplies, was one that
+called out all the energy, resource, and bushmanship
+of those who had been trained to this life, and who had
+pushed far in the van of civilisation to make a living for
+themselves, and open the way for others who might follow.
+Though the whole country is fitted for settlement
+and occupation by European races, such fitness had to
+be demonstrated by the residence and work of the pioneers,
+some of whom did good service in the way of
+exploration and discovery. By living their lives in
+the far outside districts and making their homes
+therein, they proved the adaptability of the soil and
+climate to the wants and civilisation of the European.</p>
+
+<p>That there were more shadows than lights in those
+early days was not so much the fault of the settlers
+as of their surroundings, but the best was made of all
+circumstances, and the result is satisfactory. Very
+few of the pioneers made wealth for themselves, though
+they helped to convert the wilderness into prospective
+homes for millions of their own race.</p>
+
+<p>The story of North Queensland&#8217;s childhood is
+simply one of gradual discovery and advancing
+settlement from the Southern districts, where the same
+severe course of wresting the land from uselessness<span class="pagenum">[Pg 3]</span>
+and sterility had been gone through. The source of
+this movement may be traced chiefly to a desire for
+pastoral extension by squatters, always on the move
+for new pastures, and to the ever roving prospector in
+search of fresh mineral discoveries.</p>
+
+<p>First the navigator outlines the coast with its bays
+and islands and openings for ports; such were Cook,
+Flinders, Stokes, and others. Then the explorer appears
+on the scene, and discovers its rivers and facilities
+for establishing the occupation of the country,
+and maps out its capabilities. Such were Leichhardt,
+Mitchell, Gregory, Landsborough, and many others.
+Thus the way is opened up for the pioneer squatter
+with his flocks and herds and the attendant business
+of forming roads and opening ports for his requirements,
+holding his own against many odds, droughts,
+floods, outrages by blacks, fevers that follow the
+opening up of all new countries, and losses peculiar
+to life in the wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>Following the pioneer (or Crown lessee, as he is
+called) in course of time comes a closer settlement,
+when the large runs become divided, and the selector
+or farmer holds the country under a more permanent
+tenure. Cultivation follows, whilst families reside
+where the pioneer squatter strove with nature in a
+long struggle many years before.</p>
+
+<p>The development of North Queensland has taken
+place since separation from New South Wales; the
+period of a single generation covers the time that it<span class="pagenum">[Pg 4]</span>
+has taken to settle this large extent of country. The
+continuous discovery of natural wealth, the progress
+of settlement, the healthy growth of the great industries,
+the establishment of a system of oversea, coastal,
+and inland communications, the creation of great
+cities, the founding of social and educational institutions,
+in fact all that makes the colony of to-day, with
+its potentialities of industrial wealth and expansive
+settlement, have been covered by the span of a single
+life.</p>
+
+<p>In 1824, Lieutenant Oxley discovered and explored
+the Brisbane River. Redcliffe, so named a
+quarter of a century before by Flinders, but now
+generally known as &#8220;Humpy Bong,&#8221; was the original
+site selected for the first settlement on the shores of
+Moreton Bay. Some convicts had been forwarded
+there from Sydney to form the settlement, but owing
+to attacks by blacks and the unsuitability of site, it was
+removed to the present one of Brisbane. Up to 1839,
+the dismal cloud of convictism was over this fair land
+before it was thrown open to free settlers.</p>
+
+<p>Over 12 degrees of latitude, and as many of longitude,
+through a country previously unknown and untested
+as to climate and soil, the course of advancing
+occupation went on unchecked, until the land was
+filled with the outposts of civilisation, and the potentialities
+of the colony were ascertained. Great indeed
+are the conquests of peace; much greater than those
+of war; more beneficial and more permanent.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 5]</span></p>
+
+<p>The first sale of Brisbane lands took place in
+Sydney in 1841, and next year a sale was held in
+Brisbane; the third took place in 1843, and there
+was not enough land surveyed to meet the demand,
+so small was Brisbane in those early days. The upset
+price was £100 per acre, although much more was
+realised for some lots. Even at those prices, many
+buyers suffered a loss, for a commercial crisis occurred
+shortly afterwards, and much of the property was forfeited,
+or resold at much lower prices.</p>
+
+<p>For the year 1843, the exports consisted of 150
+tierces of beef, 450 hides, 1,998 bales of wool, 3,458
+sheepskins, and 3,418 feet of pine timber.</p>
+
+<p>The foundations of trade, so modest at the start,
+have developed in one lifetime to a nation&#8217;s wealth.
+In 1844, in the territory then forming the colony,
+there were 650 horses, 13,000 cattle, 184,000 sheep,
+and scarcely more than 1,500 of a population, one half
+of whom were domiciled in North and South Brisbane.
+At the present day, the products of the live stock of
+the State furnishes employment for thousands, and
+forms a volume of trade that employs the finest lines
+of steamers sailing in the Southern Seas.</p>
+
+<p>It is needless to dwell on the history of the
+dark days of bondage and weakly infancy, which has
+little to do with the early days of settlement in North
+Queensland, except to show the starting point. The
+North is free from the stain and drag of convictism.
+The real life of the colony began with the first days<span class="pagenum">[Pg 6]</span>
+of free settlers, then immigrants poured in rapidly,
+and the occupation of the interior advanced. With
+this strong growth of material progress, came also the
+desire for self-government, and separation from New
+South Wales. This, however, was not obtained without
+much exertion, self-sacrifice, and display of patriotic
+energy. The history of the separation movement
+is long, extending over many years, but it was finally
+consummated on 10th December, 1859, when Sir
+George Ferguson Bowen was sworn in as the first
+Governor of Queensland. The boundary line of the
+new colony commenced at Point Danger, near the 28th
+parallel of south latitude and ran westward, leaving
+the rich districts watered by the Clarence and Richmond
+rivers, although much nearer to Brisbane than
+to Sydney, still belonging to New South Wales. After
+separation and self-government, came the commencement,
+in 1865, of the railway from Ipswich towards
+the interior. The discovery of gold at Gympie, near
+Maryborough, in 1867, and the rapid extension of the
+ever-spreading pastoral industry, laid the foundation
+of national life in Queensland. From this solid basis,
+the settlement of North Queensland commenced in
+earnest, with a more rapid extension than had been
+seen in any other part of Australia.</p>
+
+<p>Telegraphic communication was established
+between Brisbane and Sydney on November 9th, 1861,
+and its inauguration had a marked effect on local
+affairs. The immigration induced by Mr. Henry Jor<span class="pagenum">[Pg 7]</span>dan
+was an important factor in the settling of people
+on the land in the early days of Queensland.</p>
+
+<p>In 1869, Townsville was connected by wire with
+Brisbane, and in 1872 the line was extended to the
+mouth of the Norman River at Kimberly, now known
+as &#8220;Karumba,&#8221; the intention being that the first cable
+to connect Australia with Europe should be landed at
+the mouth of the Norman River, but, for reasons
+which have never been made public, South Australia
+was allowed to step in and reap the advantages which
+should have belonged to Queensland, although we
+carried out our share of the work by constructing, at
+great expense, a special land line across the base of
+the Cape York Peninsula, from Cardwell, across the
+Sea View Range, to Normanton and Kimberly at the
+mouth of the river.</p>
+
+<p>The last service rendered by Walker, the explorer,
+was in connection with the selection of the
+route of the telegraph line from Cardwell to the Gulf
+of Carpentaria. Mr. Walker&#8217;s second in command
+was a fine young man of the name of Herbert Edward
+Young, who was subsequently telegraph master in
+Townsville in the year 1871. Mr. Young received an
+injury in the service which eventually resulted in his
+untimely death very shortly after his marriage.</p>
+
+<p>Australia was connected with Europe by cable
+in 1872. Queensland thus starting on its career so
+hopefully was nevertheless subject to periods of depression,
+booms, and crises, prosperity and hard<span class="pagenum">[Pg 8]</span>
+times alternated. And then came the &#8220;salvation by
+gold.&#8221; The discovery of gold came as a hope and
+help to all, as it came to the North a few years later.
+It helped to find markets for stock of all kinds and
+employment for thousands, and also to extend the
+settlement of the land and open up commerce with
+other countries, introducing immigrants or diggers,
+many of whom remained and settled in the country.
+But the young country had to be opened up and some
+degree of settlement established before mining for
+gold could be carried on.</p>
+
+<p>In all parts of Queensland, pastoral settlement
+has preceded all others, including mining. Though
+the squatter is now, in the more settled districts, becoming
+a thing of the past, his work being finished
+and his day gone by, at the first enterprise, bush
+knowledge and a practical life were the most potent
+factors in making known the possibilities of the land
+of Queensland.</p>
+
+<p>The name &#8220;squatter&#8221; was given in the early days
+to the pastoral tenants of the Crown, who rented
+pasture lands in their natural state. The first pastoral
+occupation took place about 1840, and this may be said
+to have commenced the life history of the movement
+that made Queensland known to the world. Large
+areas were occupied on the banks of rivers and creeks
+where the splendid and nutritive indigenous grasses
+required no further cultivation. All that the squatters
+did was to turn their stock loose on them and exercise<span class="pagenum">[Pg 9]</span>
+some care to prevent them from straying, or being
+killed and scattered by the blacks. No country was
+ever endowed by Nature with a more permanent,
+healthy, and beneficial pasturage than Australia,
+though heavy stocking and hot dry seasons have somewhat
+diminished the value of this natural wealth in
+some of the earlier settled districts. The chief source
+of employment in the Colony of Queensland, and the
+leading export, is still derived from the stock depastured
+on the native grasses that were found when the
+State was first explored.</p>
+
+<p>A company or syndicate was formed in
+February, 1859, for the purpose of establishing a new
+pastoral settlement in North Australia. The project
+was conceived in consequence of the reports of explorers
+who had passed through much of the country
+to be operated on. These reports were from the
+journals of Sir Thomas Mitchell, Dr. Leichhardt, A. C.
+Gregory, the Rev. W. B. Clarke, and others. The
+prospectus was of a most ambitious and comprehensive
+nature, and it showed an intention to overcome, or
+make light of, all obstacles, and to march straight on
+to glory and wealth, as well as to start a young nation
+on its prosperous career. The area of the proposed
+new settlement was comprised within the 22nd parallel
+of S. latitude, the 137th degree of east longitude on
+the west, and on the north and east by the ocean,
+practically including what is now known as North
+Queensland.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 10]</span></p>
+
+<p>The report of the Rev. W. B. Clarke, which was
+favourable to the probability of auriferous country
+being discovered, and of rich deposits of gold being
+met with on the northern rivers, was a great factor in
+promoting the project of founding a settlement which
+was to establish a thriving and industrious European
+and Oriental mercantile and planting community.
+The immediate design was to commence a detailed
+exploration of the country reported on by Dr. Leichhardt.
+The prospectus dwelt on the advantages of
+thoroughly exploring the rivers and country and making
+known the capabilities of the soil and climate to
+the capitalists of Australia as a field for investment.
+The programme mapped out was:&mdash;To proceed from
+Rockhampton direct to Leichhardt&#8217;s camp in the bed
+of the Burdekin River at Mount McConnel. To
+trace the Burdekin down to the sea in canoes, taking
+soundings to establish its navigable capabilities; to
+fix its mouth and its qualifications as a seaport. To
+fix the probable head of navigation, and a favourable
+site for a goods depôt there. To return to Mount
+McConnel; thence to explore the lower Suttor, lower
+Cape, and Burdekin Valley as far as the Valley of
+Lagoons, ascending the river by its western, and returning
+by its eastern bank; to fix the most favourable
+position as near as possible to water carriage for the
+first establishment of pastoral stations, and to trace the
+most accessible route from the latter to the former.
+To return to the settled districts by a different route,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 11]</span>
+viz.: to trace up the Cape or Belyando River to its
+head in latitude 24 degrees, to cross the great watershed,
+and to drop down upon the Maranoa, which was
+to be followed to about latitude 26 degrees, where
+the course was to be left and a route made down the
+River Culgoa, arriving in the settled districts by the
+lower Condamine.</p>
+
+<p>By adopting this route, the whole frontier, from
+the Valley of Lagoons to Gregory&#8217;s last track down
+the Victoria (or Barcoo) would be explored; thus,
+without additional outlay, deciding whether Leichhardt
+pushed westward by the Victoria according to
+Gregory, or what is more probable, from some point
+upon the Belyando or Burdekin, according to the
+Rev. W. B. Clarke. The person in charge of the
+party was to prepare a full report upon the country
+traversed, while the surveyor of the party was to draw
+out a chart of the region explored, copies of the report
+and chart to be furnished to each of the subscribers,
+who would then be in a position individually or collectively
+to take measures for tendering for and occupying
+the country, by sending their stock overland,
+and their stores, etc., by water to the depôt at the head
+of navigation.</p>
+
+<p>The cost of the exploration was estimated at about
+£1,000, to meet which it was proposed to raise that
+sum by subscription; unless that amount were subscribed,
+the expedition to be abandoned. The leader
+proposed was George Elphinstone Dalrymple. The<span class="pagenum">[Pg 12]</span>
+names of the subscribers of £50 each were:&mdash;Captain
+J. C. Wickham, R.N., Messrs. J. C. White, John
+Douglas, Gilbert Davidson, P. N. Selheim, A. D.
+Broughton, George Perry, W. A. Simpson, Ernest
+Henry, A. H. Palmer, Garland and Bingham, J. B.
+Rundle, Joseph Sharp, D. McDougal, Raymond and
+Co., R. Towns and Co., Griffith, Fanning and Co.,
+How, Walker and Co., Dennison and Rolleston, F.
+Bundock, Edwd. Ogilvie, R. G. Watt, and J. R. Radfort.</p>
+
+<p>It was intended that a committee of these subscribers
+should be at once formed in Sydney. The
+reasons given for the projection of a party with such
+a comprehensive and magnificent scheme before it
+were: 1st&mdash;Because the supply of butchers&#8217; meat was
+even then unequal to the demand, and the latter increased
+more rapidly than the former. 2nd&mdash;Because
+the demand for sheep stations as an investment for
+capital was far beyond the capabilities of the settled
+districts; and the capital available for speculation in
+Melbourne in particular, was seeking new fields for
+employment. 3rd&mdash;Because the number of small or
+moderate capitalists who annually immigrate with a
+view to pastoral pursuits could find no field of operations
+within the settled districts, had to push northwards,
+and in a short time would occupy all available
+country within practicable distance of the most remote
+existing, or contemplated ports of shipment&mdash;Port
+Curtis and Broad Sound.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 13]</span></p>
+
+<p>It was anticipated that other ports equal to Moreton
+Bay, with its highly-favoured back-ground, Darling
+Downs, would be opened up by exploration. The
+character of the country reported on by Dr. Leichhardt,
+intersected as it was by some very interesting
+rivers, such as the Suttor, Burdekin, Mitchell, and
+Lynd, warranted such a favourable conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>The tablelands were high, and possessed of a cool
+and healthy climate; the soil on the banks of the rivers
+was of a rich nature, suitable for agriculture; the
+pasturage was unequalled for stock of all kinds; and
+the mineral prospects were favourable towards the
+settlement of a mining community. All this undeveloped
+natural wealth lay at the disposal of any who
+might enter and bring it under the magic influence of
+capital and enterprise.</p>
+
+<p>In their wildest moments of enthusiasm, none of
+those enterprising colonists could have foreseen what
+a few years would bring forth. None could have expected
+to see in the short space of less than thirty years
+that, where the mangrove then fringed the shore,
+jetties and harbours would be built, and that great
+ocean-going steamers and vessels from all parts of the
+world would be found discharging valuable cargoes
+collected from many lands; that great cities would
+arise adjacent to these harbours, that land would be
+sold by the foot at high prices; that these thriving
+towns would be the termini of many railways reaching
+far away into that unknown interior which they were so<span class="pagenum">[Pg 14]</span>
+anxious to explore, bringing in the natural products of
+the soil valued at many millions of pounds annually for
+shipment to the markets of the world, or that the
+mining prospects so modestly alluded to in their prospectus
+would be developed to such an extent as to
+produce hundreds of tons weight of gold. These men
+were the pioneers of a new colony; they looked out
+over the wilderness extending northwards to the
+Indian Ocean, and laid their plans to conquer and subdue
+it to the wants of civilised man. The promoters
+of this pioneering enterprise anticipated the probability
+of the deep indentation of the Gulf of Carpentaria
+enabling direct oceanic communication with the Western
+world, as well as with India and China, to be
+established, and that the projected telegraphic connection
+with Europe by way of Timor and Java might
+be extended by way of the level bed of the Gulf, and
+along the valley of the Lynd and Burdekin Rivers into
+the territory of Moreton Bay, thus bringing North
+Queensland and Brisbane nearer to the marts of the
+world than any of the sister colonies. The progress
+of civilisation has brought all this to pass within the
+memory of those now living.</p>
+
+<p>Our Queensland land policy is a legacy of the old
+days of New South Wales, where the first attempt to
+confer a right to property in land was by way of grant.
+It dates from the time of Governor Phillip, the first
+Governor of New South Wales; these grants were
+made to any free immigrants on certain conditions.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 15]</span></p>
+
+<p>The system of tenure by occupation began about 1825,
+and was the origin of the squatting system; the production
+of fine merino wool gave a great impetus to
+the occupation of the waste lands. The licenses were
+annual, the rate of charge rested with the Governor,
+and they were renewable and transferable. But much
+dissatisfaction arose with the administration by the
+Crown Lands Commissioners who had the disposal of
+all disputes connected with the new system. Hence
+an agitation was set up for a redress of grievances, and
+this led to the passing of the 9th and 10th Victoria c.
+104&mdash;28th August, 1846. In this act power was
+granted to the Crown to lease for any term of years
+not exceeding fourteen, to any person, any waste lands,
+etc., or license to occupy; such lease or license to be
+subject to the regulations thereafter mentioned. On
+the 9th of March, 1847, the celebrated orders in
+Council, framed under the authority of this act, were
+issued. The lands in the Colony of New South Wales
+were divided into three classes, &#8220;settled,&#8221; &#8220;intermediate,&#8221;
+and &#8220;unsettled.&#8221; As respects Queensland,
+the settled districts were confined to very limited areas
+within ten miles of the town of Ipswich, and within
+three miles of any part of the sea coast. All the rest
+of the territory now comprised in the boundaries of
+the State was left in the unsettled districts; but
+power was given to the Governor to proclaim any
+portion as within the intermediate districts when
+necessary. The lease gave the right to purchase<span class="pagenum">[Pg 16]</span>
+part of the land within the lease to the lessee and to
+him only; other acts dealing with the sale of land
+had been passed, and land had been alienated under
+them; but the leases and regulations under the
+orders in Council forbade the sale of any waste land
+to anyone except the lessee. When a run was
+forfeited, tenders might be given, stating the term of
+years for which the tenderer was willing to take it,
+the rent he would give in addition to the minimum
+fixed by the act, and the amount of premium he would
+pay. In the event of competition, the run was to be
+knocked down to the highest bidder.</p>
+
+<p>Where new runs were tendered for, the tenderer
+was to set forth in his tender a clear description of
+the run and its boundaries, and also whether he was
+willing to give any premium beyond the rent. The
+rent was to be proportioned to the number of sheep
+or equivalent number of cattle which the run was
+estimated to be capable of carrying according to a
+scale to be established by the Governor; but no run
+was to be capable of carrying less than 4,000 sheep, or
+to be let for less than £10 per annum, to which
+£2 10s. was added for every additional 1,000 sheep.
+The estimated number of sheep or cattle was decided
+by a valuator named by the intended lessee and approved
+by the Commissioner of Crown Lands, who,
+with an umpire chosen by the two, acted as a small
+court of arbitration. The scheme was fitted in its
+simplicity to encourage exploration on the largest
+possible scale.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 17]</span></p>
+
+<p>Proclamations issued by the Government of New
+South Wales to give further effect to the &#8220;orders,&#8221;
+authorised an assessment on stock pastured beyond the
+settled districts, which was levied at the rate of a halfpenny
+for each sheep, three halfpence for every head of
+cattle, and threepence for every horse; and returns
+were directed to be made by every pastoral lessee
+under severe penalties. Under these several acts and
+orders, the Executive and the squatters came into collision,
+and disputes arose as to the meaning of many
+clauses in the various Land Acts; but no material
+alteration had been made at the time when Queensland
+was separated from New South Wales, although
+the Constitution Act of New South Wales, July, 1855,
+vested in the local legislature the entire management
+and control of the waste lands of the colony. In 1859,
+when the Colony of Queensland was separated from
+New South Wales, the pastoral interest was in the
+ascendant, and this is considered to have been made
+evident by the first land legislation of the new colony.
+The first consideration of the new Government was
+legislation for leasing and selling the land. A very
+large number of tenders for Crown Lands had been
+accepted by the New South Wales Government, or had
+been applied for and were in abeyance, and until a decision
+was given on these applications, the land was
+lying idle and waste. One-fourth of the entire unoccupied
+territory had been applied for, the result of the
+energy of pioneering pastoralists, and the prospects<span class="pagenum">[Pg 18]</span>
+opening up for new pastoral settlements. The first bill
+presented to the new Parliament on 11th July, 1860,
+was introduced by the Colonial Treasurer, an old
+squatter, Mr.&mdash;afterwards Sir R. R.&mdash;Mackenzie.
+Some of the provisions of the old orders in Council
+were followed; they accepted the unsettled districts as
+declared in them. The intermediate were abolished.
+Applications for licenses for a year were to be accompanied
+by a clear description of runs, to be not less
+than 25 nor more than 100 square miles, with a fee of
+10s. per square mile. These entitled the lessee to a
+lease of 14 years. The land to be stocked at the time of
+application to be one-fourth of its grazing capabilities.</p>
+
+<p>This was fixed by the act at 100 sheep or 20 head of
+cattle to the square mile; the rent to be appraised after
+four years for the second and third remaining
+periods of five years each, at the commencement of
+each period. As to the runs tendered for and still unstocked,
+the provisions were extended, but lessees
+were compelled to stock their land to one-fourth of the
+extent fixed by the act. The tide of speculation in
+unoccupied land was stayed, there arose a great
+demand for stock of all kinds, and those pastoralists
+in the south, who had flocks and herds to dispose of,
+realised great prices. Afterwards the colony passed
+through some troublesome years, and a Relief Act
+was required; and as a vast area of the young colony
+had still to be occupied, encouragement was held out
+to settlers to take up runs. The Pastoral Leases Act<span class="pagenum">[Pg 19]</span>
+of 1869, gave another impetus to the settlement of outside
+districts, and acted as a relief to many who had
+taken up runs under the previous acts. The new
+leases were to be for a term of 21 years, and the new
+Act also dealt with leases under existing acts. Where
+new country was applied for, a license had to be taken
+out, and a declaration made that the country was
+stocked to one-fourth of its grazing capabilities, the
+rent being 5s. per square mile for the first 7 years;
+10s. for the second term, and 15s. for the third term.
+Every succeeding Government tried a new Land Bill,
+some dealing with selection, land orders to new arrivals
+being part of the system; but the tendency of all succeeding
+land legislation down to the present day has
+been to allow more liberal terms to the prospective
+selector. The conditions were made so restrictive in
+the first days as to lead one to conclude that land selection
+was almost a crime; whereas the genuine selector
+in remote districts has enough to contend with in opening
+his land for some kind of cultivation and facing the
+seasons, etc., without being forced to make improvements
+he will not require. The grazing selector is
+a coming power in the land; a grade between the old
+squatter and the small selector. The discovery of
+artesian water will be a factor of the utmost importance
+to him as tending to assure his position from loss
+by drought. The grazing selector is spreading over
+the interior rapidly; and before the expiration of the
+leases now in existence, more land legislation is sure<span class="pagenum">[Pg 20]</span>
+to be introduced to liberalise the terms and initiate a
+system for obtaining the freehold of parts of these
+large grazing farms. The history of our land laws
+shows them to have been simply experimental at every
+stage, hence the need for repeated alterations.</p>
+
+<p>It would have been a good thing for Queensland,
+I might say for Australia, if a similar policy to that
+of the United States of America had been followed,
+namely the throwing open of the public estate on the
+most liberal terms and the encouragement of private
+enterprise in railways.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 21]</span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>CHAPTER II.<br />
+
+THE NAVIGATORS.</h2>
+
+<p>According to historical record, the first part
+of Australia discovered by Europeans, was the
+northern part of Queensland, and it also bears
+the mournful distinction of being the first scene of
+their death at the hands of the natives. Nearly three
+hundred years ago, in the Gulf of Carpentaria, a boat&#8217;s
+crew belonging to the &#8220;Duyfken,&#8221; one of the early
+Dutch vessels exploring there, was cut off and killed.
+The knowledge of the country obtained in those days
+produced no results as regards settlement, and very
+little addition was made to geographical knowledge
+until Captain Cook discovered and made known the
+eastern seaboard of North Queensland. The occupation
+and settlement of this large territory was initiated
+by the enterprise of pastoralists from the southern districts
+in search of new runs for their stock. Thus the
+first record of Queensland is of the North; her growth
+and settlement comes from the South.</p>
+
+<p>The Dutch yacht &#8220;Duyfken,&#8221; despatched from
+Bantam in November, 1605, to explore the island of
+New Guinea, sailed along what was thought to be the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 22]</span>
+west side of that country, as far as 14 deg. South
+latitude. The furthest point reached was marked on
+their maps Cape Keer Weer, or Turnagain, and the
+shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria were supposed to be
+a part of New Guinea. Torres was the first to sail
+between New Guinea and the mainland of Australia;
+he commanded the second vessel of an expedition
+fitted out by the Spaniards for the purpose of discovery
+in 1606. He sailed through from the eastern side, and
+he describes the numerous islands lying between New
+Guinea and Cape York. It is probable he passed
+in view of the mainland, and his name is perpetuated
+in that of the Straits. The Gulf of Carpentaria
+is supposed to have been named by Tasman after the
+Governor of the East India Company; and so little by
+little the coast was explored, and the outline of Australia
+mapped out, until Captain Cook&#8217;s memorable
+discoveries of the east coast completed the chart of
+Australia and its history commenced. The west coast
+had been visited frequently by many Dutch ships, as it
+lay in their line of route in sailing to Batavia. Dampier,
+in 1688, was the first Englishman to land there,
+and his description of the country and the natives was
+far from encouraging. He spoke of them as the worst
+people he had ever met, and the country as the meanest.
+It was not until 1770, when Captain Cook ran
+the east coast up from Cape Everard to Cape York,
+and took possession of the whole territory in the name
+of King George the Third, that the veil began to lift<span class="pagenum">[Pg 23]</span>
+from this land of silence and profound mystery. His
+voyage furnished the most reliable and scientific information
+about the coast line of Australia hitherto
+published. Captain Cook had been commissioned by
+the English Government to make a scientific expedition
+to the island of Otaheite, as it was then called,
+to witness the transit of Venus, on June 3rd, 1769.
+He was accompanied by Dr. Solander as a botanist,
+and Mr. Banks (afterwards Sir Joseph Banks), as a
+naturalist. After carrying out his commission, he
+sailed in search of the southern continent. He circumnavigated
+New Zealand, and thence steered westward
+till he sighted the shores of Australia on April
+19th, 1770. After landing at Botany Bay on the 28th
+of the same month, he sailed north along the east
+coast to Torres Straits. He passed and named Moreton
+Bay and Wide Bay, and rounded Breaksea Spit
+on the north of Great Sandy Island, named Cape
+Capricorn, and Keppel Bay, Whitsunday Passage,
+Cleveland Bay, and Endeavour River, where he
+stayed some time to repair his vessel, the
+&#8220;Endeavour.&#8221; The spot where he beached his ship
+is now Cooktown, and a monument stands where
+his vessel was careened under Grassy Hill. Many
+of the principal headlands, bays, and islands, along
+the coast were named by him. Finally, he passed
+through Torres Straits, naming Prince of Wales
+Island, and Booby Island, and then sailed homeward
+by Timor and Sumatra.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 24]</span></p>
+
+<p>Captain Matthew Flinders, navigator and discoverer,
+gave up his whole life to the cause of discovery,
+having as a young man in company with Bass, made
+trips along the southern coast of Australia in an open
+boat, soon after the settlement of Sydney. In 1799, he
+sailed from Sydney to explore Moreton and Hervey
+Bays in the &#8220;Norfolk,&#8221; and went as far as Port Curtis,
+landing at several places and examining the country.
+He was appointed to the command of the &#8220;Investigator&#8221;
+in 1801, and arrived in Sydney in May, 1802;
+thence he proceeded up what is now the Queensland
+coast, which he examined from Sandy Cape northwards.
+He named Mount Larcombe, near Gladstone;
+surveyed Keppel Bay and other places, correcting and
+adding to Cook&#8217;s charts; he sailed into the open ocean
+through the Great Barrier Reef in latitude 19 degs.
+9 mins., longitude 148 degs., after many narrow
+escapes among the shoals and reefs. His destination
+was the Gulf of Carpentaria, and on his way he sighted
+Murray Island, where he saw large numbers of natives
+using well-constructed canoes with sails; from thence
+he steered west, anchoring close to one of the Prince
+of Wales Islands, where he and his crew mistook the
+large anthills for native habitations; then steering
+southwards, he found himself in the Gulf of Carpentaria,
+of which very little was then known. Flinders
+was the first English navigator to sail along its coasts,
+where such shallow waters prevail that they were at
+times afraid to go within three miles of the low shores,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 25]</span>
+and had to be content with merely viewing the
+tops of the distant mangroves showing above the
+water.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>There is only one tide in the twenty-four hours;
+it takes twelve hours for the tide to flow in, and twelve
+hours for it to flow out again; and very uninteresting
+is the aspect of the coast line sailing down the Gulf.
+Flinders anchored near Sweer&#8217;s Island, which he
+named, and examined Bentinck, Mornington, and
+Bountiful Islands adjacent thereto, the whole group
+being called Wellesley&#8217;s Islands. An inspection made
+here of the &#8220;Investigator&#8221; showed that there was
+scarcely a sound timber left in her, and the wonder
+was that she had kept afloat so long; however, Flinders
+determined to go on with his explorations. One
+island was called Bountiful Island from the immense
+number of turtles and turtles&#8217; eggs which were there
+procured, and when leaving on the continuation of
+their course, they took forty-six turtles with them
+averaging 300 lbs. each.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>There is at the present day on Sweer&#8217;s Island, a
+well containing pure fresh water called Flinders&#8217; well,
+supposed to have been sunk by him, and near to it
+was a tree marked by him. This tree was standing in
+1866-8, but as it showed signs of decay, it was removed
+in 1888 by Pilot Jones, and sent to the Brisbane
+Museum, where it now is. This tree (which is
+generally known as the &#8220;Investigator&#8221; tree) has a<span class="pagenum">[Pg 26]</span>
+number of dates and names carved thereon, as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>1.&mdash;1781, &#8220;Lowy,&#8221; name of early Dutch exploring
+vessel, commanded by Captain Tasman,
+after whom the Island of Tasmania is named.</p>
+
+<p>2.&mdash;1798, and some Chinese characters.</p>
+
+<p>3.&mdash;1802, &#8220;Investigator.&#8221; &#8220;Robert Devine.&#8221;
+(Devine was the first lieutenant of Flinders&#8217;
+ship &#8220;Investigator.&#8221;)</p>
+
+<p>4.&mdash;1841, &#8220;Stokes.&#8221; (Captain Stokes commanded
+the &#8220;Beagle,&#8221; surveying ship, which
+visited the Gulf in 1841.)</p>
+
+<p>5.&mdash;1856, &#8220;Chimmo.&#8221; (Lieutenant Chimmo
+commanded the &#8220;Sandfly,&#8221; surveying vessel.)</p>
+
+<p>6.&mdash;&#8220;Norman.&#8221; (Captain Norman of the &#8220;Victoria,&#8221;
+visited the Gulf in 1861 with Landsborough&#8217;s
+party in search of Burke and
+Wills. The Norman River is named after
+Captain Norman.)</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>In skirting the western shores of the Gulf, Flinders
+identified many leading features which were
+marked in Tasman&#8217;s chart, and which were found quite
+correct. On the last day of 1802, the &#8220;Investigator&#8221;
+was in sight of Cape Maria, which was found to be on
+an island. To the west was a large bay or bight, called
+by the Dutch Limmen&#8217;s Bight; and the whole coastal
+line seemed to be thickly inhabited by natives.
+Flinders mentions seeing many traces of Malay occu<span class="pagenum">[Pg 27]</span>pation
+along the shores of the islands of the Gulf&mdash;temporary
+occupation for the purpose of collecting
+<i>beche de mer</i>. Blue Mud Bay was so named by him
+on account of the nature of the bottom. This bay was
+surveyed. The country beyond was found to be
+higher and more interesting than the almost uniformly
+low shores of the Gulf they had been skirting for so
+many hundreds of miles. Melville Bay completed the
+examination of the Gulf of Carpentaria, which had
+taken one hundred and five days; the circuit being
+twelve hundred miles. Shortly afterwards they fell
+in with six Malay proas, held intercourse with the
+crews, and learned that the object of their expedition
+was to find trepang, or <i>beche de mer</i>; and as they had
+been trading for many years on the northern coasts
+of Australia, it is evident that they must have been
+well acquainted with the seas and shores of the Gulf.
+Flinders sailed for Timor, and thence to Sydney, as
+his vessel was now utterly unseaworthy, and reached
+the harbour in June, 1803.</p>
+
+<p>His vessel after arrival was condemned, and Flinders
+determined to go to England to procure another
+ship to continue his surveys of the coast. On his
+way home, he was wrecked on a reef, and, returning
+to Sydney, obtained a small craft, in which he made
+another start, but, touching at Mauritius, was detained
+a prisoner for six years by the French, notwithstanding
+his passport as an explorer. After his release,
+he set about editing his journals and preparing an<span class="pagenum">[Pg 28]</span>
+account of his researches. He completed this work,
+but died on the very day his book was published.
+No navigator or explorer has done more than Flinders
+in the matter of accurate surveys, or in the boldness
+of his undertakings, and his great work for
+Australia was entirely unrewarded. He spent his life
+in voyaging and discovery, and suffered many hardships,
+besides imprisonment.</p>
+
+<p>One of the largest and most important rivers
+flowing into the Gulf of Carpentaria has been named
+after him &#8220;The Flinders.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>In 1823, an expedition was sent out from Sydney
+under the command of Lieutenant Oxley to survey
+Port Curtis, Moreton Bay, and Port Bowen, and to
+report upon a site for a penal establishment. The
+party went up the Tweed River some miles, and then
+went northward to Port Curtis harbour. After landing
+in several places, a river was discovered which
+was named the Boyne. The vessel employed on this
+service was the &#8220;Mermaid,&#8221; and finding nothing about
+Port Curtis suitable for a settlement, Oxley returned
+south, and anchored at the mouth of the Bribie Island
+passage, which had not been visited by Europeans
+since Flinders landed there in 1799, and called it
+Pumicestone River. Here they were joined by two
+white men, Pamphlet and Finnegan by name, who
+had, with one other, been cast away on Moreton
+Island a short time previously, and had since been liv<span class="pagenum">[Pg 29]</span>ing
+with the blacks. These men piloted Oxley into the
+Brisbane River, which was named by him after Sir
+Thomas Brisbane, Governor of New South Wales.
+They pulled up the river a long way above the present
+site of the city, and admired the beautiful scenery along
+its banks. This discovery led to the occupation of
+Moreton Bay as a penal settlement, and the foundation
+of the town of Brisbane.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Captain Wickham and Lieutenant Stokes of the
+&#8220;Beagle&#8221; were surveying the coast in that vessel,
+from 1838 to 1843, and Lieutenant Stokes afterwards
+wrote an account of their journeying. They named
+the Adelaide and Victoria Rivers on the north-west
+coast, both of which they located and explored. In
+1841, the &#8220;Beagle&#8221; was on the east coast. She passed
+Magnetic Island, and sailed through Torres Straits
+into the Gulf of Carpentaria on an exploring cruise.
+In latitude 17 deg. 36 min., they entered a large river,
+which was followed up a long way in the boats, and
+was called the Flinders; it is one of the principal
+rivers entering the Gulf. Further west, in 1840, they
+had discovered and pulled the boats up the Albert
+River. Stokes was astonished at the open country
+found on the Albert. As far as the eye could reach,
+nothing was to be seen but open extensive plains,
+which he named &#8220;The Plains of Promise.&#8221; The
+fine stream of the Albert was followed until the boats
+were checked by dead timber about fifty miles from<span class="pagenum">[Pg 30]</span>
+the entrance. The geography of northern tropical
+Australia owes a great deal to Stokes, who wrote most
+interesting accounts of his journeys.</p>
+
+<p>Stokes surveyed and charted the estuaries of the
+Albert and Flinders Rivers, and he named Disaster
+Inlet, Morning Inlet, Bynoe Inlet, Accident Inlet,
+and the Van Diemen River, the latter he also examined
+and charted for some miles up from its mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. G. Phillips, in 1866-8, made the first examinations
+and surveys of Morning Inlet, Bynoe Inlet,
+(which he found to be a delta of the Flinders), Norman
+River, Accident Inlet, and the Gilbert River.
+Mr. Phillips was accompanied by the late Mr. W.
+Landsborough, the work being done in an open boat
+belonging to the Customs Department.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>H.M.S. &#8220;Rattlesnake&#8221; left Portsmouth in 1846,
+under Captain Stanley, on a surveying and scientific
+cruise. She reached Queensland waters in 1847, and
+visited the Molle Passage, inside of Whitsunday Passage,
+where some of the most striking and charming
+scenery on the north coast of Queensland is to be
+found. They went as far as Cape Upstart, and failing
+to find water ashore, returned to Sydney. In
+1848, they returned to the northern coasts, bringing
+the &#8220;Tam o&#8217; Shanter,&#8221; barque, on board of which
+were all the members and outfit of Kennedy&#8217;s exploring
+party. Captain Stanley assisted Kennedy to land<span class="pagenum">[Pg 31]</span>
+at Rockingham Bay and make a start on his ill-fated
+trip to Cape York.</p>
+
+<p>They found cocoanut trees growing on the Frankland
+Islands, the only instance known of their indigenous
+growth on the coast of Australia.</p>
+
+<p>They rescued from Prince of Wales Island a white
+woman who had been four and a half years among the
+blacks. She was the sole survivor of the crew of a
+whaling cutter, the &#8220;American,&#8221; wrecked on Brampton
+Shoal; she had been adopted by the tribe, and
+spoke the language fluently; she returned to her
+parents in Sydney when the &#8220;Rattlesnake&#8221; reached
+port. Professor Huxley, the scientist, was one of
+the party of the &#8220;Rattlesnake.&#8221;<span class="pagenum">[Pg 32]</span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>CHAPTER III.<br />
+
+INLAND EXPLORATION.</h2>
+
+<p>The cause of exploration and discovery in
+Australia has never lacked enthusiastic volunteers,
+whether on sea or land. Like the North
+Pole, the hidden secrets of the continent have always
+attracted men of enterprise and energy anxious to
+penetrate the veil of mystery and silence that has
+hung over this vast territory since Creation&#8217;s dawn.
+Little by little has the land been explored and opened
+up for occupation; and those geographical secrets so
+long sought after have been unfolded as an open page
+for all to study and make use of. The records of some
+of the early pioneers, the motives which promoted
+their search, their hardships, and their journeyings,
+their failures and their endurance, will always remain
+an interesting portion of colonial history.</p>
+
+<p>The explorers were types of the men of a generation
+now gone by; they were men who endured a
+thousand perils and hardships to solve the mystery
+of Australian geography. By their enterprise and
+discoveries, they became the forerunners of the early
+pastoral pioneers who opened up the vast plains of
+the interior to occupation, and settled the towns and<span class="pagenum">[Pg 33]</span>
+ports of the coast. The navigators were the first
+to make known the outlines of the country, then the
+explorers followed, starting from various points to
+trace its geographical features, follow the courses of
+its rivers, and investigate the suitability of the soil
+and herbage for the sustenance of stock. In this
+manner was the path opened for the pioneer squatter
+or pastoralist with his flocks and herds to settle on
+and portion out the land, and turn the wilderness to
+profit and occupation. The skeleton map of the
+country being traced out, the details were worked in
+gradually by the spirit of enterprise and adventure
+that has always been ready in these lands for such
+work.</p>
+
+<p>The first land explorer of the territory now called
+Queensland, was, in point of time, Allan Cunningham,
+botanist, explorer, and collector for the Royal Gardens
+at Kew, who arrived in New South Wales in 1816.
+After many journeyings on sea along the coasts of
+Australia, and inland to the Liverpool Plains through
+the Blue Mountains, he left the Hunter River in 1827
+with a party of six men and eleven horses, discovering
+the Darling Downs, and thus opening the way
+to settlement in Queensland. He named Canning
+Downs on this trip, and returned the same
+year. In the following year, 1828, he went by sea to
+Brisbane, and connected that port with the Darling
+Downs by discovering a gap in the coast range, still
+known as Cunningham&#8217;s Gap. He spent most of his<span class="pagenum">[Pg 34]</span>
+life collecting and exploring, and died at the early age
+of 48 in Sydney. His brother, Richard Cunningham,
+also botanist and collector, accompanied Sir Thomas
+Mitchell in one of his early trips; while camped on
+the Bogan, he wandered away, lost himself, and was
+killed by the blacks.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Of all the explorers who have taken a prominent
+part in discovering the inland territory of Australia
+in general, and Queensland in particular, Dr. Leichhardt
+occupies the most conspicuous position, and
+his discoveries have been followed by the most extensive
+and advantageous results. He explored all
+the country on the east coast inland as far as the
+Mitchell River, and on the northern coast as far as
+Port Essington. He was a man of considerable
+scientific attainments, and his travels had a marked
+effect in inducing settlement along his line of march.
+His memorable trip from Brisbane to Port Essington
+reflects great honour on his memory, and his name
+will last as long as colonial history.</p>
+
+<p>Leichhardt left Sydney in 1844 in the steamer
+&#8220;Sovereign&#8221; for Brisbane; he had with him Calvert,
+Roper, Murphy, Phillips, and Harry Broome, an
+aboriginal. The party later on was joined by Gilbert, a
+naturalist, and one coloured man, a native. They left
+Jimbour on the Darling Downs, on October 1st, 1844,
+crossed the Dawson on November 6th, and on the 27th
+Leichhardt named the Expedition Range. Two days<span class="pagenum">[Pg 35]</span>
+after that they came to the Comet River, so named
+because a comet was seen there. On December 31st,
+the party came across the remains of a camp evidently
+made by a white man, consisting of a ridge pole and
+forks cut with a sharp iron instrument, probably the
+halting place of some adventurous pioneers who
+travelled on the outside fringe of all settlement, and
+who frequently made long journeys into the unknown
+land.</p>
+
+<p>On January 10th, they reached the Mackenzie
+River, and on February 13th were on the Isaacs River,
+coming from the north-west, which they named after
+F. Isaacs of Darling Downs. Leichhardt&#8217;s account of
+his journey is very interesting. It gives a description
+of the geological formations, of the mountains and
+peaks, and also a botanical description of the flora
+of the country through which he passed. He describes
+the game, some of which they turned to account
+to supplement their already scanty fare. The
+expedition passed on March 7th from the heads of
+the Isaacs to another creek, which they called Suttor
+Creek, after Mr. Suttor of New South Wales, who
+had contributed four bullocks to the expedition. The
+stream enlarging with the additions of other creeks,
+eventually merged into the Suttor River, which they
+continued to follow down, passing a great number of
+native encampments on the way, and observing large
+numbers of water fowl and other game. The junction
+of the Cape River was passed, and they camped close<span class="pagenum">[Pg 36]</span>
+to a mount which they called Mount McConnel, after
+Fred McConnel, who had contributed to the expedition.
+Near here they discovered the junction of the
+Suttor with a large river coming from the north, called
+the Burdekin, after Mr. Burdekin of Sydney, who had
+also liberally contributed to the expedition. The river
+is described by Leichhardt as being here about a mile
+wide, with traces of very high floods coming down
+its channel; the junction of the two rivers is in
+latitude 20 deg. 37 min. 13 sec. On April 22nd, after
+following up the Burdekin through fine open country
+well grassed, they discovered the Clarke River coming
+in from the south-west, called after the Rev. W. B.
+Clarke, of Sydney.</p>
+
+<p>The course of the Burdekin River, which was
+closely traced, served the little party through more
+than two degrees of latitude and the same of longitude,
+with a never failing supply of pure water and good
+grass, and then passing over some large fields of
+basalt towards the north-west, they arrived on another
+watershed, the first river of which they called the
+Lynd, after Mr. R. Lynd, a gentleman to whom the
+explorer was much indebted. The first camp on the
+Lynd was in latitude 17 deg. 58 min.; the country
+throughout its course was very rough, consisting
+mostly of large granite boulders; its course was generally
+north-west, and the adventurous party were now
+on waters flowing into the Gulf of Carpentaria. The
+Lynd was followed to its junction with the Mitchell<span class="pagenum">[Pg 37]</span>
+in latitude 16 deg. 30 sec., and a marked tree of
+Leichhardt&#8217;s is still visible at the junction of the two
+streams. Although they were so far from the termination
+of their journey, their flour had already been
+exhausted for several weeks, their sugar bags were
+empty as well, they were also without salt, and
+had scarcely any clothes. However, the explorer
+speaks in great praise of the congenial climate they
+were experiencing, the weather being almost perfect
+(this in June). Having followed the course of the
+Mitchell River till it took them past the latitude of
+the head of the Gulf, it was decided to leave it, and
+their first camp thereafter was in latitude 15 deg.
+52 min. 38 sec. Three days after leaving the Mitchell,
+the party was attacked by the natives early in the
+night; Gilbert was killed at once, Calvert and Roper
+were badly wounded, and the whole party had a
+narrow escape from total destruction. After burying
+their companion, they continued their journey towards
+the Gulf, where the finding of salt water in the rivers
+gave them great encouragement.</p>
+
+<p>One river they named the Gilbert after their late
+companion, and after crossing all the rivers flowing
+into the Gulf within tidal influence, the party steered
+north-west, naming Beame&#8217;s Brook and the Nicholson
+River after two of Leichhardt&#8217;s benefactors. They
+had now crossed Captain Stokes&#8217; Plains of Promise,
+and were making their way along the coast to
+Port Essington. They travelled through poor, scrub<span class="pagenum">[Pg 38]</span>by,
+rough country, crossing many rivers and creeks,
+and enduring a thousand hardships, till on September
+21st they reached the largest salt water river they had
+seen, with islands in it; this they called the Macarthur,
+after the Macarthurs of Camden, who had given liberal
+support to Leichhardt. Continuing north-west
+through poor, scrubby country, on October 9th they
+encamped on what was named the Limmen Bight
+River on account of its debouching into Limmen
+Bight, and about the 19th, the Roper was discovered
+and named after a member of the expedition. Here
+they had the misfortune to have three of their horses
+drowned, and Leichhardt was compelled to leave behind
+much of his valuable collection of plants and
+stones; a matter that grieved him sorely. A great
+quantity of game was obtained here, ducks, geese, and
+emus were killed every day, and made a welcome
+addition to their fare of dried or jerked bullock meat.
+They thickened their soup with green hide, which was
+considered a treat; they made coffee from a bean found
+growing along the river banks, which Leichhardt
+called the &#8220;River Bean&#8221; of the Mackenzie; and they
+were constantly making experiments, sometimes rather
+dangerous, as to the value as food of the seeds and
+fruits they found on their line of march.</p>
+
+<p>The South Alligator River was reached, and the
+same north-west course, continued through rocky
+country, which lamed their two remaining bullocks,
+and when they reached what Leichhardt considered<span class="pagenum">[Pg 39]</span>
+the East Alligator River over some extensive plain
+country in which large numbers of geese and ducks
+were seen, they were full of hope on meeting some
+friendly natives, who could speak a few words of
+English, evidently visitors to the settlement towards
+which our way-worn explorers were trying to find
+their road. Many tracks of buffaloes were seen, and
+one was shot, and made a welcome change from their
+usual fare. Eventually they reached Port Essington,
+where Captain Macarthur gave them a kindly welcome,
+and after a month&#8217;s rest they left in the &#8220;Heroine,&#8221;
+arriving in Sydney March 29th, 1846. Their
+arrival created great astonishment and delight, as they
+had been mourned as dead for a long time. The
+Legislative Council granted £1,000, and the public
+subscribed £1,578 to the party, which was presented
+to them by the Speaker of the Legislative Council
+at a large public gathering in the School of Arts in
+Sydney.</p>
+
+<p>Leichhardt&#8217;s journey from Moreton Bay to Port
+Essington furnished the first knowledge we had of the
+capabilities of North Queensland. It was the turning of
+its first leaf of history, for his journey was for the
+greater part through the territory now comprised within
+its boundaries. The record of his trials, hardships,
+and endurance, will stand unequalled among all histories
+of explorations in any part of Australia.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. John Roper, who was badly speared in the
+night attack by blacks and lost the use of one eye<span class="pagenum">[Pg 40]</span>
+afterwards, died a few years ago at Merriwa, New
+South Wales, and was the last survivor of Leichhardt&#8217;s
+first trip to Port Essington.</p>
+
+<p>On a subsequent exploring trip, in which he intended
+to cross Australia from east to west, Leichhardt
+and his party disappeared, and no definite information
+has ever been forthcoming as to the fate
+that overtook them. On this occasion he started from
+the Darling Downs, and his companions were Hentig,
+Classan, Donald Stuart, Kelly, and two natives,
+Womai and Billy. His last letter is dated April 4th,
+1848, from Macpherson&#8217;s station&mdash;Coogoon, beyond
+Mount Abundance, situated about six miles west of
+the present town of Roma.</p>
+
+<p>Traces have been discovered of their journey
+through a part of the Flinders River country. Two
+horses found by Duncan Macintyre on the Dugald,
+a branch of the Cloncurry, about 1860, were identified
+as having belonged to Leichhardt&#8217;s expedition, and
+some traces were discovered by A. C. Gregory in latitude
+24 deg. south, consisting of a marked tree at one
+of his old camps. These form the only records we
+possess of the ill-fated travellers. Drought may
+have split his party up in the desert interior, and, disorganised
+and scattered, they would fall an easy prey
+to thirst and delirium, for so soon does extreme thirst
+in a hot and dry climate demoralise the strongest men,
+that hope is lost even in a few hours, and delirium sets
+in. People thus distracted, lie down under the nearest<span class="pagenum">[Pg 41]</span>
+bush to die, after having wandered to every point of
+the compass in search of water until their strength
+fails. On the other hand, the party may have been
+destroyed by flood, by hunger, or by the attacks of
+hostile natives, a mutiny may have broken out and the
+party, split up into fragments, may have wandered by
+devious paths and perished in detail.</p>
+
+<p>Many expeditions were sent out in search of the
+lost explorers, and although not able to find any definite
+traces of his route, or to account for his disappearance,
+they were instrumental in opening up vast tracts
+of hitherto unknown territory, and adding largely to
+the knowledge of the geography of the interior.</p>
+
+<p>The following beautiful verses were written by
+Lynd, a friend of Leichhardt&#8217;s, and have been set to
+music:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem" style="width: 28em;"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&#8220;Ye who prepare with pilgrim feet</span>
+<span class="i1">Your long and doubtful path to wend.</span>
+<span class="i0">If whitening on the waste ye meet</span>
+<span class="i1">The relics of my martyred friend.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&#8220;His bones with reverence ye shall bear.</span>
+<span class="i1">To where some crystal streamlet flows:</span>
+<span class="i0">There by its mossy banks prepare</span>
+<span class="i1">The pillow of his long repose.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&#8220;It shall be by a stream whose tides</span>
+<span class="i1">Are drank by birds of every wing,</span>
+<span class="i0">Where Nature resting but abides</span>
+<span class="i1">The earliest awakening touch of spring.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&#8220;But raise no stone to mark the place.</span>
+<span class="i1">For faithful to the hopes of man.</span>
+<span class="i0">The Being he so loved to trace,</span>
+<span class="i1">Shall breathe upon his bones again.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza"><span class="pagenum">[Pg 42]</span>
+<span class="i0">&#8220;Oh meet that he who so carest,</span>
+<span class="i1">All bounteous Nature&#8217;s varied charms,</span>
+<span class="i0">That he her martyred son should rest</span>
+<span class="i1">Within his mother&#8217;s fondest arms.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&#8220;And there upon the path he trod,</span>
+<span class="i1">And bravely led his desert band,</span>
+<span class="i0">Shall science like the smile of God</span>
+<span class="i1">Come brightening o&#8217;er the promised land.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&#8220;How will her pilgrims hail the power,</span>
+<span class="i1">Beneath the drooping Myall&#8217;s gloom.</span>
+<span class="i0">To sit at eve and muse an hour,</span>
+<span class="i1">And pluck a leaf from Leichhardt&#8217;s tomb.&#8221;</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="center">&mdash;Lynd.</p>
+
+<p>The following descriptions are taken from a journal
+of an expedition into the interior of tropical
+Australia in search of a route from Sydney to the Gulf
+of Carpentaria by Lieut.-Colonel Sir T. L. Mitchell,
+Surveyor-General of New South Wales, in 1845.</p>
+
+<p>The money for this attempt was found by the
+Legislative Council of New South Wales. The Secretary
+for the Colonies sanctioned the expedition, which
+had been suggested by the leader himself, during a
+slack time in his department. This trip, though it
+never approached the Gulf, or even its watershed&mdash;which
+was its main object at starting&mdash;nevertheless
+discovered such an extent of available country as to
+make it one of the most valuable and interesting expeditions
+that were ever carried out in North Queensland.
+This was Mitchell&#8217;s third exploring trip, and it
+is referred to now, as it relates to the discovery and
+opening up of a large part of western, as well as a part<span class="pagenum">[Pg 43]</span>
+of North Queensland. There is no doubt that Mitchell
+would have reached the Gulf waters if his equipment
+had not been so cumbersome and altogether dependent
+on good seasons. An account of his outfit will be
+interesting reading in these times when people think
+little of moving from the South to the North of
+Australia with any kind of a party, and his departure
+must have looked like the start of a small army on
+the move to conquer a new country. Sir Thomas
+Mitchell took with him eight drays drawn by eighty
+bullocks, two iron boats, seventeen horses (four being
+private property), and three light carts; these were
+the modes of conveyance. There were 250 sheep to
+travel with the party as a meat supply. Other stores
+consisted of gelatine and a small quantity of pork. The
+party consisted of thirty persons, most of whom were
+prisoners of the Crown in different stages of probation,
+whose only incentive to obedience and fidelity was
+the prospect of liberty at the end of the journey.
+According to the testimony of their leader, they performed
+their work throughout creditably; they were
+volunteers from among the convicts of Cockatoo
+Island, and were eager to be employed on the expedition.
+Some of those engaged on a previous trip
+were included in this expedition.</p>
+
+<p>The whole party left Parramatta on November
+17th, 1845, and crossed the Bogan on December 23rd,
+that country being then settled with stations, the result
+of discoveries made in previous years by the same in<span class="pagenum">[Pg 44]</span>trepid
+explorer. Their journey led them by St.
+George&#8217;s Bridge, the present site of the town of St.
+George, on to the Maranoa River, then entirely unsettled,
+and this river was followed up towards its
+source. Touching on the Warrego, discovering Lake
+Salvator, and passing the present site of Mantuan
+Downs, they reached the head of Belyando. This was
+thought at first to be a river likely to lead to the Gulf
+country, but after following it down nearly to the latitude
+where a river was described by Leichhardt as
+joining the Suttor from the westward, Mitchell decided
+it was a coast river, and so the party returned on their
+tracks to a depôt camp which had been established on
+the Maranoa, coming to the conclusion that the rivers
+of Carpentaria must be sought for much further to the
+westward. Therefore, continuing their travels in this
+direction, the Nive River was discovered, and this was
+thought for a time to be a water leading to the Gulf,
+but after following it towards the south-east, the party
+turned northwards, and thus discovered the far-famed
+Barcoo River, which they thought was the Victoria of
+Wickham and Stokes. Again high hopes were entertained
+that at last a river was found that would lead
+them to the desired end, and that this was a Gulf River.
+They followed the course through all the splendid
+downs country, below where the Alice joins it, and
+found it was going much too far to the south to be a
+Gulf river, being thus again disappointed in their
+expectations. Mitchell speaks in glowing terms of<span class="pagenum">[Pg 45]</span>
+the country through which they passed, and named
+Mount Northampton and Mount Enniskillen, two
+prominent landmarks. Returning to his party, he
+took the route home by the Barwon and Namoi, and
+so back to Sydney, which all reached in safety after
+an absence of over twelve months. Mitchell&#8217;s discovery
+of the Barcoo River was due to a division of
+his party, and a light equipment, by which he could
+advance as much as twenty or twenty-five miles a day,
+and still keep a record of his latitude and progress.</p>
+
+<p>This trip of Mitchell&#8217;s led to the appointment of
+his second in command, Mr. E. Kennedy, to return
+and discover where the Victoria or Barcoo really went
+to, and to obtain further information of the mysterious
+interior of the great Australian continent, and its
+peculiar river system. Mitchell was famous for his
+exploring trips in the southern part of Australia, and
+his two volumes of explorations remain a classic
+in literature. His account of Australia Felix and the
+Werribee are most interesting. Mitchell invariably
+traversed his route with compass and chain, so that
+his positions can always be verified.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Edward Kennedy, who was second in command
+under Sir T. L. Mitchell when the Barcoo was discovered,
+was appointed to lead a party to the same
+districts in 1847. He followed down the Barcoo to
+where a large river came in from the north, which he
+named the Thomson, after Sir E. Deas Thomson, of<span class="pagenum">[Pg 46]</span>
+Sydney. The Barcoo he identified with Mitchell&#8217;s
+Victoria, which at a lower stage is called Cooper&#8217;s
+Creek. Kennedy intended to go to the Gulf of Carpentaria,
+but the blacks removed his stock of rations
+left at the Barcoo, and so he decided to return to
+Sydney by way of the Warrego, Maranoa, Culgoa, and
+Barwon Rivers.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The Gregory brothers had successfully conducted
+several exploring expeditions in West Australia before
+entering on those journeys in North Queensland
+that have helped to make known its north-eastern
+parts. A letter from the Secretary of State for the
+Colonies, the Duke of Newcastle, to the Governors in
+Australia, was received, in which it was recommended
+that an expedition should be organised for the exploration
+of the unknown interior of Australia, stating
+that a sum of £5,000 had been voted by the Imperial
+Government for the purpose, and suggesting that Mr.
+A. C. Gregory should be appointed to the command,
+and Brisbane be the point of departure. The expedition
+was to be conveyed by sea to the mouth of the
+Victoria River, on the northern coast of Australia.
+It was to be an Imperial expedition, paid for by the
+Imperial Government, for the purpose of developing
+the vast and unknown resources of the continent. It
+was called the North Australian Exploring Expedition.
+The preliminary arrangements having been completed,
+the stores, equipment, and a portion of the party were<span class="pagenum">[Pg 47]</span>
+embarked at Sydney on the barque &#8220;Monarch,&#8221; and
+the schooner &#8220;Tom Tough,&#8221; and sailed for Moreton
+Bay on July 18th, 1855, arriving at the bar of the Brisbane
+River on the 22nd. The horses and sheep were
+collected at Eagle Farm by Mr. H. C. Gregory, and
+shipped on board the &#8220;Monarch&#8221; on July 31st. After
+some difficulties in getting over the bar and obtaining
+the necessary supply of water at Moreton Island, the
+expedition may be said to have started on its responsible
+task on August 12th, 1855.</p>
+
+<p>The party consisted of eighteen persons, the principal
+members being:&mdash;Commander, A. C. Gregory;
+Assistant Commander, H. C. Gregory; Geologist,
+J. S. Wilson; Artist and Storekeeper, J. Baines;
+Surveyor and Naturalist, J. R. Elsey; Botanist,
+F. von Muller; Collector and Preserver, J. Flood.
+The stock consisted of fifty horses and two hundred
+sheep; and eighteen months&#8217; supply of rations were
+taken.</p>
+
+<p>They sighted Port Essington on September 1st,
+but the next day the &#8220;Monarch&#8221; grounded at high
+water on a reef, and was not worked off for eight days,
+during which time the vessel lay on her side, and the
+horses suffered very much in consequence, indeed, the
+subsequent loss of numbers of them is attributed to
+the hardships endured during the period. The horses
+were landed at Treachery Bay under great difficulties,
+having to swim two miles before reaching the shore.
+Three were drowned, one lost in mud, and one went<span class="pagenum">[Pg 48]</span>
+mad and rushed away into the bush and was lost.
+The &#8220;Monarch&#8221; sailed for Singapore, while the &#8220;Tom
+Tough&#8221; proceeded up the Victoria River, where Mr.
+Gregory and some of the party took the horses by
+easy stages to meet them, as they were so weak from
+the knocking about on the voyage that they had frequently
+to be lifted up. This little trip occupied three
+weeks before they joined the party on the schooner.
+When they met, it was to learn that mishaps had again
+occurred, the vessel had grounded on the rocks, and
+much of the provisions had been damaged by salt
+water; the vessel had also suffered injury; some of the
+sheep had died from want of water, and the rest were
+too poor to kill. The record is one continuous
+struggle with misfortune, but owing to good general-ship
+and patience, progress was made, and the main
+objects of the expedition being constantly kept in
+view, each step taken was one in advance.</p>
+
+<p>After the horses had recovered a little from their
+journey, Mr. Gregory and a small party made an exploring
+trip towards the interior, and to the south to
+latitude 20 deg. 16 min. 22 sec., passing through some
+inferior country, and touching the Great Sandy Desert
+seen by Sturt, red ridges of sand running east and
+west, covered with the inhospitable Triodia or Spinifex
+grass. As his object was to visit the Gulf country,
+he retraced his steps to the camp on the Victoria
+River; and after adjusting matters there, dividing his
+party and sending the vessel to Coepang for supplies,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 49]</span>
+with directions to come to the Albert River, he started
+on his journey to the Gulf of Carpentaria on June 21st,
+1856. His party comprised the two Gregorys, Dr.
+Mueller, Elsey, Bowman, Dean, and Melville, seven
+saddle and twenty-seven pack-horses, with five
+months&#8217; provisions.</p>
+
+<p>They followed down the Elsey River to the
+Roper, so called by Leichhardt, and passed a camp
+of some explorers some six or seven years old, where
+trees had been cut with sharp axes. They reached
+the Macarthur River on August 4th, after passing
+through much poor country covered with inferior
+grasses. Their track skirted the tableland, and as the
+journal states, the country was barren and inhospitable
+in the extreme. The Albert River was reached on
+August 30th, 1856, and not finding any traces of the
+&#8220;Tom Tough&#8221; having been there, the explorer started
+from that point to Moreton Bay. Coming to a large
+river, which Leichhardt thought to be the Albert,
+Mr. Gregory named it after the great explorer, and
+it is now known as the Leichhardt. This river they
+crossed, and travelled east-south-east. After crossing
+the Flinders River, where the country consisted
+of open plains, the party travelled east-north-east
+through a flat ti-tree country, north of what is now
+the Croydon goldfield, a barren, flat, and dismal prospect.
+Gregory says in his journal, that had the season
+been earlier, he would have preferred travelling
+up the Flinders, and turning to the Clarke from its<span class="pagenum">[Pg 50]</span>
+upper branches. However, they moved on to the
+Gilbert River, and followed it up through rocky defiles
+and rough granite country till they reached the
+Burdekin River on October 16th; the next day they
+passed one of Leichhardt&#8217;s stopping places, where he
+camped on April 26th, 1845, in latitude 19 deg. 37 min.
+S. They were living on horseflesh at this time, and
+mention is made of a horse that had not carried a pack
+since leaving the Gilbert, being killed for food, and its
+flesh dried in the sun, forming what is called jerked
+meat, an article well known to early pioneers when
+salt was absent. They frequently saw the blacks, who
+mostly ran away at the sight of the horses, probably the
+first they had ever seen; but no casualty happened
+during the whole trip, owing to the good management
+of the leader, and the caution always shown where
+danger was likely. On October 30th they camped
+near the Suttor River, with Mount McConnell in
+view. After the junction of the Suttor and Burdekin
+Rivers had been passed, the Suttor was followed up
+past the latitude of Sir Thomas Mitchell&#8217;s camp on
+the Belyando, and thus his route connected up with
+Dr. Leichhardt&#8217;s. They left the Belyando, and on
+November 8th, killed the eleven months&#8217; old filly,
+born on the Victoria River after landing, the flesh
+was cured by drying, and the hair scraped off the hide,
+which was made into soup. They passed the Mackenzie
+River, went on to the Comet, below the junction,
+and found a camp of Leichhardt&#8217;s party on their<span class="pagenum">[Pg 51]</span>
+second journey. They reached the Dawson River,
+and following a dray track, they came again in contact
+with civilisation at Connor and Fitz&#8217;s station,
+where they were hospitably received. They then
+travelled past Rannes (Hay&#8217;s station), Rawbelle, Boondooma,
+Tabinga, Nanango, Kilcoy, Durundur, reaching
+Brisbane on December 16th, 1856.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Mr. A. C. Gregory&#8217;s expedition in search of
+Leichhardt was equipped by the New South Wales
+Government. The objects of this expedition were
+primarily to search for traces of Leichhardt and his
+party, and secondly the examination of the country in
+the intervening spaces between the tracks of previous
+explorers. The expedition was organised in Sydney,
+and made a start from Juandah, on the Dawson River,
+on March 24th, 1857. They crossed the dense scrubs
+and basaltic ridge dividing the Dawson waters from
+those trending to the west, flowing into the basin of
+the Maranoa River. The Maranoa was reached in
+latitude 25 deg. 45 min., and they followed it up to
+Mount Owen, advanced to the Warrego River, westward
+from there to the Nive, and pursued a north-north-west
+course to the Barcoo River, then called the
+Victoria. As the captain of the &#8220;Beagle&#8221; had discovered
+and named the Victoria River on the north-west
+coast first, the name of Sir T. Mitchell&#8217;s river
+was changed to the Barcoo, a native name. When
+Mr. Gregory traversed this fine country, one of those<span class="pagenum">[Pg 52]</span>
+devastating periodical droughts that visit this inland
+territory now and again, must have been prevailing
+for many months, and had left the land a wilderness.
+That land Mitchell had described in 1846 in
+glowing language as the fairest that the sun shone
+on, with pastures and herbage equal to all the wants
+of man, and water in abundance covered with wild
+fowl. When Gregory passed through it in 1857, it
+was bare of all vegetation, there was scarcely any
+water in the bed of the river, and that only at long
+intervals, nothing but the bare brown earth visible.</p>
+
+<p>In latitude 24 deg. 35 min. S., longitude 136 deg.
+6 min., a Moreton Bay ash tree was discovered with
+the letter <b>&#9175;</b> cut in, and the stumps of some small trees
+cut with an axe, evidently one of Leichhardt&#8217;s camps,
+but no further traces could be discovered, though
+both sides of the river were followed down. The
+Thomson River was reached and followed up to latitude
+23 deg. 47 sec., and here they were compelled
+to retrace their steps owing to the terrible state of the
+country through drought; it being impossible to travel
+either north or west, although at that time the country
+was not stocked. The far-reaching plains were devoid
+of all vegetation except for drought-resisting
+herbage. The principal object of their journey had
+to be abandoned and a southerly course taken, as it
+was considered madness to travel into the sandy desert
+bordering on the river during such a season. So, with
+horses weakened by hard living, they followed down<span class="pagenum">[Pg 53]</span>
+the Thomson, over dry mud plains that wearied both
+man and beast, and across stony desert ridges to
+Cooper&#8217;s Creek and to Lake Torrens. Before reaching
+the branch of Cooper&#8217;s Creek called Strezlecki Creek
+by Captain Sturt, they saw the tracks of two horses
+lost by that explorer in this locality years before.
+Their course was continued south-south-west towards
+Mount Hopeless at the northern extremity of the
+high ranges of South Australia, which had been visible
+across the level country at a distance of sixty miles.
+Eight miles beyond Mount Hopeless, they came to
+a cattle station, recently established by Mr. Baker.
+After that they proceeded by easy stages to Adelaide.</p>
+
+<p>It is, perhaps, with reference to the physical
+geography of Australia that the results of the expedition
+are most important, as by connecting the explorations
+of Sir T. Mitchell, Kennedy, Captain Sturt,
+and Eyre, the waters of the tropical interior of the
+eastern portion of the continent were proved to flow
+towards Spencer&#8217;s Gulf, if not actually into it, the
+barometrical observations showing that Lake Torrens,
+the lowest part of the interior, is decidedly below sea
+level.<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> There is reason to believe from later and more detailed
+surveys that Lake Torrens is not below the level of the sea.</p></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>As the people of Victoria were desirous of taking
+part in the explorations of Northern Australia, a most
+elaborate and expensive expedition was organised to
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 54]</span>travel across Australia from Melbourne to the Gulf
+of Carpentaria. Great credit is due to the enterprise
+of the people and the Government of Victoria for
+this display of public spirit, for, apparently, Victoria
+had less to gain than any of the other colonies by
+geographical discoveries in the interior. Robert
+O&#8217;Hara Burke was appointed leader, G. J. Landells
+second, and W. J. Wills third in command. Burke
+and Wills and two others reached the Gulf,
+and named the Cloncurry River; but the notes
+of the trip do not give much information as to the
+journey or the country travelled through. The expedition
+left Melbourne on August 20th, 1860, fifteen
+men in all, provided with twelve months&#8217; provisions,
+making twenty-one tons of goods. The party was
+too large and cumbersome, and the time of year was
+badly chosen for a start; there were no bushmen
+with them, and the leader was a man unfamiliar with
+bush life, though full of devotion to the cause he had
+taken in hand. The record of the trip is one full of
+disaster, arising from mistakes that could have been
+avoided had men competent for the task been chosen.
+They started from Cooper&#8217;s Creek, where Brahe was
+left with a depôt store, while Burke, Wills, King, and
+Grey with three months&#8217; provisions set out for the
+Gulf on December 16th, 1860. The party that had
+been so well equipped in every way on leaving Melbourne,
+was reduced to too small a compass when the
+critical time for action arrived. They followed the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 55]</span>
+edge of the stony desert to the point reached by Sturt
+on October 21st, 1845, and then steered for the Gulf
+of Carpentaria, at the mouth of the Flinders. After
+passing through the Cloncurry Ranges, the little party
+followed one of the tributaries of that river, one that
+had numerous palm trees on its banks, which must
+have been either the Corella or Dugald, to the west of
+the Cloncurry River, and on February 11th, 1861, in
+the middle of the wet season, Burke and Wills reached
+tidal water in the Gulf, on the right bank of the Bynoe
+River, which is a delta of the Flinders River. Thus
+the object of the expedition was attained. On the
+return journey, Grey died through exhaustion and
+weakness. The ground was very heavy for walking
+owing to the rains, and the only horse had to be
+abandoned, while the camel was almost too weak to
+travel, even without any load. Burke, Wills, and
+King arrived at Cooper&#8217;s Creek on April 21st, having
+been absent four and a half months on their trip.
+They found the depôt had been deserted that morning
+by Brahe; he, however, had remained several
+weeks beyond the time he was instructed to stay.
+Instead of following on his tracks, Burke decided on
+starting via Mount Hopeless to Adelaide, but not finding
+water, they returned to Cooper&#8217;s Creek, growing
+weaker every day. Their last camel died, and they
+were forced to live on the seeds of the Nardoo (Marsilea
+quadrifida), which, however, gave them no
+strength. The blacks treated them kindly, but they<span class="pagenum">[Pg 56]</span>
+left the creek, and then came the mournful end.
+Burke and Wills died, and Howitt&#8217;s search party
+found King, the only survivor of the little band, wasted
+to a shadow in a camp of the blacks. As no proper
+record of the journey, or description of the country
+was made, and in the diary many gaps occur of several
+days together, the expedition was barren of scientific
+results. There is merely the fact of visiting the
+shores of the Gulf, and returning to Cooper&#8217;s Creek,
+under the most distressing circumstances and hardships.
+Although successful in the main, it is a record
+of sorrow, despondency, and a sacrifice of life. On this
+expedition camels were used for the first time in Australia.
+Until the fate of Burke became known, many
+efforts were made to discover what had become of
+him, and to this end, there were five exploring parties
+sent out in search of him. They were Howitt&#8217;s, Walker&#8217;s,
+Landsborough&#8217;s, Norman&#8217;s, and McKinlay&#8217;s,
+and their discoveries led to an important increase in
+the knowledge of Australia.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Mr. A. W. Howitt&#8217;s party proceeded to the spot
+where Brahe had kept the depôt, and seeing no traces
+there of the missing party (although they had dug
+up the stores left), he searched down the river, and
+they came on King sitting in a hut which the blacks
+had made for him. He presented a melancholy appearance,
+wasted to a shadow, and hardly to be recognised
+as a civilised being except by the remnants of<span class="pagenum">[Pg 57]</span>
+clothes on him; this was on September 15th, 1861.
+As soon as King was a little restored, they looked
+for Wills&#8217; remains, and having found them, gave
+them burial, marking a tree close by; a few days afterwards
+Burke&#8217;s bones were found and interred. They
+called all the blacks around, and presented them with
+articles such as tomahawks, knives, necklaces, looking
+glasses, combs, etc., and made them very happy indeed.
+When the sad story was revealed there was
+much sorrow and grief throughout Victoria; and it
+was agreed that Mr. Howitt should go back and
+bring down the bodies for a public funeral in Melbourne.
+A large sum of money was voted to the
+nearest relatives of Burke and Wills, and a grant made
+to King sufficient to keep him in comfort for life. A
+searching inquiry was made into the circumstances
+relative to the conduct of some of the officers of the
+expedition, and a few of them were severely censured
+for neglect of duty in not properly supporting the
+leader.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>One of the expeditions in search of Burke and
+Wills was led by John McKinlay, who travelled
+through a great part of North Queensland, and reported
+favourably on its capacity for settlement. He
+started from Adelaide in August, 1861, and arrived at
+the Albert River in May, 1862, thus crossing the continent
+a second time. He was a bushman well fitted for
+such an enterprise by experience, endurance, and de<span class="pagenum">[Pg 58]</span>cision.
+The second in command was W. O. Hodgkinson,
+subsequently Minister for Mines in Queensland.
+McKinlay found a grave near Cooper&#8217;s Creek
+which he examined, and found a European buried
+there, which he understood from the natives to be a
+white man killed by them, but afterwards it was known
+to have been Gray&#8217;s burial place. The party made an
+excursion into the melancholy desert country described
+by Sturt many years before, consisting of dry lakes,
+red sand hills, and stones. They travelled through to
+the Cloncurry district, and onwards to the Gulf, passing
+through country now under occupation, Fort Constantine,
+Clonagh, and Conobie being the principal stations
+there, and thence over the Leichhardt River to
+the Albert, which was reached on May 13th. McKinlay
+expected to receive supplies from the &#8220;Victoria,&#8221;
+but she had sailed three months before, and thus short
+of provisions and generally hard up, he had to tackle
+a long overland journey to the settlements on the
+eastern side of North Queensland, a most trying and
+harassing undertaking, which, however, he accomplished
+successfully. He had first to eat the cattle,
+then the horses, then the camels. They killed their
+last camel for food&mdash;it was called &#8220;Siva&#8221;&mdash;and it
+proved a saviour, as they arrived at Harvey and
+Somer&#8217;s station, on the Bowen, with their last piece
+of camel meat, and one horse each left. They
+had a hard rough trip from the Gulf, travelling in by
+the Burdekin, and McKinlay proved himself a daring<span class="pagenum">[Pg 59]</span>
+and most persevering and experienced explorer. The
+McKinlay River&mdash;a branch of the Cloncurry&mdash;and the
+township of McKinlay are named after him.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Though not pertaining to any exploration or discovery
+connected with North Queensland, it will be
+interesting to refer shortly to the Horn Exploring
+Expedition which was carried out on a scientific basis
+to make known the country in the more central part of
+the Australian continent. The scientific exploration of
+central Australia, or that part known as the Macdonnell
+Ranges, had long been desired by the leading
+scientific men of Australia. The party consisted of
+sixteen in all, with twenty-six camels, and two horses,
+and made a final start from Oodnadatta (which is the
+northern terminal point of the railway from Adelaide),
+on May 6th, 1894.</p>
+
+<p>In the very centre of the continent there exists
+an elevated tract of country known as the Macdonnell
+Ranges. These mountains, barren and rugged in the
+extreme, rise to an altitude of nearly 5,000 feet above
+sea level, while the country surrounding them has an
+elevation of about 2,000 feet above the sea level, and
+slopes away towards the coast on every side, which at
+no point is nearer than 1,000 miles. The mountains
+are at the head of the Finke River; the region is
+called Larapintine from the native name of the
+river. The existence of these ranges saves that portion
+of the continent from being an absolute desert, as they<span class="pagenum">[Pg 60]</span>
+catch the tropical showers, which flow down the sides
+of the mountains, and cause inundations in the low
+country, and a spring of grass, which, however, is not
+permanent, the rainfall being from five to twelve inches
+annually. These ranges measure, from east to west,
+about 400 miles, with a width of from twenty to fifty
+miles, the entire area covering more than 10,000 square
+miles of country. Apart from these ranges, there are
+several remarkable isolated masses, about 32 miles
+S.S.W. from Lake Amadeus. Rising like an enormous
+water-worn boulder, half buried in the surrounding
+sea of sand hills, is that remarkable monolith
+known as &#8220;Ayers&#8217; Rock.&#8221; Its summit can be seen more
+than forty miles away, as it rises about 1,100 feet above
+the surrounding plain. The circumference at its base
+is nearly five miles, and its sides are so steep as to be
+practically inaccessible, although Mr. W. C. Gosse,
+the explorer, succeeded with great difficulty in ascending
+it. It is quite bare of vegetation, except a few fig
+trees growing in the crevices. Fifteen miles west of
+Ayers&#8217; Rock is another remarkable mountain mass
+called Mount Olga, rising to 1,500 feet from the plain.
+The Finke River flows south from these Macdonnell
+Ranges towards Lake Eyre, and water is only found
+after floods. Both alluvial gold and quartz reefs are
+found in the ranges. Professor Ralph Tate, of the
+University of Adelaide, and Mr. J. A. Watt, of the
+Sydney University, assisted in drawing up the report.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 61]</span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.<br />
+
+EXPLORERS IN NORTH QUEENSLAND.</h2>
+
+<p>The second journey of Edmund Kennedy, in
+1848, was confined to the east coast of North
+Queensland, and is one of the most mournful
+narratives of disaster and death; only three of the
+party returning out of the thirteen that started.</p>
+
+<p>The party was hampered with an unsuitable outfit
+of drays, as well as some undesirable men, unused
+to the bush and out of accord with the objects of an
+exploring expedition.</p>
+
+<p>The members of a party going into an unknown
+country have to depend on the fidelity of each to all,
+and according to the devotion displayed by each, so
+will success or failure attend the expedition. Kennedy
+had men in his party he had better have left behind.</p>
+
+<p>His troubles and trials commenced after landing
+at Rockingham Bay, near the site of the present town
+of Cardwell, in trying to pass over swamps, and then
+cutting his way through tangled, dark, vine-scrubs
+to the summit of the steepest ranges in North Queensland.
+They were obliged to leave their carts and har<span class="pagenum">[Pg 62]</span>ness
+behind, and wasted much time in looking for a
+place to ascend the ranges. They quarrelled with the
+blacks soon after starting, and some of the men took
+fever. They reached the Herbert, and went into the
+heads of the Mitchell and Palmer Rivers, passing over
+the site of the Palmer goldfield. Here the strength
+of the party began to fail, and horse flesh was their
+main dependence for food. At Weymouth Bay, Carron
+and seven men were left, all sick with disappointment
+and hardship, and in a low state of health. Kennedy
+and Jacky, with three men, pushed on along the coast
+northwards to Cape York. One man was wounded
+by a gun accident, and he and the other two were
+left at Pudding Pan Hill, and were never heard of
+again. The leader and Jacky went on, intending to
+return to the scattered party. They were followed by
+hostile blacks, who speared the horses, and afterwards
+mortally wounded Kennedy himself, who died in
+Jacky&#8217;s arms. Jacky himself was also speared, but
+he buried his leader in a grave dug with a tomahawk,
+and after many hairbreadth escapes and much privation,
+he reached the northern shore, where the &#8220;Ariel&#8221;
+was waiting for the arrival of the party. Only one
+man, and he an aboriginal, endured to the end, and
+but for his keen bush knowledge, courage, and splendid
+devotion, neither of the two other survivors would
+have been rescued, nor any tidings of the mournful
+fate of the party have been made known to the world.
+The &#8220;Ariel&#8221; sailed to Weymouth Bay, and found the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 63]</span>
+two men, Carron and Goddard, barely alive, the only
+survivors of the eight left there by Kennedy.</p>
+
+<p>Kennedy&#8217;s papers planted in a tree by Jacky, were
+afterwards recovered by him. When the nature of the
+country through which Kennedy travelled is understood
+and its difficulties known, it is no wonder that
+mishaps occurred to him. Stony mountainous country,
+thick dark scrubs, long dense grass, with tribes
+of fierce blacks ready to throw a spear on every occasion,
+were enough to tax the capacity of any leader,
+without the accompaniment of sickness, want of
+rations and disorganisation.</p>
+
+<p class="center">E. KENNEDY.</p>
+
+<div class="poem" style="width: 28em;"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His task is ended, his journeying o&#8217;er.</span>
+<span class="i0">He rests in the scrub, by that far northern shore;</span>
+<span class="i0">By the long wash of the Coral Sea,</span>
+<span class="i0">Brave Kennedy sleeps now quietly.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Not lonely he lies in his last bed,</span>
+<span class="i0">For loving memories o&#8217;erbrood his head;</span>
+<span class="i0">Kindly to him, the tall ferns lean,</span>
+<span class="i0">In love, their fellowship of green.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sweetly for him, the bird&#8217;s deep song,</span>
+<span class="i0">Is sung when summer days are long;</span>
+<span class="i0">Soft drips the dew in the morning sun,</span>
+<span class="i0">Rest harassed one, thy task is done.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His native friend, faithful to death,</span>
+<span class="i0">Stayed by him to his latest breath;</span>
+<span class="i0">Nor thought he had himself to save,</span>
+<span class="i0">Till he had made his leader&#8217;s grave.</span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 64]</span></p>
+
+<p>Mr. W. Landsborough left Brisbane in the brig
+&#8220;Firefly&#8221; on August 24th, 1861, in company with the
+colonial warship &#8220;Victoria,&#8221; taking the outer passage.
+Rough weather on the voyage caused distress and a
+loss of seven horses out of thirty, and they were compelled
+to seek refuge inside the Barrier Reef at Hardy&#8217;s
+Island. The brig grounded broadside on the reef;
+the masts had to be cut away to save the vessel; and
+the horses were landed through a large hole cut in
+the side of the ship. After some delay, the &#8220;Victoria&#8221;
+appeared in sight, towed the crippled craft off, and
+proceeded with her in tow in order to carry out
+the objects of the expedition. Passing through
+Torres Straits, they called at Bountiful Island and obtained
+a good supply of turtles, anchoring in Investigator
+Roads, situated between Bentinck and Sweer&#8217;s
+Islands. Landing on Sweer&#8217;s Island, they found the
+wells left by Flinders in 1802, also the &#8220;Investigator&#8221;
+tree. After clearing the sand out of the wells, the
+water was found fresh and good. Mr. Landsborough
+made a preliminary survey of the Albert River to find
+a site for landing his horses and for starting on his
+overland journey.</p>
+
+<p>The Albert had not been surveyed since
+Captain Stokes had ascended it as far as Beame&#8217;s
+Brook in 1842, but being known, it was appointed a
+rendezvous for exploring parties. They found no
+traces of Burke having visited this spot. The hulk
+of the &#8220;Firefly&#8221; was towed up the Albert, and used<span class="pagenum">[Pg 65]</span>
+as a depôt for the expedition, and this was her last
+voyage. The writer saw her early in 1865; she was
+then in an upright position, close to the left bank of
+the river, with the tide flowing in and out where the
+side had been cut open for the horses to land on the
+reef. The horses soon recruited after landing, the
+grass round the depôt being excellent. They now got
+ready for a start to Central Mount Stuart, leaving the
+&#8220;Victoria&#8221; to wait ninety days for their return. The
+party consisted of Mr. Landsborough, Messrs. Campbell
+and Allison, and two blackboys, Jimmy and
+Fisherman. Their horses had improved so much that
+they gave a lot of trouble at first, throwing their packs
+and scattering the gear over the plains, but they soon
+quietened down to work. The little expedition followed
+mainly the Gregory River towards its source,
+and were much surprised to find a beautiful river with
+a strongly flowing stream and long reaches of deep
+water, overhung by pandanus, cabbage-palm, and
+much tropical foliage. They soon discovered the use
+of the heart of the palm as a vegetable, though it can
+only be obtained by the destruction of the tree. Blacks
+were frequently seen, observing their movements,
+looking on at a distance, as they usually do at the first
+sight of a white man; but they did not attempt to interfere
+with them. The Gregory River is distinct from
+most of the Gulf rivers. The luxuriant foliage along
+its banks, cabbage-palms, Leichhardt trees, cedar and
+pandanus, denote the permanency of the running<span class="pagenum">[Pg 66]</span>
+water, while level plains, covered with fine pasture
+grasses, extend on either side for scores of miles.
+They named the Macdam, an anabranch of the Gregory,
+and observing a river joining on the right side
+of the Gregory, called it the O&#8217;Shannassey; the source
+of the flowing stream that made the river so useful
+and picturesque was shortly afterwards found, where
+a large body of clear water fell over some basaltic
+rocks, showing that springs caused the flow, and not
+summer rains in the interior as was thought at first.
+This is not the only instance in North Queensland
+where running streams flow from springs bursting
+forth from the basaltic table lands. Above
+the source of the water, the Gregory partook of the
+character of other Gulf rivers, dry sandy channels,
+dependent for their supply of water on tropical rains.
+They followed up the now dry river, and reached a fine
+tableland over 1,000 feet above sea level, which was
+called Barkly&#8217;s Tableland, after Sir Henry Barkly,
+late Governor of Victoria. Open basaltic plains,
+covered with the very finest pastures now met them
+everywhere, though water was scarce. After journeying
+across the open country southwards, a river was
+found, which was called the Herbert; it flowed in the
+opposite direction to the tributaries of the Gregory.
+Following down the Herbert, they spent Christmas
+Day on a sheet of water called Many&#8217;s Lake, and
+lower down Francis Lake was seen; still lower down
+grass and water both became so scarce as to induce<span class="pagenum">[Pg 67]</span>
+the leader, much against his will, to abandon the project
+of reaching Central Mount Stuart. In latitude
+20 deg. 17 min., and longitude 138 deg. 20 min., he
+was compelled to retrace his steps. It was a season
+of drought, no water having come down the Herbert,
+and being limited to time to meet Captain Norman
+at the Gulf in ninety days, forty-three of which had
+already passed, no resource was left but to return by
+the route they had come. They followed the right
+bank of the Gregory River, and met a large number of
+natives, who threatened them on several occasions,
+but the little party of five passed through without any
+mishap, owing in a great measure to the care taken
+by the leader, who was well aware of the good old
+bush maxim of always being prepared and never giving
+a chance away. In following the Gregory, they ran
+Beame&#8217;s Brook, which forms the head of the Albert,
+down on the right bank. This is an effluent from the
+Gregory, and is one of the most remarkable streams
+in Queensland. It is very little below the level of the
+adjoining plains, and is a clear stream of pure water,
+overshadowed by cabbage-palms, pandanus, and ti-trees;
+it traverses the plains some fifty or sixty miles
+before it flows into the Albert. It is said the blacks
+can turn the water out of this channel by blocking
+up the exit from the main stream with stiff mud, and
+thus catch fish that may be left in the holes. The little
+channel is boggy in its course, and the country is subject
+to great floods in the wet season. The party came<span class="pagenum">[Pg 68]</span>
+to the depôt, and found all well, and there learnt that
+Mr. F. Walker, another explorer, had been there and
+reported finding Burke&#8217;s tracks on the Flinders, about
+seventy miles distant; and having restocked himself
+with some provisions, had left to follow up the traces.
+After three weeks&#8217; detention, and arranging matters
+with Captain Norman, Landsborough took his departure
+with his party, intending to go right through
+to Melbourne. Their supply of rations was of the
+most miserable kind, not even as good as prison fare.
+The stores provided for the expedition were ample for
+all requirements, but they were refused tea, sugar,
+and rum. Starting on a long hazardous overland
+journey of unknown duration, the inadequate outfit
+accorded to these enterprising men from a steam
+vessel within a fortnight&#8217;s sail of a commercial port,
+was unjustifiable, and must be condemned.</p>
+
+<p>The expedition left the Albert on February 8th,
+1862, a party of six, Mr. Landsborough, Mr. Bourne,
+and Mr. Gleeson, with three blackboys, Jimmy,
+Fisherman, and Jacky, and twenty-one horses, whilst
+there was a continent to cross before they could reach
+their destination. The tracks of Walker&#8217;s party were
+just discernible, as they followed a course that took
+them to the Leichhardt River, over level plains
+covered with flooded box and excæcaria, commonly
+called &#8220;gutta percha,&#8221; one of the Euphorbia family;
+these plains are subject to floods, and are very much
+water-logged during the rainy seasons on account of<span class="pagenum">[Pg 69]</span>
+their being so level. The grass grows in great tussocks,
+showing only the tops above the water for many
+miles, and these were the &#8220;Plains of Promise&#8221; of which
+so much was expected from the reports of the early
+explorers! They crossed at the bar of rocks at what
+is now Floraville, and directed their course to the
+Flinders River, eastward through Newmayer Valley,
+and on past Donor&#8217;s Hills, so named in honor of an
+anonymous contributor, a Melbourne gentleman, who
+gave £1,000 to the exploration fund. In following
+the right bank of the Flinders, they passed Fort
+Bowen, a small mount rising abruptly from the plains
+near the right bank of the river, which was called after
+the first Governor of Queensland. Many springs were
+met with surrounding the base of the little mountain
+forming mounds on the top of which water may be
+found. The nature of the ground in places is very
+treacherous; the water has a strong taste of soda, and
+is quite undrinkable in some of the springs. About
+twenty miles south-east from Fort Bowen are two
+similar small mountains, Mount Browne, and Mount
+Little (now forming part of Taldora run), at which
+springs similar to those at Fort Bowen are also to be
+met with. These small mountains, the highest of
+which is only seventy-five feet above the surrounding
+plain, were named by Mr. Landsborough after a firm
+of solicitors in Brisbane, the Hon. E. I. C. Browne,
+and Robert Little. The latter subsequently became
+the first Crown Solicitor of Queensland, but both<span class="pagenum">[Pg 70]</span>
+gentlemen are now dead. The ground in places is
+dangerous, for under the light crust, that shakes and
+bends beneath the weight of a horse, are depths of soft
+mud, sometimes of a bluish colour, that would engulf
+both horse and rider. One spring is hot, the water
+at the surface being 120 deg., evidently a natural
+artesian well. Heavy tall ti-trees surround all these
+mud springs, and also innumerable small mounds that
+are the result of the pressure of water from the great
+depths below. The whole extent of country travelled
+through consists of open treeless plains, covered with
+good pasture grass, and occasionally some small white
+wood trees (atalaya hemiglauca). As the river ran
+in the direction they were travelling, they followed
+it up, and about where Richmond now stands, they
+saw the fresh tracks of a steer or cow making south,
+supposed to have wandered from some of the newly-formed
+stations towards the Burdekin. After this, the
+river trending too much to the east, they crossed the
+divide, thus leaving the Gulf waters behind them.
+The change occurs in an open downs country without
+any ranges to cross. A watercourse called Cornish
+Creek took them to the Landsborough, and following
+it down to the Thomson River, they passed Tower
+Hill, where Mr. Landsborough had been exploring
+before, and had left his marked trees. Travelling
+southwards, they made for the Barcoo, and thence
+to the Warrego, and on May 21st they came to a
+station of the Messrs. Williams where they were<span class="pagenum">[Pg 71]</span>
+received in a most cordial manner. They were now
+about eight hundred miles from Melbourne, and
+seven hundred from Brisbane, and it was decided
+to make for Melbourne by following the Darling.</p>
+
+<p>McKinlay and Landsborough on their return were
+the recipients of a public demonstration by three
+thousand people in the Melbourne Exhibition Building,
+and had a splendid reception.</p>
+
+<p>Landsborough died on March 16th, 1886, from an
+accident caused by his horse falling with him, and he
+is buried close to the north end of Bribie Passage at
+Caloundra, where he had resided with his family for
+some years previously. Landsborough was a very
+honorable and lovable man, of simple tastes, fond of
+reading and indefatigable in his love for travelling
+about the country.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>F. Walker led a party from Rockhampton in
+search of Burke and Wills in 1861. He was a bushman
+of varied experience, and he has the credit of
+originating the system of native police in Queensland.
+He performed the task of exploration with which he
+was entrusted creditably and ably. Starting from C.
+B. Dutton&#8217;s station, Bauhinia Downs, on the Dawson
+River, he and his small party went through the Nogoa
+country to the Barcoo, where he saw traces of Gregory
+and Leichhardt. They then went north-west to the
+Alice and on to the Thomson River, and from there<span class="pagenum">[Pg 72]</span>
+on to the head of the Flinders, which was called the
+Barkly. A marked tree of Walker&#8217;s exists near the
+town of Hughenden. Instead of following down the
+river, he struck across the basaltic ranges and tableland
+northwards till he came to the heads of a river
+which he called the Norman, but which is more likely
+the head of the Saxby River; however, he followed
+it down to its junction with the Flinders, where he
+saw the tracks of Burke and Wills going down with
+four camels and one horse; crossing the river he found
+the same traces returning. Walker now went to the
+Albert River, where he met Captain Norman of the
+colonial warship &#8220;Victoria&#8221; at the depôt there, and
+obtaining fresh supplies, he returned to the Flinders.
+And now commenced a painful march through the
+ranges and tableland, so hard on the horses&#8217; feet
+that they could be traced along the stones by the
+tracks of blood from their hoofs. The men suffered
+from the seeds of the speargrass, which penetrated
+the skin and caused irritation. The Burdekin was
+reached, and some fresh supplies were obtained at
+Bowen; and then passing through the settled districts
+to the south of that town, Walker arrived at Rockhampton
+early in June, having been absent about
+nine months.</p>
+
+<p>He had several encounters with the blacks during
+his journey&mdash;attacks and reprisals. About 1865, Walker
+was sent out by the Queensland Government to
+report on the best route for an overland telegraph line<span class="pagenum">[Pg 73]</span>
+to connect the Gulf with Brisbane. On his recommendation,
+the line was taken up the Carron Creek
+by way of the Etheridge to the east coast at Cardwell,
+through some very poor country. He selected this
+route on account of there being timber suitable for
+poles; but as the white ants soon destroyed them, the
+line had to be rebuilt with iron poles.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Walker died of Gulf fever in 1866 at a
+miserable shanty on the Leichhardt River, close to
+Floraville, and is buried there. His second in command
+on the telegraph expedition was a Mr. Young,
+who was subsequently telegraph master at Townsville
+in 1870. Young was a fine honorable man, but,
+unfortunately, he received an injury whilst in the
+execution of his duty repairing the telegraph line
+between Bowen and Townsville, from the effects of
+which he subsequently died, only a few days after his
+marriage.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>A small private expedition, under the charge of
+J. G. Macdonald, started from Bowen, on the east
+coast of North Queensland, in 1864, for the purpose
+of discovering a practicable route for several mobs of
+cattle then being sent towards the Flinders or westward
+for the occupation of new country. The party
+consisted of Mr. Macdonald, G. Robertson, Robert
+Bowman, and Charlie, a native of Brisbane, with
+seventeen horses, and two months rations. The
+starting point was from Carpentaria Downs, on<span class="pagenum">[Pg 74]</span>
+the Einasleigh River, then the farthest out settlement,
+the latitude being 18 deg. 37 min. 10 sec. S.,
+long. 144 deg. 3 min. 30 sec. E. The course
+generally was westward, following down the Gilbert
+River, and thence to the Flinders and Leichhardt
+Rivers. These they crossed, and then travelled on
+to the Gregory, which was followed down to the
+Albert. The object of the expedition having been
+achieved, and the country deemed suitable for stocking,
+the party commenced their return journey, crossing
+the Leichhardt River at a rocky ford, where the
+scenery was beautiful and the site admirably adapted
+for a head station. Eventually one was formed there,
+but was swept away in the disastrous flood of 1870,
+when the waters covered all the surrounding country
+to a great depth. The journey home was uneventful,
+the only occurrence being the finding of the skeleton
+of a horse they had left on their outward journey at
+the Gilbert River, and which had been killed by the
+blacks and eaten. The stages made were somewhat
+astonishing for an exploring party. The time taken
+by the journey outwards and the return was fifty-three
+days to Carpentaria Downs, and to Bowen seventy-one
+days in all; this trip proves what can be done with
+a lightly-equipped party, in contrast to many of the
+unwieldy expeditions fitted out in the south. Mr.
+Macdonald&#8217;s favourable report of the country was the
+direct means of a good deal of settlement on the Gulf.
+Mr. Macdonald, in conjunction with Mr., afterwards<span class="pagenum">[Pg 75]</span>
+Sir, John Robertson, and Captain Towns, of Sydney,
+took up many stations on the Gulf waters and expended
+large sums of money in stocking them. They
+also despatched the first vessel with loading to the
+Albert, bringing consigned goods to settlers, as well
+as supplies for their own consumption. This vessel
+was the &#8220;Jacmel Packet,&#8221; which arrived in the Albert
+River from Sydney in 1865, thus leading to the establishment
+of Burketown. Sir John Robertson personally
+visited the Gulf in 1868, travelling overland from
+the east coast as far as Normanton and Burketown,
+and returning the same way.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Mr. Hann, one of the pioneers of the Burdekin
+country, was the leader of a small expedition
+sent out by the Queensland Government for exploring
+and prospecting purposes through the peninsula
+to Cape York. The party started from Fossilbrook
+station, in 1872; they named the Tate and Walsh
+Rivers, and then went on to the Palmer River,
+after crossing the Mitchell, which they found a strong
+running stream. On the Palmer gold was discovered,
+and the place was called Warner&#8217;s Gully, after Frederick
+Warner, the surveyor to the party; this being the
+first discovery of gold in that country. Travelling still
+north, they reached the Coleman River, and visited
+Princess Charlotte Bay. They discovered the Kennedy
+and Normanby Rivers, taking a few sheep with them
+as far as this. They then travelled to the present site of<span class="pagenum">[Pg 76]</span>
+Cooktown, and followed up the Endeavour River for
+thirty miles, striking south to the Bloomfield River,
+where the dense vine scrubs greatly impeded their
+progress. On their way back they passed through
+some very rough country. So successful an expedition,
+made in so short a time, reflects credit on the
+leader of the party, who was a thorough bushman,
+and well acquainted with the dangers from hostile
+blacks in such a country. This expedition resulted
+in the development of one of the richest goldfields in
+Australia; bands of prospectors soon followed on their
+tracks and opened up the great alluvial diggings of
+the famous Palmer Goldfields, from which nearly
+£5,000,000 worth of alluvial gold was won.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>W. O. Hodgkinson had been a member of the
+Burke and Wills expedition in 1860, and crossed
+Australia as second in command of McKinlay&#8217;s party
+in 1862.</p>
+
+<p>In 1876, he led an expedition sent out by the
+Queensland Government to explore the north-west
+country from the Cloncurry to the South Australian
+boundary. The party was only a small one, but the
+work was well carried out, and the results were satisfactory
+and justified the expenditure incurred. They
+started from Cloncurry, which at that time, 1876, was
+already a settled mining township, but the country west
+and south was not well mapped out. They crossed<span class="pagenum">[Pg 77]</span>
+the rolling plains on the Diamantina River, and in
+their reports describe life in the far west in its natural
+aspect, the game of the country, the vegetation, the
+spinifex, the awful sand ridges, and all the details of
+a journey made at the cold time of the year. The
+country, according to the vicissitudes of the season,
+may be either a desert or a meadow, for the rainfall
+is very uncertain. They followed up the Mulligan
+River in well-watered country, reaching Mary Lake,
+on the Georgina, and then on to Lake Coongi in
+South Australia. Mr. Hodgkinson&#8217;s expedition was
+described in a diction not much used by the old explorers,
+whose records were made in a matter-of-fact
+style, with little attention to effect. Nevertheless, his
+descriptions are eminently interesting and life-like, and
+have a charm for all who like to read a traveller&#8217;s
+report of an unknown land. Hodgkinson&#8217;s name is
+commemorated by the goldfield named after him, as
+well as the river upon which it is situated.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>G. E. Dalrymple led the north-east coast expedition
+fitted out by the Queensland Government in 1872.
+This was altogether a coasting trip by boats, and led
+to much information about the high values of the
+rich alluvial lands fringing the banks of the rivers
+which run into the sea on the east coast of the northern
+part of Queensland. The Johnstone, the Russell,
+and Mulgrave Rivers were named by him, as well as
+the Mossman and Daintree. Here was found most<span class="pagenum">[Pg 78]</span>
+magnificent scenery, and on the Johnstone they discovered
+some fine cedar (one tree measuring ten feet
+in diameter), besides a vast extent of rich land fit for
+sugar growing. All these rivers have since been
+opened up for cultivation, and sugar-cane, with other
+tropical products, has taken the place of dense scrubs
+that then lined the banks of these comparatively unknown
+rivers&mdash;although the boats of the &#8220;Rattlesnake&#8221;
+had been into the Russell and Mulgrave Rivers
+in 1848. The country appeared to Dalrymple to be
+inhabited by very large numbers of blacks, and game
+was to be found in abundance. The name of Dalrymple
+is perpetuated in many places on the map of
+Queensland. A township on the Burdekin River, as
+well as several mountains and other remarkable features,
+have been named after George Elphinstone Dalrymple,
+who was a splendid type of man in every sense
+of the word. He was at one time treasurer of the
+Colony.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>A search expedition for Leichhardt was promoted
+by the ladies of Melbourne, and although very little is
+recorded of its work, it has a melancholy interest from
+the fact that the leader, a man of great promise and
+energy, lost his life in endeavouring to carry out the
+task entrusted to him, and he now lies in an unmarked
+grave on the bank of a lonely billabong near the Cloncurry
+River, a few miles from his brother&#8217;s station,
+Dalgonally.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 79]</span></p>
+
+<p>The expedition was entrusted to Duncan McIntyre,
+who had found on the Dugald River, during a
+private expedition in 1861, two horses that belonged
+to Leichhardt&#8217;s last expedition. Mr. McIntyre went
+out with camels and horses, and formed a depôt camp
+at Dalgonally station on Julia Creek in 1865. He
+went on to Burketown, then just opened, for the purpose
+of buying stores; at the time of his visit the Gulf
+fever was at its worst, and he took ill and died on his
+return to the camp. He is spoken of as a man of high
+attainments and of large experience in bushmanship,
+and his untimely death was fatal to the objects of the
+expedition, the leadership of which was assumed by
+Mr. W. F. Barnett. A short trip was undertaken by
+him, in company with J. McCalman as second in
+charge, Dr. White, a medical man, Colin MacIntyre,
+G. Widish, and Myola, a blackboy. They started with
+nine camels, six of which were young ones, ten horses,
+and stores for five months. They travelled westward
+over the Cloncurry to the Dugald to the camp,
+marked XLV. of Duncan McIntyre on his first expedition
+to the Gulf, the camp where he found the two
+horses that Leichhardt lost on his last trip. Near here
+is the grave of Davy, one of their blackboys, who died
+from fever. After travelling over the country in the
+neighbourhood for a few weeks, and not having any
+fixed plan or instructions, they returned to the depôt
+camp. The expedition, which was well equipped, was
+eventually given up and the party dispersed. In con<span class="pagenum">[Pg 80]</span>sequence
+of the death of the leader, no notes of his
+journey were obtainable. The camels remained on
+Dalgonally, the property of Mr. Donald McIntyre, for
+years, and increased to quite a herd. The ladies of Melbourne
+sent a handsome gravestone suitably inscribed
+to be erected over the lonely grave of the explorer, but
+for many years it lay unnoticed on the beach at Thursday
+Island, and is probably still there.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The trip of Major-General Fielding to Point Parker
+is in no sense of the term an exploring trip through
+new country, but rather an exploratory survey for
+railway purposes through a fairly well settled tract.
+Nevertheless, some notes of the journey may be found
+of interest.</p>
+
+<p>In 1881, negotiations were entered into between
+the late Mr. (afterwards Sir) Thomas McIlwraith,
+then Premier of Queensland, and a syndicate called
+Henry Kimber and Co., to construct a railway on
+the land grant principle, between Roma and Point
+Parker, on the Gulf of Carpentaria. These negotiations
+resulted in the formation of a larger syndicate
+called the Australian Transcontinental Railway Syndicate,
+Limited, which initiated their scheme by making
+certain proposals to the Government of Queensland,
+and sending out General Fielding to traverse the
+proposed route in 1882.</p>
+
+<p>The party, under General Fielding&#8217;s leadership,
+started from Roma, and went by way of Victoria<span class="pagenum">[Pg 81]</span>
+Downs and Yo Yo to Biddenham, on the Nive, thence
+by Lansdowne and Barcaldine Downs to the Aramac,
+and on to Mount Cornish, delays occurring along the
+route for repairs to waggonettes and harness, and for
+the purpose of exchanging horses or buying new ones.
+Following down the Upper McKinlay, they reached
+the Cloncurry on October 7th, and were joined there
+by the Government Geologist, Mr. R. L. Jack. More
+delays occurred here for the want of stores, and it was
+not until November 1st that all the members of the
+expedition reached Kamilaroi station, on the Leichhardt
+River; Gregory Downs was reached on the 7th,
+and Point Parker on November 15th; the expedition
+having camped sixty-seven times. On the night of
+their arrival at Point Parker, the natives surrounded
+the camp at midnight. There were about a hundred
+of them, but they left when three shots were fired over
+their heads; no one was hurt on either side, and this
+was the only demonstration made by the aboriginals.</p>
+
+<p>Point Parker is described as having a very limited
+area for settlement, only about 7,000 acres being available.
+The Government schooner &#8220;Pearl&#8221; was waiting
+here, and after a careful survey of Point Parker and
+Point Bayley, they visited Bentinck and Sweer&#8217;s
+Islands and Kimberley (now called Karumba), at the
+mouth of the Norman River. Finally, on November
+13th, they sailed up the Batavia River in the &#8220;Pearl&#8221;
+for about forty miles, and explored it still further in
+the boats, thence on to Thursday Island on December<span class="pagenum">[Pg 82]</span>
+4th, 1882. In General Fielding&#8217;s opinion, the country
+traversed on his route may be divided into sections;
+the first part between Mitchell and Malvern was
+neither fitted for pastoral purposes nor for agricultural
+settlement; thick scrub, bad soil, and poor timber prevailing.
+Between the Ward and the Nive, and thence
+to the Barcoo, Thomson, and Diamantina Rivers was
+first-class sheep country, requiring a good deal to be
+done in the way of providing water to enable the country
+to be fully stocked. The country between the
+McKinlay and Fullerton Rivers is subject to flood.
+Approaching the mining district of Cloncurry, the
+country is not so favourable for sheep, and is better
+adapted for raising cattle and horses. From the Cloncurry
+through the Gregory to the Nicholson River is
+all good cattle country, but the grass seed along the
+banks of the watercourses, and the flooded nature of
+parts of the country in the rainy seasons, render it unfit
+for profitable sheep-farming. From the Nicholson to
+the Gulf at Point Parker, the country is described as
+particularly useless. The formation is desert sandstone
+overlaid with nodular ironstone conglomerate;
+the vegetation dense, chiefly ti-tree scrubs growing
+upon spuey or rotten ground, together with spinifex,
+saltpans, and marshes. Such was General Fielding&#8217;s
+estimate of the country through which the line was to
+pass. Captain Pennefather of the &#8220;Pearl&#8221; schooner
+had been surveying the waters between Allan Island
+and Point Parker. He was very reticent as to the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 83]</span>
+qualifications of the place as a port; but looking at the
+soundings, and the open nature of the anchorage,
+coupled with the utterly valueless nature of the soil
+surrounding the place for over one hundred miles, the
+less said about it as a shipping port the better.</p>
+
+<p>The whole scheme was condemned by Parliament,
+and the general election of 1883 returned a majority
+against the principle of land grant railways. One of
+the first reform acts of the new Parliament was to
+repeal the Railway Companies&#8217; Preliminary Act. No
+doubt, had the scheme been favoured by the people of
+Queensland, a great impetus would have been given
+to settlement by the introduction of so much private
+capital into the colony, while the large annual payment
+of interest on borrowed money would have been
+avoided to a great extent. At all events, there is no
+transcontinental railway as yet, and when it does
+arrive, Point Parker will not be chosen as the terminus.
+Mr. Frank Hann, a brother of William Hann, the discoverer
+of the Palmer Goldfield, accompanied General
+Fielding as pilot. Hann is a first-class bushman, as
+hard as nails and full of energy. He was for many
+years the owner of Lawn Hill, situated on a western
+tributary of the Gregory River, but ticks ruined his
+herd. He is now in Western Australia.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The first surveyor appointed by the Queensland
+Government in the Gulf was Mr. George Phillips,
+lately the member for Carpentaria. He surveyed and<span class="pagenum">[Pg 84]</span>
+laid out Burketown, Carnarvon, on Sweer&#8217;s Island,
+and Normanton, on the Norman River. In company
+with W. Landsborough, in 1866, he explored and
+named the Diamantina and other western rivers. The
+former was named after Lady Bowen, the Governor&#8217;s
+wife, whose Christian name was Diamantina Roma.
+The party passed close by the spot where Winton now
+stands, and by Kynuna, and from the head waters of
+the Diamantina they struck across via the heads of
+Rupert&#8217;s and Alick&#8217;s Creeks to Minamere (then
+Sheaffe&#8217;s), thence to the Flinders, and on to Burketown.
+There were no signs of settlement between the Thomson
+River at Mount Cornish, and where they struck
+the Flinders River. Mr. Phillips and Mr. Landsborough
+were the first to navigate the Norman River,
+and they chose the site for the township.</p>
+
+<p>The writer met this party coming down the
+Flinders on their way to Burketown, in which place
+he had been laid up for several weeks with the Gulf
+fever; he was then on his way back to Conobie, more
+dead than alive. This was in the early part of 1866.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 85]</span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>CHAPTER V.<br />
+
+PIONEERING WORK IN QUEENSLAND.</h2>
+
+<p>The narrative of the pastoral industry in Queensland
+is almost the history of North Queensland
+itself. The outward flow of that restless
+and progressive industry can be traced from its infancy,
+when Mr. Patrick Leslie, of Collaroi, in the
+district of Cassilis, New South Wales, moved his stock
+northwards, and after first exploring the country by
+himself and a man named Peter Murphy, placed
+his sheep in June, 1840, and formed the first
+station in Queensland on the Darling Downs (discovered
+by Allan Cunningham 13 years before). He
+called this first station Toolburra, and afterwards
+selected Canning Downs station also. The stock consisted
+of nearly 6,000 sheep, two teams of bullocks
+and drays, one team of horses and dray, ten saddle
+horses, and twenty-two men, all ticket-of-leave men,
+pronounced by Mr. Leslie to be the best men he ever
+had in his life. The town of Warwick is built near
+this classic spot, where first the pioneers of the squatting
+industry pitched their original camp. The next
+to reach the Darling Downs were Hodgson and Elliott,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 86]</span>
+who occupied Etonvale in September, 1840. No white
+man had settled on Darling Downs previous to
+Patrick Leslie in 1840. After Hodgson, King and
+Sibley were next to hold Gowrie, and these were followed
+by others, until in 1844, there were thirty stations
+formed and occupied in that district, the stock mostly
+coming from the Hunter River district of New South
+Wales.</p>
+
+<p>In 1843, the first station on the Burnett River
+was formed by Russell and Glover who took up Burrandowan,
+and they were soon followed by other
+settlers, occupying all the beautiful country on the
+Upper Burnett and Mary Rivers. Here the soil is
+rich, the surface water abundant, the climate equal to
+any in Australia; and thus a rich territory was added
+to the young colony.</p>
+
+<p>The names of the early settlers and pioneers of
+this country are as well known as the stations they
+formed. The Healeys of Tabinga were settled not far
+from Burrandowan. Over the Brisbane Range, John
+Eales, from the Hunter, was the first settler with stock
+in the Wide Bay District. The Jones&#8217;, of merchant
+fame in Sydney, were also among the first over the
+range at or near Nanango. The course they followed
+took them down Barambah Creek to Boonara station.</p>
+
+<p>All the centre of the Burnett district was occupied
+by squatters coming by this line, while the upper, or
+Auburn portion, from lower down by Burrandowan.
+Lawless Bros. took up Boobijan; Anderson and Leslie<span class="pagenum">[Pg 87]</span>
+occupied Gigoomgan; whilst McTaggart, H. C. Corfield,
+Perrier, Forster, Herbert W. H. Walsh, Dr.
+Ramsay, E. B. Uhr, and others followed soon after.</p>
+
+<p>Following on this, came the occupation of the
+runs on the Dawson River, a tributary of the Fitzroy,
+and onwards to the north and far out to the great
+west, where the downs rolled towards the setting sun.
+The Fitzroy River, draining an enormous territory,
+equal to any river in Queensland, and surpassed by but
+few in Australia, was gradually and successfully occupied.
+Through the brigalow and mulga scrubs, dense
+and forbidding, over mountain ranges, stony and steep,
+across flooded rivers, and over or around all obstacles,
+the pioneers still moved on and took up and occupied
+runs. Westward to the Maranoa and Warrego, and
+northward by the Fitzroy to the Burdekin and Flinders
+River, and even over the South Australian
+borders to Port Darwin, their mission was carried on,
+to fill the land with the outposts of civilisation.</p>
+
+<p>Before 1853, the Archer family were squatting on
+the Burnett River, and in that year Charles and William
+Archer went northward on an exploring trip
+during which they discovered and named the Fitzroy
+River, and rode over the spot where now stands the
+city of Rockhampton, with all its wealth, civilisation,
+and promise of prosperity. They started from Eidsvold,
+on the Burnett, simply with pack horses and
+two men, passed from Dalgangal to Rawbelle, and
+at the foot of Mount Rannes found the establishment<span class="pagenum">[Pg 88]</span>
+of the brothers Leith Hay, then the farthest out
+station. They had some very troublesome country to
+penetrate. Besides hilly mountainous ranges, brigalow
+and vine scrubs surrounded the base of Mount
+Spencer, whose thousand feet of height they climbed,
+and gave to it its name. They crossed the Dee, and
+passed close to the site of the famous Mount Morgan
+gold mine. And so on they journeyed to the top of
+a range, where the most astounding view lay beneath
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Through a large and apparently open valley,
+bounded by table-topped, pyramidal and dominant
+mountains, with here and there fantastically-shaped
+sandstone peaks, a large river wound its way towards
+the sea.</p>
+
+<p>They supposed this river to be the confluence
+of the Dawson and Mackenzie, and the sea before
+them to be Keppel Bay. They explored the valley
+of the Fitzroy, which they named after Sir Charles
+Fitzroy, they being the first to discover it, and then
+went on to Gracemere Lake, a magnificent sheet of
+fresh water, about two miles long and three quarters
+of a mile wide. They rode on till they came to tidal
+water in the Fitzroy, and found it a fine navigable
+stream, with the tide running strongly up it. Near here
+they came upon a large lagoon covered over with a
+beautiful pink water-lily (nymph&oelig;a), which they called
+the Pink Lily Lagoon. In the account of their journey,
+they described the cycas palm growing with<span class="pagenum">[Pg 89]</span>
+clusters of round smooth nuts encircling the top as a
+crown, under the leaves. After inspecting the country
+from opposite Yaamba to what is now known as
+Archer&#8217;s cattle station, and laying it out in blocks, they
+returned to the Burnett. These pioneers were looking
+for new country, and being perfectly satisfied with the
+Fitzroy and its promise of future prosperity, they returned
+with stock two years later, in 1855, and took
+legal possession. It was on August 10th of that year
+that they brought the first stock on to Gracemere and
+occupied it as a run.</p>
+
+<p>In the same year, 1855, the site of the future town
+of Rockhampton was examined. The name of the
+town was chosen by Mr. Wiseman, Commissioner of
+Crown Lands for New South Wales, who had been
+sent up from Sydney to confirm the Messrs. Archer
+in the possession of their discovery. The rocks
+crossing the river situated above the present suspension
+bridge and forming the limit of navigation, helped
+to the choice of a name for the new northern town.
+Gracemere head station is on the south side of the
+Fitzroy River, and is distant seven miles from Rockhampton.
+Till then, Rannes had been the outer limit
+of occupation towards the north, in which direction
+settlement was extending. The Archers were a family
+of pioneer settlers, several brothers assisting in the
+enterprise of opening up country and forming new
+stations. They were extremely popular men of high
+character and attainments; and the name of Archer<span class="pagenum">[Pg 90]</span>
+will be known as long as Rockhampton exists. Archibald
+Archer represented the town and district for many
+years in the Queensland Assembly, and acted as
+Colonial Treasurer in the first McIlwraith Ministry
+with credit to himself and much benefit to the young
+colony.<a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> The Archers may justly be said to be the
+original discoverers and actual founders of Rockhampton,
+for although the town took its great start on the
+road to importance from the time of the Canoona
+rush in 1858, called in those days the Port Curtis
+rush, the site of the town had been made known five
+years previously by the Archer Brothers.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_2" id="Footnote_B_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_2"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> Mr. Archibald Archer died early in 1902, in London, at
+the age of 82. Mr. Alexander Archer and his wife (a
+daughter of the late Sir R. R. Mackenzie) were both lost
+in the &#8220;Quetta,&#8221; which foundered near Cape York.</p></div>
+
+<p>Amongst the early settlers in the country about
+Gladstone were the Landsboroughs, at Raglan Station,
+James Landsborough, a brother of the explorer
+William, living there after taking it up. They held a
+run in the Wide Bay district, called Monduran, on the
+banks of the Kolan River, a beautiful and picturesque
+stream of clear flowing water, with varied patches
+of dark pine scrubs growing down to the water&#8217;s edge.</p>
+
+<p>William Young, a sturdy self-reliant old pioneer,
+took up a run called Mount Larcombe, and held it
+with sheep. Mount Larcombe can be seen from the
+deck of passing steamers close to Gladstone. Mr.
+Young was foremost in opening the country between
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 91]</span>Gladstone and Rockhampton. He obtained a rough
+sketch from Mr. Charles Archer of country they had
+tendered for, and on going out came across a
+large branch of the Calliope which had not been so
+taken up. This he chose for his new run, and Mount
+Larcombe being at the head of the creek, he named
+the station after it. He took his sheep from the Burnett,
+and settled on his new country on May 29th, 1855.
+The reason for those of the advance guard pushing out
+so far was on account of the tendering system for
+runs then in force. By this system, those who marked
+out country could hold it unstocked, and unless a few
+hundred pounds were paid by them for the right of
+actual occupation, the pioneers in search of land had
+to go out further. Prospecting thus for new country
+without any intention of stocking it, but merely of
+selling the information and the claim to the country to
+any one in search of a run for their stock, became a
+regular speculation.</p>
+
+<p>The Wide Bay district only extended as far as
+Little&#8217;s station at Baffle&#8217;s Creek, and on to Blackman&#8217;s.
+When separation took place, and a new district was
+declared, those who had tendered for new country
+for the purpose of reselling, had nine months allowed
+them to stock their country in. Otherwise they were
+called upon to forfeit it. Mr. Young had a great deal
+of trouble from the blacks; they made a raid on his
+shepherds, killing several, but afterwards he found
+them very useful for minding sheep, etc. At that<span class="pagenum">[Pg 92]</span>
+time, two small trading vessels handled the trade to
+Sydney, and from this port Mr. Young had to get his
+rations, as well as shepherds. Many of the latter sent
+to him were found useless for bush life.<a name="FNanchor_C_3" id="FNanchor_C_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_C_3" id="Footnote_C_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_3"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> Mr. Young ended his days peacefully in Sandgate in
+1899, at an advanced age.</p></div>
+
+<blockquote><p>No. 55117.</p>
+
+<p class="quotdate">Crown Lands Office,<br />
+Sydney, 29th January, 1855.</p>
+
+<p>Nos. 2, 5, 11 and 12 of December.</p>
+
+<p>Gentlemen,
+</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4" summary="Letter from Crown Lands Office">
+<tr><td align="left">Rockhill,&nbsp;No.&nbsp;3.<br />Bugulban,&nbsp;No.&nbsp;1.<br />Gunyah, No. 2.<br />Borroran, No. 4.</td>
+<td align="left">I have the honor to acknowledge
+the receipt of your tenders (opened on the 4th
+ultimo), for new runs of Crown Lands in the
+district of Port Curtis, named in the margin,
+and I beg to inform you, that the same now
+await the report of the Commissioner of the
+district, in accordance with the Regulations of
+the 1st January, 1848.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="left">I have the honor to be, Gentlemen,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="center">Your most obedient servant,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="center">GEO. BARNEY.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="right">Chief Commissioner of Crown Lands.</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p class="quotsig">
+Messrs. R. &amp; F. BLACKMAN,<br />
+Maryborough, Wide Bay.<br />
+</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>This copy of the letter from Colonel Barney to
+the Messrs. Blackman regarding the tenders of their
+runs shows that they were early in the Port Curtis
+district, and occupied a run called Warrah, still held
+by Mr. F. A. Blackman in 1897. The whole of the
+Wide Bay district had become settled with stations,
+and the necessity for an outlet for produce and receipt
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 93]</span>of supplies led to the port of Gladstone being opened.
+Among the first to establish a business there was
+Richard E. Palmer, who built a wharf and a large
+wool shed, so that the wool from Rannes and other
+stations lately formed could be shipped away. He
+then took up Targieni station, near Mount Larcombe,
+and lived there for many years. Among the early
+settlers in the district about Gladstone were the Bells
+of Stowe, father and sons, Mrs. Graham on the Calliope;
+and Charles Clarke, James Landsborough, John
+Forsyth. Edwin Bloomfield held Miriam Vale;
+Robinson and Wood had taken up Caliungal; William
+Elliott passed Gracemere with sheep, and took up
+Tilpal in 1857. Ramsay and Gaden held Canoona run
+when the gold rush took place in 1858. Mr. A. J.
+Callan, for some years member of the Legislative Assembly
+for Fitzroy, took up Columbra run. All the
+surrounding country became parcelled out among the
+early arrivals, and settlement began to spread itself into
+far-away districts to the north and north-west. Civilisation
+was pronounced enough when ladies followed
+their husbands on many of the new stations.
+Raglan was famous for its hospitality as early as 1860,
+when Mrs. James Landsborough presided, and her
+numerous family grew up there.</p>
+
+<p>From Marlborough, a small village on the outward
+stock route, the track led out west towards Peak
+Downs, a beautiful tableland discovered by Leichhardt.
+Mr. Stuart, known as Peak Downs Stuart,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 94]</span>
+took up one of the first runs in 1861 with sheep
+brought from Victoria. These sheep were destroyed
+by order on account of scab breaking out among
+them. Mr. P. F. Macdonald and Sydney Davis were
+among the earliest settlers on Peak Downs. Mr.
+William Kilman, whose name is so well known in the
+central districts, was one of the enterprising pioneers
+of the north. In 1854, when he was twenty-five years
+old, he set out on an exploring trip along the Queensland
+coast. On that journey, he came to the river on
+which Rockhampton now stands, and, passing up the
+coast, went as far as Cleveland Bay, where Townsville
+was founded some years later. He returned to New
+South Wales from Cleveland Bay, and in 1856 took
+up a large tract of country on the upper waters of the
+Dawson. It would thus appear that Mr. Kilman
+visited the locality of Townsville ten years before Mr.
+Andrew Ball came down from Woodstock station to
+explore the country.</p>
+
+<p>Captain John Mackay, explorer and pioneer
+settler, as well as navigator, discovered Port Mackay
+in 1860. The history of the discovery and settlement
+of the district and town of Mackay is of interest, showing
+what individual effort in conjunction with large
+experience and great physical fortitude and endurance
+can accomplish. Captain Mackay left Armidale on
+January 16th, 1860, with a party of seven men and
+twenty-eight horses, to explore the north country for
+runs for stocking purposes; they travelled by Tenter<span class="pagenum">[Pg 95]</span>field,
+Darling Downs, Gayndah, and Rockhampton.
+After recruiting and refitting here, they started again
+on March 16th, passed Yaamba and Princhester, on
+to Marlborough, where Mr. Henning was forming a
+station. They left civilisation behind them when
+leaving this place, and bearing to the north-west
+over the range, which was very rugged and broken,
+followed the Isaacs and travelled on towards the Burdekin.
+Returning towards the coast, they found a
+river they called the Mackay, traced it to the coast,
+and having marked trees along its course, they decided
+to return south, having been successful in the object
+of their expedition.</p>
+
+<p>The party now fell sick of fever and ague, a most
+prostrating malady, and were reduced to the utmost
+extremity for want of provisions, for the sick men were
+for some time unable to travel. In suffering and pain,
+hungry and thirsty, and utterly weary, they started
+again for civilised parts. The blackboy, their faithful
+companion, died on the journey, while some of the
+others could scarcely manage to ride. On returning,
+they met Mr. Connor, who was forming Collaroy station;
+here they remained a few days recruiting, then
+crossing the Broadsound Range, they camped with Mr.
+John Allingham, who was travelling with stock looking
+for country, passed Mr. Macartney at Waverley, and arrived
+at Rockhampton after an absence of four months.
+They tendered for the country discovered in accordance
+with the Crown Lands Regulations, and the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 96]</span>
+tenders were accepted by the Queensland Government,
+from which date they were allowed nine months for
+stocking, failing which, any person putting stock in,
+could legally claim the country. In order to obtain
+some compensation for the discovery they had made,
+Captain Mackay got cattle on terms, and started from
+Armidale on July 26th, 1861, with 1,200 cattle, fifty
+horses and two teams of bullocks. The stock travelled
+by Dalby to the Burnett and Dawson, passing Banana
+and Rannes, and thence to Rockhampton on October
+27th, where supplies were waiting for them from
+Sydney. They then passed northwards through the
+Broadsound country, where several stations were then
+forming, and arrived at the foot of the coast range,
+when by double-banking the teams, that is, putting
+two teams on to one dray with only a part of a load on,
+they managed, after several days&#8217; hard work, to get
+the loads and stock across the terrible barrier. After
+great trouble in forcing a way through ranges, scrubs,
+and other obstacles, the stock arrived at the spot
+selected for the head station on the Mackay River,
+now called the Pioneer, on January 11th, 1862. The
+station was named Green Mount, and having turned
+their weary stock loose on the well-grassed plains,
+the party set to work to form a station hut and yards.
+All their stores were exhausted, and after waiting long
+months for the vessel that was to have come from
+Rockhampton, they at last discovered that she was
+below Cape Palmerston at anchor; she was brought up<span class="pagenum">[Pg 97]</span>
+the river four miles west of where the town now stands,
+and landed the stores on the south bank. Captain
+Mackay then chartered the vessel at the rate of £8 per
+day, and spent a few days in taking soundings, bearings,
+etc.; having made a rough chart of the river and
+adjacent coast line, it was sent with the correct latitude
+and longitude to the Crown Lands Office, Brisbane,
+on which report the Mackay River was declared a
+port of entry. The name of the river was changed to
+the Pioneer, as Commodore Burnett (afterwards
+lost in H.M.S. &#8220;Orpheus&#8221; on the Manakau Bar in
+New Zealand), had, in 1863, named a stream flowing
+into Rockingham Bay, the Mackay, and recommended
+the new discovery should be called after H.M.S.
+&#8220;Pioneer,&#8221; which he commanded. The Queensland
+Government not wishing to detract from the merit
+of discovery, named the town Mackay. There can be
+no manner of doubt but that the honor of discovering
+the Pioneer River and the Port of Mackay, and making
+that discovery public information, so as to be of service
+in opening up the district, rests entirely with Captain
+John Mackay.<a name="FNanchor_D_4" id="FNanchor_D_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_D_4" class="fnanchor">[D]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_D_4" id="Footnote_D_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_D_4"><span class="label">[D]</span></a> Captain Mackay, in 1902, succeeded the late Captain
+Almond as Harbour Master at Brisbane.</p></div>
+
+<p>The discovery of the fine pastoral country in the
+Barcoo by the Mitchell expedition was soon followed
+by occupation. On October 12th, 1862, the first mob of
+cattle arrived on the Thomson River, for Mount Cornish
+and Bowen Downs. The Thomson River was at
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 98]</span>that time supposed to be the Barcoo, but Mr. N.
+Buchanan found out that it was the same river that
+had been named the Thomson by Kennedy in 1847.
+The first station was named Bowen Downs, and the
+first stock to arrive on these waters were the cattle
+started from Fort Cooper, where they had been depasturing
+for some time. The mob consisted of five
+thousand head, and the route followed was by Lake
+Elphinstone on to Suttor Creek, down that creek to
+the Belyando, following that river up a short distance,
+then across by Bully Creek, crossing the range at the
+Tanks by Lake Buchanan on to Cornish Creek, and
+down that creek to their destination.</p>
+
+<p>Suttor Creek station then belonged to Kirk and
+Sutherland, and was the farthest out station in that
+direction. On arriving at Bully Creek, a dry stage
+ahead of forty-five miles, caused the leader to leave
+1,500 head behind him, the balance arriving at their
+destination on October 12th, 1862. Mr. R. Kerr was
+in charge, with four white stockmen, one blackboy,
+three gins, and a white man named Maurice Donohue,
+who died before he had been there very long, and was
+doubtless the first white man buried in the district.
+In the following year, 1863, a drought occurred on the
+Thomson, the plains were left destitute of grass,
+and the waterhole, on the banks of which the station
+was formed, was reduced to two feet in depth. When
+full there would be about eighteen feet of water in
+it, and it was afterwards found that it took eighteen<span class="pagenum">[Pg 99]</span>
+months without rain to bring it down to that level. In
+about March of this year, Messrs. Rule and Lacy, as
+also Mr. Raven, arrived on Aramac Creek with sheep,
+the former taking up and stocking the country now
+known as Aramac station. Mr. Raven first settling
+down higher up the creek, afterwards returned to
+Stainburne, taking up and stocking the present
+Stainburne Downs. At the same time that these
+sheep arrived at the Aramac, three thousand cows
+from the Narran (N.S.W.) arrived on Bowen Downs,
+Messrs. Hill and Bloxham in charge; all these stock
+went out by the Barcoo, and the cattle suffered severely
+from the effects of the drought, one thousand head
+being lost en route. Four of the party, Messrs. Hill,
+Bloxham, Burkett, and Best, who took out these cows
+to Bowen Downs, decided to go upon an exploring
+trip on their own account. They went up Landsborough
+Creek, and on to the Flinders River, intending
+to go to Bowen; after getting over the Range on
+the east side of the Flinders, it commenced to rain, and
+continued an incessant downpour for four days, making
+the country so boggy that they could not travel;
+some of their horses died, and some got crippled
+by getting bogged among the rocks; so they decided
+to return to Bowen Downs. They got down from
+the ranges into one of the gorges, and then Mr. Best
+was laid up with rheumatic fever, and was unable to
+travel. Their supplies ran short, and they had to kill
+some of their horses for food; by the time Mr. Best was<span class="pagenum">[Pg 100]</span>
+able to move, they had only three horses left; so they
+decided to kill one of these, take a portion of the
+flesh with them, and walk to Bowen Downs for assistance,
+leaving Mr. Best behind, as he was still unfit
+to travel. They left the two horses with him, and
+the remainder of the horse they had killed, jerking the
+meat for him before they started. The three then
+began their tramp, Mr. Bloxham being leader and
+guide; they promised to be back in twenty-eight days,
+and urged Mr. Best to remain where they were leaving
+him, but if he did move to be sure to follow their
+tracks. They also gave him directions as to the route
+to follow to reach Bowen Downs. They got to Bowen
+Downs in due course, after surmounting innumerable
+difficulties. Mr. Bloxham, who was the oldest of the
+party, was very weak on arrival, and suffering severely
+from the consequences of subsisting on jerked
+horse flesh; they were all wearing horse hide
+sandals, their boots being worn out. After several
+days spell, Mr. Bloxham made up a party and went
+to the rescue of the man left behind. The other two
+left for civilisation. The rescue party met Mr. Best
+on the twenty-ninth day from leaving him, a few miles
+from his camp. He had stayed the twenty-eight days
+as agreed, and started in on the twenty-ninth. They,
+of course, were very glad to find him, and the meeting
+was mutually satisfactory. During his sojourn in the
+gorge, Mr. Best only saw the blacks once; and then
+he fired his gun off to attract their attention, but they<span class="pagenum">[Pg 101]</span>
+took no notice of him. Another report said that as he
+had been using his gun as a crutch, the muzzle had got
+blocked up with mud, and when he fired it off to scare
+the blacks away the gun burst with such a terrible roar
+that they never ventured near him again.</p>
+
+<p>The first pioneer to stock country on the Flinders
+was James Gibson, who took up a run called the
+Prairie, in 1861. He also stocked several runs in the
+neighbourhood and on the Clarke River. He started
+two lots of cattle from the Barwon (N.S.W.), one in
+charge of Mr. E. R. Edkins, now of Mount Cornish,
+the other mob in charge of Mr. George Sautelle, now
+long settled at Byrimine station, near Cloncurry.
+These cattle passed by Goondiwindi, through the
+Downs country, by Yandilla, to the Dawson, by Rockhampton,
+and then by Fort Cooper and Bowen on
+to the Clarke River. These, according to the Land
+Office records, were the first runs taken up in the
+pastoral district of Burke. Their cattle were supplemented
+by other large mobs, all destined to form new
+stations in the far north, in connection with Mr. W.
+Glen Walker, of Sydney, an enterprising and speculative
+merchant. In 1864 the country first taken up by
+this firm was sold or transferred, and the cattle (as
+many as ten thousand head), were removed to the
+Lower Flinders then quite unoccupied. They travelled
+through Betts&#8217; Gorge, a creek forcing its way through
+the basalt to join the Flinders. A large stretch of well-watered
+country on the Saxby Creek, known as Tal<span class="pagenum">[Pg 102]</span>dora
+and Millungerra was taken up by James Gibson
+in 1864.</p>
+
+<p>The first man to open the way to the Albert at
+Burketown was Mr. N. Buchanan, with cattle from
+Mount Cornish and Bowen Downs on the Thomson
+River; he selected Beame&#8217;s Brook station on the
+Albert, eighteen miles above the present site of Burketown,
+and also occupied another run on the Landsborough
+River, a tributary of the Leichhardt, on a
+waterhole about twelve miles long. Following him in
+order of succession came Mr. J. G. Macdonald&#8217;s cattle
+from the Burdekin. These travelled by a different
+route via the Einasleigh and Etheridge Rivers, the
+latter called after Mr. D. O. Etheridge, one of the
+overlanders, a man long resident there afterwards, and
+well known. They followed the route opened up by
+Mr. J. G. Macdonald when on his private exploring
+expedition to the Gulf country a year or two before.
+The country this stock occupied was on the Leichhardt
+River, at a place called Floraville, situated where
+a great bar of rocks crosses the river above all tidal
+waters, the falls being about twenty feet in height.
+Another run this firm took up at the same time was
+situated on the Gregory River, and called Gregory
+Downs; but this country was abandoned later on,
+and is now held by Watson Bros.; it is an excellent
+piece of well-grassed cattle country, watered by the
+finest perennial river in North Queensland, a clear,
+flowing stream of water, shaded by palms, pandanus,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 103]</span>
+and ti-trees. The Gregory River, named by the
+late Mr. W. Landsborough in honor of the Honorable
+A. C. Gregory, M.L.C., C.M.G., the well-known
+explorer and scientist, has never been known to
+go dry. In March, 1896, Mr. G. Phillips, C.E.,
+estimated the flow of the river&mdash;which was then
+low&mdash;at 133 millions of gallons per day at Gregory
+Downs. There can be no doubt that the discharge
+is due to a leak from the great artesian beds
+underlying the Barkly Tableland, on which the
+town of Camooweal is situated, on the head waters
+of the Georgina River.</p>
+
+<p>The Barkly Tableland was also named by Mr.
+Landsborough in honor of Sir Henry Barkly, Governor
+of Victoria, 1856-1863.</p>
+
+<p>Donor&#8217;s Hills station was settled by the Brodie
+Bros., who came from Murrurundi, in New South
+Wales early in 1865. They travelled by Bowen River
+and along the Cape River route, and took up the
+country about the junction of the Cloncurry and the
+Flinders Rivers, near some peculiar isolated ironstone
+hills, which were named Donor&#8217;s Hills. It was considered
+a good run and well watered, and is now held
+by Mr. Chirnside, of Victoria, being still stocked with
+sheep. Among the last wave of pioneers was Mr.
+Atticus Tooth, who brought cattle from the Broken
+River, near Bowen, and took up a run on the lower
+Cloncurry, which he called Seaward Downs; the stock
+belonged to a business firm in Bowen called Seaward,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 104]</span>
+Marsh and Co. It now forms part of Conobie run,
+taken up by Messrs. Palmer and Shewring, who
+brought sheep and cattle from Pelican Creek, in 1864.
+The cattle were driven from Eureka, in the Wide
+Bay district, by Edward Palmer, one of the firm who
+from that time resided on the station, and who is the
+author of these notes. The stock followed the route
+up the Cape River, and were detained in the desert
+at Billy Webb&#8217;s Lake nearly two months waiting for
+rain to take them through. After the usual vicissitudes
+of travelling stock down the Flinders, and
+searching for country all round the Gulf it was
+decided to occupy Conobie, where the Dugald, Corella,
+and Cloncurry Rivers form a junction. The sheep
+were placed on the run in May, 1865, and then the trip
+back to Brisbane had to be undertaken in order to
+apply for the lease of the country.</p>
+
+<p>One of the partners, Mr. W. Shewring, died about
+a year afterwards from the effects of the Gulf fever,
+and also several of the men. They were all buried on
+the bank of the large lagoon, near which the head
+station was formed.</p>
+
+<p>Supplies to this place were carried from Port
+Denison by bullock dray, but the first wool was shipped
+for Sydney from the new port, Burketown. The
+price of everything was extremely high, flour and
+sugar often selling at one shilling per pound, while
+wages for ordinary hands ranged from thirty-five shil<span class="pagenum">[Pg 105]</span>lings
+to fifty shillings a week, and men were scarce
+even at that.</p>
+
+<p>Pioneers as well as explorers, the settlement of
+Cape York Peninsula will always be associated with
+the names of the Jardines. The account of their trip
+from Bowen with cattle and horses through the most
+troublesome country ever traversed by stock, will stand
+as a lasting monument to their superior bushmanship
+and hardihood. The narrative of the journey adds
+a most interesting page to the records of Australian
+exploration, as it was conducted throughout without
+any mishap, although surrounded with many dangers,
+through a country almost unknown and during a
+season when the risks were much increased by reason
+of the advent of the annual heavy rains. The uncommon
+task of taking a mob of cattle such a distance
+with success, reflects the highest credit on the Jardine
+Brothers.</p>
+
+<p>The origin of the trip was a report made by the
+first governor, Sir G. Bowen, in 1862, to the Imperial
+Government recommending Somerset, Cape York, as
+a harbour of refuge, coaling station and entrepôt for
+the trade of Torres Straits and islands of the North
+Pacific. The task of establishing the new settlement
+was confided to Mr. Jardine, Police Magistrate at
+Rockhampton, who was qualified by experience and
+judgment to carry out the work. Mr. Jardine proposed
+to establish a cattle station there, by sending
+cattle in charge of his two sons through the Peninsula,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 106]</span>
+in order to supply the requirements of trade with fresh
+beef. Frank and Alick Jardine, aged respectively 22
+and 20, carried out the task of overlanding very creditably,
+being strong, active, and hardy young men, full
+of resource and inured to bush work and discomforts.</p>
+
+<p>Those who know by experience what a wet season
+means in the Peninsula, with flooded creeks and rivers,
+poison plants killing the horses and cattle, and hostile
+blacks always on the alert to damage anything in
+their way, will understand the full meaning of the
+successful issue of such a trip. The writer settled a
+cattle station on the Mitchell River in 1879, and can
+thus enter fully into all the troubles of these young
+overlanders, and appreciate the magnitude of their
+task.</p>
+
+<p>The party, consisting of ten persons and twenty-one
+horses, left Rockhampton in May, 1864; they
+travelled overland to Bowen, where they obtained
+cattle from Mr. William Stenhouse, of the Clarke
+River. The furthest out station then was Carpentaria
+Downs, to the north-west, held by J. G. Macdonald,
+supposed to be on the Lynd River, but afterwards
+proved to be on the Einasleigh, a branch of the Gilbert
+River. On October 10th they were ready for a final
+start with the cattle from Carpentaria Downs. The
+party were composed of the following:&mdash;F. L. Jardine,
+leader; A. Jardine; A. J. Richardson, surveyor; C.
+Scrutton; R. N. Binney; A. Cowderoy; and four blackboys,
+Eulah, Peter, Sambo, and Barney, natives of<span class="pagenum">[Pg 107]</span>
+Wide Bay and Rockhampton; also forty-one horses,
+one mule, and 250 cattle, with provisions to last for four
+months. They started under the impression they were
+following down the Lynd of Leichhardt, that led to the
+Mitchell River, hence the troubles and doubts about
+their journey were much increased, and it was a considerable
+time before the mistake was discovered. Not
+long after getting into the wilderness, a fire burnt one
+half of their camp gear and rations, which was a loss
+they felt throughout their journey.</p>
+
+<p>Travelling through poor, flat ti-tree country,
+covered with spinifex and wire grass that no stock
+would look at, they encountered the further misfortunes
+of the loss of horses and cattle by poison and
+delay owing to their being hunted by blacks. In addition
+to the loss of cattle, travelling was excessively
+heavy in consequence of the rains. But the journey
+was prosecuted in spite of all troubles and risks. The
+blacks soon commenced to attack them, and had to be
+checked, although they never ceased all through the
+journey to harass them. The party struck salt water
+when following down the Staaten, and then knew that
+they were out of their course, and not near the Mitchell
+River of Leichhardt. They saw the marine plains extending
+along the coast, and finally, about December
+18th, crossed the long-looked for Mitchell River,
+covered here with dense vine scrubs, and having
+numerous wide channels. They lost some horses that
+went mad through drinking salt water, and at the cros<span class="pagenum">[Pg 108]</span>sing
+had a severe contest with the blacks, who had been
+daring and mischievous all the time. After crossing
+the Mitchell, they followed a course along the coast
+line of the Gulf, meeting with disasters all the way,
+their cattle being poisoned, their horses failing, their
+rations exhausted, and hardships accumulating. They
+finally left the Mitchell and made straight running for
+Cape York on December 22nd; the wet season came
+on them then, and nothing but rain was recorded
+while going through a most dismal, miserable country,
+poor in grass, and full of obstacles, such as scrub,
+etc. Heavy storms of rain and wind passed over them
+frequently, from which they had no shelter, the tents
+being blown to pieces. They had no salt, and the
+weather was too muggy to dry or jerk the meat when
+a beast was killed. In this way they crept along the
+coast line, crossing all the rivers and creeks in full
+flood, and by the time they reached the Batavia River
+they had to do most of the travelling on foot, so many
+horses having died from the fatal effects of the poison
+plants common in this despicable country. As all the
+creeks were lined with vine scrubs, they were compelled
+to cut tracks through every one of them for the
+cattle and to swim creeks every day, while the prickles
+of the pandanus leaves gave them special discomfort.</p>
+
+<p>Several attempts were made to search for the
+settlement at Cape York by advance parties, but it was
+not until March 2nd that the brothers, having met
+some friendly natives, were piloted into the settlement,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 109]</span>
+and thus this most wonderful trip was concluded,
+having taken over five months to get through about
+1,600 miles, the last two or three hundred being done
+on foot, and without even boots to their feet. The
+country passed through was mostly of a forbidding and
+sterile character, except on the Einasleigh River banks,
+and in consequence of their report, no occupation of
+runs followed. As the Peninsula became more explored,
+better country was discovered near the heads
+of the rivers flowing into the Gulf; and in after years
+a few stations were stocked with cattle.</p>
+
+<p>Frank Jardine, the elder brother, has lived at
+Somerset ever since, and his house is seen when passing
+through the beautiful Albany Pass. Alick Jardine
+became a surveyor and engineer, and for many years
+was employed by the Government of Queensland.
+He attained the position of Engineer for Harbours
+and Rivers, but was among the officers retrenched
+in 1893.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 110]</span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.<br />
+
+THE SPREAD OF PASTORAL OCCUPATION.</h2>
+
+<p>After the Canoona rush in 1858 and 1859, the
+tide of pastoral run hunting set in; the route
+northwards followed by stock going out to occupy
+new country led by Princhester and through
+Marlborough. Here the route turned off westwards
+towards the Peak Downs, and extended still further to
+the interior where the Barcoo, Thomson, and Alice
+Rivers flowed into a mysterious land. The northern
+road led on to Broad Sound, where Connor&#8217;s Range
+had to be passed; this spur of the main coast range
+comes close in to the coast. Overlanders could
+not avoid crossing it, and this was an undertaking.
+It was reckoned to be two miles from the first rise
+to the summit, and to get drays and stock across
+sometimes took several days, as they had to unload
+some of their goods at the steep pinches and return
+empty for the balance of the loading. The road was
+in a state of nature, and wound round gullies and
+sidings through the forest trees that grew on the steep
+sides of the mountain; many a curse was wasted on its
+stony, dusty inclines ere the long looked for summit<span class="pagenum">[Pg 111]</span>
+was reached. After crossing the range, the first settlement
+in those early days, about 1860, was Lotus Creek
+station. From Lotus Creek the road led on to Fort
+Cooper station, considered one of the best coast stations
+then discovered. As early as 1863, Nebo Creek,
+west of Mackay, was made a recruiting centre, where
+stores could be obtained from a firm named Kemmis
+and Bovey. Passing along Funnel Creek, still going
+northwards, the head of the Bowen River was reached.</p>
+
+<p>The Bowen River country was soon occupied with
+runs and stock from the south, passing along the coast
+route that led by Rockhampton, Marlborough, and
+Nebo. The roads were lined with flocks and herds of
+those entering on the pioneering work of the North
+of Queensland, and business men were following in the
+wake of the early stock settlers to commence a trade
+wherever an opportunity offered. The settlement was
+bona fide and genuine; men with means, energy and
+experience were entering on it with great enthusiasm
+and high hopes of the future of the new country. The
+wave of occupation passed on to the Burdekin River,
+causing a great demand for sheep and cattle for the
+purpose of stocking new country in the north and
+west. The requirements of this great augmentation
+of the stock northwards led to the opening of Bowen
+or Port Denison as a port of shipment for supplies.
+The discovery and opening of Port Denison will be
+treated of elsewhere; its opening to commerce was a
+boon to those who were occupying the country im<span class="pagenum">[Pg 112]</span>mediately
+at the rear of the port. Many overlanders
+took advantage of the port by shearing or lambing
+their sheep wherever a chance offered, and after obtaining
+supplies for the road, were prepared to extend
+their search for new country still further away. The
+Bowen River country is very interesting and its
+scenery most picturesque; it has first-class grazing
+qualities, small open plains, with patches of brigalow
+scrub scattered over black-soil country. Sandstone
+ranges bound the creeks on the coast side, whence they
+come down to the main stream. The river is a fine
+stream, with long and deep reaches, in which are
+found alligators of large size that have come up from
+the Burdekin River. Among the early settlers to take
+up country was Mr. J. G. Macdonald, afterwards an
+early pioneer in the Gulf country, though not a resident
+there. He took up, in conjunction with others,
+a large area of country in the Bowen district, afterwards
+known as Dalrymple, Inkermann, Strathbogie,
+and Ravenswood. His residence at Adelaide Point
+was at one period the show place of the North, where
+Mrs. Macdonald (after whom Adelaide Point was
+named) dispensed hospitality with a kindly grace which
+won all hearts. Of all this, nothing now remains but
+a memory. The house is gone; Mr. Macdonald is
+dead, and the family dispersed. Carpentaria Downs
+was also taken up by J. G. Macdonald, on the head of
+the Einasleigh River, for a long time the outside
+settlement.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 113]</span></p>
+
+<p>One of the early sheep stations held by Mr. Henning
+was located on the Bowen River, while lower down
+a fine piece of country called Havilah was held with
+sheep by Hillfling and Petersen&mdash;this was before 1862.
+Other stations occupied somewhere about this time,
+or even earlier, were Strathmore and Sonoma, held by
+Sellheim and Touissaint, with stock from Canning
+Downs. These stations were a stage still further north,
+the surrounding country being fine open forest land,
+very well grassed and watered. These runs were the
+first taken up in the pastoral district called Kennedy.</p>
+
+<p>The main stock route northward followed the
+Bowen River settlements crossing Pelican Creek, a
+tributary of the Bowen, through Sonoma run, then
+to the Bogie, and across to the Burdekin River, following
+up that stream to the Clarke and Lynd Rivers.
+Knowledge of a great pastoral country away to the
+shores of the Gulf and extending far up the Burdekin
+River was in the possession of many pioneer explorers
+whose names are unrecorded, and the tide of advancing
+settlement followed on as fast as was possible,
+stations being formed to the right and left of the main
+routes, while others moved forward with a restless
+energy that nothing would satisfy but the best country
+for their stock. One route turned on the Bowen River
+to the west, and crossed the Suttor River above Mount
+McConnel near the junction of the Cape River
+that came in from the westward. This stock track
+soon became a main road owing to the traffic which<span class="pagenum">[Pg 114]</span>
+was carried on from the newly-opened port of Bowen
+or Port Denison to the western settlements, even to
+Bowen Downs station. The road led across the
+Leichhardt Range&mdash;another heavy piece for teams,
+equal to Connor&#8217;s Range, the sharp stones laming the
+bullocks, and making the ascent a trial of patience
+and endurance to man and beast. A station called
+Natal Downs was held by Kellet and Spry on the Cape
+River, and by this route a great many of the early
+settlers in the far west travelled their stock during
+1864-65. The blacks were aggressive in those days
+on Natal Downs, and were in the habit of cutting off
+the shepherds at outstations; it was reported and
+believed that as many as eighteen shepherds were
+killed at various outstations in the first few years of
+settlement there.</p>
+
+<p>Onward and westward went the movement of
+stock. The principal topic of conversation turned
+always upon new country, the latest discoveries of
+good grazing lands, and the men who were following
+with sheep and cattle. The way out west in those
+first days led up the Cape River through poor country,
+with a good deal of spinifex grass and patches of
+poison bush. On the flat tableland dividing the Gulf
+waters from those flowing towards the Thomson, were
+a series of large shallow swamps, known as Billy
+Webb&#8217;s Lake, a kind of halting place for stock. Between
+this and the Flinders waters lies a tract of country
+nearly two hundred miles in width, called the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 115]</span>
+Desert&mdash;and the name is a well-deserved one. The
+Desert consists of spinifex ridges and sandy sterile
+country, covered in large patches with the desert
+poison shrub botanically known as &#8220;Gastrolobium
+grandiflora.&#8221; This dangerous plant grows to a height
+of six to eight feet in separate bushes, and exhibits a
+bluish-silvery sheen conspicuous afar off. It bears a
+scarlet blossom like a vetch, and the leaf is indented at
+the outer end. Its poisonous nature was soon proved
+by the first stock that attempted the passage. Many
+of the early drovers lost large numbers of both cattle
+and sheep from its deadly effects. In one camp,
+Halloran&#8217;s and Alexander&#8217;s, as many as 1,500 sheep
+died in one night from eating it. All the stock passing
+through this belt of desert country paid some tribute
+to its evil properties. This poison plant is peculiar
+to the strip of desert country that extends along the
+dividing watershed for many hundreds of miles, from
+the Alice River reaching north as far as the Lynd.</p>
+
+<p>The symptoms of poisoning from this plant are
+a kind of madness, causing animals to rush about
+furiously, and then, becoming paralysed, to fall helpless
+to the ground, and soon expire. There are but one
+or two varieties of the plant in Queensland, though in
+Western Australia twelve or fourteen varieties of
+Gastrolobium are found.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the destructive poison plant, there is the
+evil-smelling repellant spinifex growing through this
+strip of vile country, as well as a low, close scrub,<span class="pagenum">>[Pg 116]</span>
+through all of which stock has to be got before the
+open plain country is reached. A great scarcity of
+surface water, and low stony ridges with heavy patches
+of red sand, are characteristic of poison country.
+Glad indeed were the pioneers to leave it behind, and
+with great satisfaction to stand on the rocky eminence
+that bounded it on the western side, whence they
+looked down the open valley of the Jardine, and beheld
+the downs and the grassy plains of the Flinders spreading
+out before them for many miles. The sight came
+as a surprise and relief after so much disagreeable
+travelling through the worst portion of North Queensland,
+especially should a thunderstorm have passed
+over the country recently and caused a spring in the
+herbage. The Flinders River flowing to the west and
+north-west towards the Gulf of Carpentaria, through
+most extensive plains and downs, traverses a different
+geological formation to that which the pioneers crossed
+when coming from the east coast. The edge of the
+great cretaceous formation which forms the major
+portion of the western country, is here entered on for
+the first time, and a new strange world seems to open
+up. A new fauna and flora is evident on the very
+first entrance into the new region; the birds are different
+and more numerous; galas, parrots, and pigeons
+abound, and assure the newcomer that he has found a
+new pastoral country, the grasses and herbage of which
+are more permanent, enduring and nutritive than
+those he has hitherto met with. The downs, covered<span class="pagenum">[Pg 117]</span>
+with the Mitchell grass, with scarcely a bush or shrub
+to break the monotony, stretch away as far as the
+eye can see; while the heavy timber along the creeks
+and rivers indicates their course. A dreary monotony
+prevails on the western rivers, the same everlasting
+plains, the same great grassy waste of downs like an
+ocean without its interesting motion. Far ahead can be
+seen the river timber winding through the brown
+plains, so that the traveller can see a whole day&#8217;s stage
+ahead. For over a hundred of miles along the north-eastern,
+or right bank of the Flinders River, is a tableland
+of basaltic formation, near which the river winds
+its course; a dark fringe of rocks rises abruptly,
+broken here and there by indentations through which
+flow creeks to join the main channel. The cone of
+eruption for this vast overflow of lava is said to be
+somewhere about Mount Sturgeon, to the eastward.
+The lava has flowed over the original sandstone formation,
+and formed a level tableland now broken and
+covered with black, porous blocks of lava of every
+size. It is utilised for pasture purposes, notwithstanding
+its forbidding aspect.</p>
+
+<p>Some time after Rule and Lacy stocked the
+Aramac, Mr. Hodgson arrived on it with sheep and
+took up and stocked Rodney Downs; he crossed the
+spinifex country from the Belyando to the Alice River,
+and lost about six thousand sheep on this track by
+poison bush, the Gastrolobium grandiflora. Mr. Meredith
+arrived in May of the same year on the Thom<span class="pagenum">[Pg 118]</span>son,
+and took up and stocked Tower Hill station.
+During June of this year the Thomson and Aramac
+Creek were in high flood; Rule and Lacy were flooded
+out of their first camp, and removed to where Aramac
+station now is. Some stockmen looking after the
+company&#8217;s cattle on an anabranch of Cornish Creek,
+were surrounded by water, and lived on jerked beef
+for a month. About July the head station was shifted
+up to Cornish Creek, taking the name of Bowen
+Downs with it, which name it has since retained. In
+1872 the cattle station was formed into a separate
+establishment under the management of Mr. E. R.
+Edkins, who called it Mount Cornish, in honor of the
+late E. B. Cornish, of Sydney. This year wound up
+with a wet Christmas. Wages in those days were
+very high, stockmen getting as much as 40s. a week,
+and cooks 30s.; any old horse would bring £25. The
+year 1864 may be styled the year of Hegira or flight
+of stock outwards to settle new country; they came
+from all parts, and helped to fill the land everywhere
+with the beginning of civilisation. A boom had set
+in for pastoral occupation; the reports of recent explorations
+told of enormous tracts of grand open country
+waiting for stock to utilise it, and each one was
+anxious to be the first to secure some of it for his
+sheep or cattle. The head of the Flinders River was
+occupied by a few settlers, and two lots of sheep passed
+Bowen Downs, en route to the Flinders. They belonged
+to Kirk and Sutherland, and Mr. J. L. Ranken,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 119]</span>
+and came from Fort Cooper way, losing heavily in
+crossing the range between Bully Creek and Lake
+Buchanan, between eight and ten thousand sheep
+perishing through eating the desert poison bush. They
+discovered what was the cause of such losses by
+feeding some sheep on the suspected plant when
+they died with all the symptoms of the victims in the
+desert track. The first white man known to have
+been killed by the blacks on the Thomson was one
+of the shepherds with Kirk and Sutherland&#8217;s sheep.
+He was killed on Duck Pond Creek, a tributary of
+Cornish Creek. After he was buried, the blacks dug
+the body up at night and drove a stake through it,
+pinning it to the ground. Kirk and Sutherland must
+have reached the Flinders about April, and then occupied
+and stocked Marathon. Mr. J. L. Ranken occupied
+Afton Downs, but was dried out the following
+year, and he lost a number of his sheep in consequence
+of having to remove them lower down the Flinders.
+In March of this year Mr. Meredith, of Tower Hill,
+formed a station on the east side of Landsborough
+Creek, naming it Eversleigh, and stocked it with cattle.
+In March also Bowen Downs sent cattle up the Landsborough
+for the purpose of stocking the west side of
+the creek. The men with the cattle had a very rough
+trip, as there was incessant rain, and the country became
+one vast quagmire; all their rations and ammunition
+were spoilt, and they had to live on young calf,
+&#8220;staggering bob,&#8221; as they called it. Mr. E. H. Butler<span class="pagenum">[Pg 120]</span>
+was in charge, and after leaving the cattle, started for
+home at the Mud Hut, when a thunderstorm occurred
+that put out their fire and wet all their matches. The
+river branches were flooded, and during the next two
+days they had nothing to eat, and no fire, and were
+drenched to the skin by thunderstorms; their pack-horse
+with all their blankets had knocked up, and
+they passed the night without sleep, being wet and
+cold and hungry; next morning they had to swim the
+main branch of the river, and then walk four miles
+to the station, leaving behind one of their mates
+knocked up on an island in the river. About September
+of this year (1864), Bowen Downs despatched
+about fifteen hundred head of cattle in charge of Mr.
+Donald McGlashen to the Gulf of Carpentaria for the
+purpose of taking up country and stocking it. These
+cattle travelled up the Landsborough, crossed the
+watershed on to Walker&#8217;s Creek, followed it down to
+the Flinders, and down that river to the turn off to
+Sackey&#8217;s Lagoon, and down the Alexandra to the
+Leichhardt, then across by Miller&#8217;s Waterhole to
+Beame&#8217;s Brook, where the first station was formed
+called the Brook, about sixteen miles above where
+Burketown now stands; they arrived there before the
+end of 1864, and were the first stock to occupy the
+Gulf country. When Mr. Landsborough left the
+Albert River on his trip in search of Burke and Wills,
+he left a four hundred gallon tank there with a lot of
+rations in it for the use of any distressed explorers or<span class="pagenum">[Pg 121]</span>
+others, and fastened the lid in such a way that he
+thought the blacks would be unable to open it; but
+when Mr. McGlashen found the tank, he discovered
+that the blacks had solved the problem, and the rations
+were not there. When they were mustering these
+cattle before starting, the boss, Mr. A. Scott Holmes,
+riding along with a stockman, met a blackfellow whose
+gin had two half-caste children with her, aged about
+nine and seven years; the blackfellow evidently wanted
+them to see the children, as he kept pointing to them.
+Some years after this it was reported that two half-castes
+were with the blacks out to the west of the
+Thomson, but nothing more was heard of them.</p>
+
+<p>It was during this year of 1864 that the first
+settlers found their way to the Barcoo, although the
+fame of its pastures had been known years before from
+the reports of Sir Thomas Mitchell and others explorers.
+Among the first to settle there was J. T. Allen,
+who took up Enniskillen in 1862, and who still resides
+there. Bell and Dutton took up Tambo station, close
+to where the township of the same name sprang up
+afterwards. Govett and Parsons took up Terrick, and
+Yaldwyn occupied Ravensbourne, while Moor and
+Reid held Moorsland, now called Lorne. Henry
+Edwards, from the Burnett, took up Malvern, which
+was sold the same year to the Ellis Bros., who then
+occupied Portland.</p>
+
+<p>In 1865, C. Lumley Hill, with Allen and Holberton,
+took up Isis Downs. Then a pause ensued in<span class="pagenum">[Pg 122]</span>
+occupying new runs, and progress was checked; but
+after the passing of the Pastoral Leases Act of 1869,
+which gave greater facilities for the occupation of new
+country, and more liberal terms, many runs were occupied;
+among them, Mr. Hill held Westlands. A. B.
+Buchanan took up Wellshot, while Welford took up
+Welford Downs, and was killed by the blacks in 1872.
+Among the runs opened in those days were Tocal,
+Bimerah, Mount Marlow, and Louisa Downs. The
+stock to occupy all these runs in those early days
+mainly came from the Darling Downs and Burnett, as
+in the first days of the Queensland Parliament an Act
+was passed excluding New South Wales stock. Mr.
+Hill, in 1874, sold Isis Downs, which was divided into
+three runs called Albilbah, Ruthven, and Isis Downs.
+A great deal of the western plain country was occupied
+during the years between 1865 and 1870, and a great
+deal of interest and energy was exhibited in taking up
+and selling large blocks of fine pastoral country.
+Sheep for stocking country rose to high prices, but
+when the crisis occurred, there was a collapse in values,
+and many abandoned a good deal of the country and
+disappeared from the scene.</p>
+
+<p>Berkelman and Lambert discovered and settled
+Elizabeth Creek and Listowel Downs. Mr. H. E.
+King was the first Land Commissioner, and superintended
+the laying out of Tambo, the first town on
+the Barcoo. The price of carriage for supplies in those
+day was £46 per ton. Cameron and Crombie took<span class="pagenum">[Pg 123]</span>
+up Barcaldine in 1864 with sheep from New England,
+and, in conjunction with Mr. Allen, they also took up
+Home Creek, Enniskillen, Minnie Downs, Vergemont,
+and Evesham. They brought their stock by the Burnett,
+the Dawson, and Springsure, over the Expedition
+Range. There was the usual trouble with the blacks
+after settling down. The natives killed the shepherds
+and robbed the huts of rations and cooking utensils
+that were very difficult to replace in those days. The
+Peak Downs was first reported on by Dr. Leichhardt,
+but many years elapsed before occupation set in.
+Among those who were prominent in the opening up
+and early settlement of the fine tableland of Peak
+Downs, with its rich soil, were De Satge and Milford,
+of Wolfang; Mackay, of Huntley; Gordon Sandeman,
+of Gordon Downs; Hood, of Hood and Manning;
+and Lamb and Black, of Yamala.</p>
+
+<p>As the character of the new country became
+known, many other runs near Hughenden were occupied
+by overlanders struggling along with stock,
+among them was Fairlight, on the basalt ridge,
+held with sheep by Henry Betts. Afton Downs,
+as has already been mentioned, was taken up
+with sheep by Mr. Ranken, who deserted it later
+with a considerable loss of stock owing to drought.
+Kirk and Sutherland, who had come from Suttor
+Creek with sheep in 1863 were also dried out from
+Marathon, and suffered great losses. Both of these
+runs now possess flowing streams in every direction,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 124]</span>
+formed by artesian bores. Notable among the early
+settlers was the family of the Annings, father and sons,
+from Victoria. They held Reedy Springs, on the head
+waters of the Flinders, Charlotte Plains, and several
+other stations formed by their enterprise; the sons still
+occupy the same country, and have grown gray in
+pioneering. Another Victorian firm, Muirson, Jamieson
+and Thompson, occupied Mount Emu with sheep
+in 1862, after much travelling about in search of suitable
+country. Mrs. Thompson, with a young family,
+accompanied her husband in those early pioneering
+days of roughness and privation, and lived at Mount
+Emu for many years, where her large family grew up,
+and her sons are now occupying runs throughout the
+district. The hospitality of Mount Emu was proverbial,
+and the refinement that prevailed in all the
+arrangements at the head station gave additional value
+to the welcome that was extended to all travellers.
+On the Burdekin country, the family of the Hanns,
+father and sons, possessed themselves of Maryvale, a
+splendid piece of country.</p>
+
+<p>The farthest outstation north in 1860-61 was that
+of W. Stenhouse, on the Clarke, a tributary of the
+Burdekin. Seventy miles nearer Bowen, was the
+station of Allingham Bros., and thirty-five miles still
+nearer port were located the Messrs Cunningham.
+Ernest Henry very early took up Mount McConnel,
+at the junction of the Suttor and Selheim Rivers;
+this is one of the old landmarks of Leichhardt when<span class="pagenum">[Pg 125]</span>
+on his trip to Port Essington in 1844-45. Stock were
+taken there from Baroondah, on the Dawson, in 1860;
+and later on Hughenden station was settled with stock
+taken from Mount McConnel. Hughenden is situated
+at the beginning of the open plain country on the
+Flinders; it was one of the first stations settled there
+in 1864. The present head station is on the exact spot
+taken up so long ago, but is somewhat different in style
+to the original slab hut on the ridge in which Mr. R. R.
+Morrissett and his hutkeeper, old Jack Ryan, dwelt in
+1864, when water for the use of the head station was
+drawn from the junction of the creek with the river,
+that being the only surface water within miles. Mr.
+Ernest Henry, a most energetic and indefatigable pioneer
+carried on a good deal of prospecting on the Cloncurry,
+and was the earliest discoverer of the mineral
+wealth of the district. A company was formed in 1868
+to work the copper lodes discovered by Mr. Henry, but
+after expending large sums of money on smelting
+works, etc., they were obliged to cease operations on
+account of the expense of carriage and the low price of
+copper. H. Devilin was one of the most active and
+venturesome pioneers in discovering and making
+known to others the country on the Flinders. He
+opened the way for several stockowners in that extensive
+district, though he himself does not appear to have
+had much personal interest in any of the speculations.</p>
+
+<p>In opening up the highway through the head of
+the Flinders to the far west, these pioneers were the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 126]</span>
+forerunners of the great wave of settlement that followed
+on immediately afterwards, notwithstanding the
+deterrent features of the desert and the poison bush,
+through which they had to pass with their stock. Up
+to 1864 the runs that had been stocked on the Upper
+Flinders downs were Fairlight, by Betts and Oxley
+with sheep, and Telemon station by Collins and Walpole.
+This last property is now owned by J. L. Currie,
+of Melbourne, is mostly freehold, and with the discovery
+of artesian water, and the introduction of fine
+wooled sheep, has become a most valuable estate. It
+consists of open rolling downs, with patches of gidya,
+a species of acacia. Marathon, on the Upper Flinders,
+was taken up by R. H. Sheaffe, who for five years
+represented the Burke district in the Legislative Assembly.
+The run was sold by him to Kirk and Sutherland,
+who were in search of grass for their sheep.
+Marathon is now owned by a Melbourne firm, and by
+means of artesian wells, carries 200,000 sheep. After
+being dried out from Afton Downs, John Ranken, a
+member of a very old colonial family in New South
+Wales, eventually found his way to Barkly Tableland,
+where he settled for a time. Afton Downs is situated
+on Walker&#8217;s Creek, a tributary of the Flinders on
+the western side, and is of the usual open rolling
+downs formation. All these runs, as previously mentioned,
+were occupied before the discovery of artesian
+springs, and therefore subject to being periodically
+dried out. At the present day, with judicious expen<span class="pagenum">[Pg 127]</span>diture
+on artesian wells, and other improvements,
+this run annually shears close on 100,000 sheep.
+Following down the Flinders through the great
+plain country, the next station occupied was
+Richmond Downs, where a struggling township
+named Richmond now stands; this was held in
+1864 by Bundock and Hays, with cattle from
+the Clarence River, in New South Wales. They
+lost many on their way out by pleuro-pneumonia
+and the desert poison bush already described. Opposite
+to Richmond Downs, across the Flinders River,
+Kennedy and Macdonald took up about the same time
+a run which they called Cambridge Downs, now a
+large sheep station. All these runs on the Upper
+Flinders were first settled in 1864, and formed an outpost
+of settlement by which other pioneers directed
+their course lower down the river. During 1865 and
+the following year, another wave of occupation flowed
+on past these outside stations, and the new pioneers
+finding country further on, became in their turn a
+starting point for others, and still the tide flowed outwards
+and westwards till all available country was
+taken up. Those who came out during 1864 and 1865
+had a serious difficulty to contend with in facing a
+drier season than has since been experienced up to
+1897. The pioneers with their stock were compelled
+to follow the course of the river, as it was almost certain
+death to go far to the west looking for water or
+country. All the tributary creeks of the Flinders were<span class="pagenum">[Pg 128]</span>
+dry, and those who ventured out had soon to return
+to the main watercourse. The native dogs crowded in
+on the Flinders in thousands, and the blacks themselves
+had also to resort to it. During that trying season,
+none of the rivers ran in their channels, and even most
+of the large waterholes in the bed of the Flinders
+dried up, while stages of thirty or forty miles without
+water were frequent. Notwithstanding these drawbacks
+to stockowners who were on the search for some
+unfrequented nook to unharness on, the crowd pressed
+on in the hope of better country ahead, some Canaan
+far beyond, where hills were always green and water
+abundant. These men followed each other in quick
+succession and took up runs on the Lower Flinders
+and all over the Gulf country, wherever water could be
+found.</p>
+
+<p>This settlement, carried out in those early years,
+was most extensive and comprehensive, and during the
+time the western country was being sought out and
+utilised the Burdekin was being stocked in every part.
+One of the pioneers was Mr. Robert Stewart, of Southwick
+station, on Fletcher&#8217;s Creek, a stream of pure,
+clear water, flowing from the great basaltic wall into
+the Burdekin. Reedy Lake station was stocked with
+sheep by O&#8217;Reilly and Reeve, near Dalrymple, where
+the main route from Bowen to the Gulf crossed the
+Burdekin River. Many other runs were taken up on
+the Burdekin and towards the coast, and many
+soon changed hands, the first settlers passing on to<span class="pagenum">[Pg 129]</span>
+occupy country in the interior. Several of these first-comers
+took up coast runs and stocked them with
+sheep, believing they would thrive there. This was
+found to be a mistake, and from Wide Bay to the north
+scarcely any sheep are now to be met with on coastal
+runs. For a few years in some places they did well
+enough, but they soon began to die from fluke, worms,
+and grass seeds, and they were accordingly replaced
+by cattle. The sheep on being removed to western
+pastures throve well, and soon recovered health. The
+seeds of the spear grass (Andropogon contortus) were
+a terrible scourge&mdash;they are finely barbed and intensely
+sharp and hard; once entered they pass right
+through the skin of the sheep, even into the flesh,
+causing great annoyance and leading to poverty and
+death. The soil in which this grass thrives best is in the
+sandy strips along the banks of creeks. After seeding,
+the heads bunch together, in tangled masses, and
+shower the seeds on to sheep passing through. It is of
+use as a fodder grass only when young and green,
+although cattle thrive fairly well upon it, and its presence
+in any quantity at once determines whether the
+pasturage is favourable to sheep or not. The cattle that
+were brought from Bowen Downs to stock the runs
+taken up on the Gulf, were brought to their northern
+starting point from Fort Cooper and further south
+during 1860 by N. Buchanan and W. Landsborough,
+who were both very active and enterprising in opening
+up new country. This splendid property (Bowen<span class="pagenum">[Pg 130]</span>
+Downs) was settled by the Landsborough River Company,
+held in shares by Messrs. N. Buchanan, W.
+Landsborough, Cornish, and W. Glen Walker, with
+Messrs. Morehead and Young, of Sydney. The first
+four went out of the company shortly afterwards, and
+Mr. Cornish, after visiting the Gulf country, fell a victim
+to maladies contracted during the journey. Mount
+Cornish was known in the early days as the Mud Hut.
+Mr. E. R. Edkins, who has now been the manager for
+many years, was among the very early drovers of
+stock to the Gulf. He left the Murray in 1861, and
+started from the Gil-gil in January, 1862, passed Rockhampton,
+took in charge Mr. R. Stewart&#8217;s cattle, and
+brought them to Fletcher&#8217;s Creek, now Southwick,
+on the Lower Burdekin, and reached Maryvale in September
+of that year. He then returned to the Murray,
+and brought out another lot of cattle, passing Bowen
+in April, 1864. Here the cattle were placed in quarantine.
+After being inoculated for pleuro, they travelled
+on to Mount Emu, in September, 1864. James Gibson
+also took up a run on Junction Creek, also Wanda
+Vale and Cargoon stations.</p>
+
+<p>Among the settlers who were first in the new
+country on the Flinders were Messrs. Little and
+Hetzer, who took up a run called Uralla, near the
+junction of the Saxby and Flinders Rivers. Their
+stock consisting of cattle and sheep came by Bowen
+Downs to the head of the Flinders, and then followed
+the usual route. The blacks made some trouble at<span class="pagenum">[Pg 131]</span>
+the station and several lives were sacrificed. Others
+of the pioneers to try their fortune in the general rush
+for new country were the Earle Brothers, who had a
+station near Bowen; one of them, Mr. Thomas Earle,
+took up country on Spear Creek, the head of the Norman
+River, in 1865, and called the station Iffley. The
+season was so uncommonly dry, that permanent water
+was the chief attraction, and the splendid waterhole
+at Iffley, more than two miles long, and very deep,
+decided the Earles to fix themselves there with their
+cattle and drays. There was at the time a vast extent
+of country open for settlement; the terms were fairly
+liberal, and the prospects good for those in search of
+new runs. The settlers were like a great advancing
+army, confident in their numbers and strength; and so
+they advanced into the unknown land, and left the rest
+to fortune. They came from all the settled parts of
+Australia; that was what induced Mr. H. F. Smith, of
+Barnes and Smith, to bring cattle from Lyndhurst and
+take up a run on the Lower Flinders, called Tempe
+Downs, on L Creek, so called from a tree marked L,
+one of Leichhardt&#8217;s marked trees when on his expedition
+to Port Essington, 1844-5. In 1865 James Kennedy
+took stock from Cambridge Downs, and held a
+fine run on the Upper Leichhardt River, calling it
+Pentland Downs. In the same year, James Cassidy
+occupied country lower down on the same river with
+sheep. One of the pioneers who went through much
+personal privation and hardship in the general forward<span class="pagenum">[Pg 132]</span>
+march to discover new country, was Mr. Reginald
+Halloran, associated with his brother-in-law, Mr.
+Robert Alexander, of Proston, on the Burnett. They
+suffered heavy losses among the sheep while going
+through the desert, from the poison plant, and also
+from want of water. With the party was a young fellow
+named Briggs, who was killed by the blacks on
+Skeleton Creek before reaching Hughenden while a
+detachment of the party was camped there. The remnant
+of the stock that survived the trip were placed on a
+piece of country on the Lower Flinders, which they
+named Home Creek, but which was soon deserted by
+this firm, though held as a station years afterwards.
+Mr. Halloran was a man conspicuous for his utter
+disregard of personal comfort; he would start on a
+ride of a hundred miles without rations or blanket,
+trusting to the chapter of accidents for food, and to
+his saddle cloth for covering for the night, and he was
+always welcome at any camp owing to his geniality
+and fund of humour. The young fellow, Briggs, who
+met with an untimely death, had arrived at the advance
+camp only the night before for rations, and while
+alone in the tent next morning, the other man being
+absent horse-hunting, a party of blacks visited the
+camp. The white man showed fight, breaking a gun
+over the head of one of the blacks, but was soon
+killed, and when the horse-hunter returned, he found
+Briggs dead and the camp looted.</p>
+
+<p>A place called Sorghum Downs, on the Lower<span class="pagenum">[Pg 133]</span>
+Cloncurry, now part of Conobie, was claimed by an
+old colonist and pioneer named Murdoch Campbell;
+he and his wife (a Devonshire woman), had camped
+on the Bowen River in 1863, but it was a long time
+before they found their way out so far west. Mrs.
+Campbell&#8217;s hospitality and kindness to all travellers
+was one of the pleasant remembrances of those early
+hard times. Campbell died in 1867, and Mrs. Campbell
+ultimately went to New Zealand, where she had
+friends. A small firm of two men, Anderson and
+Trimble, successful diggers from the Snowy River,
+in New South Wales, joined the rest of the pushing
+crowd, and held a good run on the Saxby River with
+sheep.</p>
+
+<p>Still the tide of occupation flowed on, and when
+all the available watered runs around the Gulf were
+occupied in 1865 and the following year, those remaining
+unsatisfied, marched on, restless as the surges
+that beat on the shore. Several of those in charge of
+stock travelled up the Gregory River southwards, and
+out far away on to Barkly Tableland, discovered by Mr.
+W. Landsborough. These were among the first to
+make known the capabilities of this splendid district.
+The Stieglitz Brothers held country far away to the
+south on the Herbert River, called now the Georgina,
+having passed through all the Flinders and Gulf country
+unrewarded.</p>
+
+<p>Gregg and Nash, with sheep for the Messrs.
+J. and E. Brown, of Newcastle, followed on the far<span class="pagenum">[Pg 134]</span>-away
+track to the inland Never-Never, Mrs. Gregg
+and her daughter accompanying the party in all their
+wanderings. The attention and hospitality of this lady
+to all travellers was as conspicuous as it was highly
+prized, and it will not be easily forgotten. Several other
+pioneers occupied runs on the Barkly tablelands, which
+was recognised as some of the finest pastoral land in
+Queensland. In after years, when this country came
+to be restocked by a new generation from the south,
+after being deserted and forsaken by the original
+pioneers, the new settlers were surprised to find evidences
+of a previous occupation. Where the early
+settlers had come from, where they had gone to, and
+who they were, were matters of curiosity; sheets of
+galvanised iron they well knew did not grow like the
+gidya trees, neither were old sheepyards (built of
+basaltic stones) the work of blacks. But who those
+early pioneers were, and what their fate, was utterly
+unknown, and caused much speculation.</p>
+
+<p>All the country bordering on the Gulf suitable
+for grazing purposes was portioned out and occupied
+between the years 1864 and 1868. Though in most
+cases the number of stock on each run was small,
+the runs were numerous, and most of the owners were
+resident. It was recognised that a great future was
+in store for this vast new territory just opening up
+to enterprise and capital. The Plains of Promise,
+named by one of the early navigators (Captain Stokes,
+of the &#8220;Beagle,&#8221; in 1842), had been much talked of<span class="pagenum">[Pg 135]</span>
+for years, but when they were stocked, the distant
+fields lost much of their interest. The fine rivers
+flowing into the Gulf of Carpentaria, through hundreds
+of miles of open plains and rolling downs,
+covered with permanent and valuable pasturage, gave
+to the early settlers good reasons for believing they
+were the pioneers in opening up a grand and wealth-producing
+territory.</p>
+
+<p>Stations were formed, stock brought out, improvements
+made, and the way opened for permanent
+occupation. The high hopes entertained seemed
+likely to be realised, until a change came over the
+aspect of things&mdash;a change brought about by influences
+far removed from the local scene, and in which
+the settlers had no voice&mdash;a change in which no
+amount of energy or sacrifice on their part could avail
+aught. The days of commercial panic set in, culminating
+in the crisis of 1868-69, the march of settlement
+was instantly checked, and the outward flow of
+civilisation turned backwards. The financial crisis
+was felt all over the mercantile world; banks of old
+standing collapsed, and low prices for wool and stock,
+and all station produce, brought the pastoral industry
+to a low ebb.</p>
+
+<p>In consequence of these monetary disturbances,
+agents declined to find money to carry on places so
+far distant as the Gulf stations&mdash;even the little required
+for current expenses. All credit was stopped, and
+supplies also, and as the newly-formed stations could<span class="pagenum">[Pg 136]</span>
+not be made self-supporting in the absence of local
+markets, the stock had to be abandoned or removed.
+The tide began to ebb at a greater rate than it had
+risen; some of the stock were sent south, while the
+rest were boiled down, scarcely clearing expenses in
+either case; the improvements were abandoned as well
+as the runs. The sheep came in from Barkly
+Tableland, the Gregory, and the Leichhardt, and by
+the year 1871, there were but few runs occupied.
+The great flood of 1869-70 helped to fill the cup of
+misfortune for the Gulf residents; no such flood was
+ever dreamt of, or has ever been seen since; it rained
+all January, February, and most of March, and the
+rivers covered all the plain country, though the loss
+of stock was small. A few runs on the Flinders and
+Cloncurry were still kept in occupation, but they were
+not many, and these only struggled along, hoping for
+better times. No value was attached to runs or stock
+in any of the Gulf country then, as runs could be
+obtained much nearer settlement for next to nothing,
+many being thrown up through the general depression.
+It seemed as if the bottom had fallen out of
+the pastoral industry, and hope had gone, but relief
+came sooner than was expected. The Etheridge goldfield
+was opened, and served to employ a good deal
+of the floating population. This field is situated to
+the east of Normanton on the Delany and Etheridge
+Rivers, about 250 miles towards the east coast. The
+discovery of auriferous reefs there, as well as some<span class="pagenum">[Pg 137]</span>
+alluvial gold, helped to keep trade alive, until the
+discovery of the rich fields on the Palmer in 1873, when
+a great demand set in for cattle. The financial depression
+lifted, the price of wool went up 100 per cent.,
+and a demand again arose for runs to stock; the old
+ones were all taken up, new country was applied for,
+and the voice of the man with money was heard again
+in the land. In the years following, up to 1884, much
+speculation was carried on in buying and selling runs
+and stock, and country for occupation was as eagerly
+sought after as in the early days.</p>
+
+<p>Advantage was taken of the liberal provisions
+of the Pastoral Leases Act of 1869, to take up
+unoccupied country, even if it was dry. Cattle were
+selling on the Palmer diggings at £10 and £12 a
+head cash, and the supply of bullocks was not equal
+to the demand, because the runs had been so thinned
+by the exodus of stock south to clear expenses, that
+no surplus was available to meet such a sudden demand
+as that caused by the arrival of 20,000 diggers
+in the north. Then the tide flowed again, and became
+the flood that helped to fill the country with work and
+life. Cattle came out in large numbers, and passed on
+to occupy country in the northern territory of South
+Australia, and even in Western Australia. As many
+as 30,000 head passed over the border in one year at
+Burketown, for the purpose of stocking country
+around Port Darwin.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 138]</span></p>
+
+<p>For several years travelling stock went out to the
+far north-west, and all had to pass through the Gulf
+country. The route followed from the borders of
+Queensland was by the track that Leichhardt took
+on his journey to Port Essington, between the tableland
+and salt water, crossing the Macarthur, Roper,
+Calvert, and other rivers. Stations were occupied
+on the Orde and Victoria Rivers on the Cambridge
+Gulf side with stock from North Queensland. In
+those districts some very fine open downs country
+had recently been discovered. Fisher and Lyons had
+20,000 head of cattle sent out to their country in the
+north-west. Osman and Panton also had large numbers
+of cattle from Queensland. Dr. Brown is reported
+to have expended £100,000 is sending sheep
+and cattle from the Adelaide side to the northern
+territory. The stocking of this far away country was
+extremely expensive owing to the distance the cattle
+had to travel, and the unusually high percentage of
+losses on the way. Some of the stock were two years
+on the road, and a new disease called red water attacked
+them when passing the Roper River. This
+disease is supposed to be due to cattle ticks (Ixodes
+Bovis), and has since carried disaster into many herds
+in Queensland. The average cost of some of the
+cattle when arrived on their country was equal to £7
+a head, in consequence of losses and expenses. The
+Gordon Brothers were among the early drovers to
+take stock over the borders to West Australia, and<span class="pagenum">[Pg 139]</span>
+they made several trips. The Duracks are another
+family of pioneer settlers in the northern territory, and
+held extensive possessions. The country bordering
+the rivers that flow into the Cambridge Gulf was reported
+to be of a superior description and of a fattening
+nature. Though much of the country in the northern
+territory was reckoned of an inferior description
+for grazing, the encouraging terms of leasing
+offered by the South Australian Government induced
+many to venture on the hazardous undertaking. The
+markets opened up by the goldfields of Port Darwin
+repaid some of their enterprise. Bullocks were sold
+at from £17 to £20 cash for butchering purposes.
+Eventually a shipping trade in cattle was opened up
+with Singapore from Port Darwin; a company built
+special steamers for carrying stock and passengers
+to the northern ports. The results have proved satisfactory,
+as the s.s. &#8220;Darwin&#8221; lately (1897) took a cargo
+of 190 head of fat bullocks on board, this being her
+forty-second trip.</p>
+
+<p>The Cape York Peninsula, within which was
+found the rich Palmer diggings, came in for a share
+of settlement between 1875 and 1880. The first of the
+early pioneers to take up a cattle run on the Mitchell
+River was Mr. A. C. Grant, now of Messrs. B. D.
+Morehead and Co. He left the Bowen River with
+three hundred fat cattle from Havilah station for
+Messrs. Skene and Henderson, and took up Wrotham
+Park in 1873, situated between the Mitchell and Walsh<span class="pagenum">[Pg 140]</span>
+Rivers, on Elizabeth Creek, 120 miles N.N.E. from
+Georgetown, a nice open piece of country, consisting
+of black soil flats and ridges. The cattle he took up
+realised £11 5s. per head cash all round; beef was
+then selling on the field at 1s. per lb. Mr. Patrick
+Callaghan held a few blocks of country along the
+Mitchell River, chiefly as a depôt for bullocks for sale
+on the various diggings, as he became a large buyer
+of cattle from the local market in conjunction with
+F. Leslie, J. Edwards, and J. Duff. The transactions
+and profits of this enterprising firm were on a very
+large scale, one partner travelling outside buying
+cattle, another superintending the supply to local
+butchers, and the other two attending to the gold buying,
+slaughtering, and financial business of the concern.
+The next to take up country for pastoral purposes
+on the Mitchell water was Edward Palmer (the
+author of these notes), who, in conjunction with John
+Stevenson and Walter Reid, took up and stocked Gamboola
+in 1879 with cattle from Ravenswood and Mount
+McConnel runs. The extent of good pasture land
+on the Mitchell waters, or anywhere on the Peninsula,
+further north, is limited. When the Palmer goldfield
+was opened the farthest outstation stocked on the
+overland route was Mount Surprise, on Junction
+Creek, held by the Firths, and this was over 200 miles
+from the diggings by the nearest practicable road.
+The road was opened by drovers taking stock, and
+carriers and miners passing northwards with their<span class="pagenum">[Pg 141]</span>
+faces set direct to the wonderful land of gold. The
+road crossed the Tate, the Walsh, and the Mitchell
+Rivers, and then followed up the Palmer River
+through some of the roughest country in North
+Queensland. When Cooktown was opened as a port
+for the diggings, the overland route was abandoned
+for dray traffic, and droving stock alone used it. The
+consumption of beef on the field for several years
+demanded an average annual supply of from 15,000
+to 20,000 head, most of the cattle realising from £7
+to £10 each. The stock came from coastal runs
+mostly, Dotswood and the Burdekin country supplying
+much of it, Bowen Downs and Aramac<a name="FNanchor_E_5" id="FNanchor_E_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_E_5" class="fnanchor">[E]</a> also
+sending in many large mobs. Very few breeding
+cattle were brought out, but some small runs towards
+Cooktown were occupied with cattle, the country consisting
+of open timbered ridges of only a second-class
+description, but fairly well watered. The Mitchell
+River was named by Dr. Leichhardt in memory of
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 142]</span>another explorer, Sir Thomas Mitchell. Leichhardt
+saw this river where it junctioned with the Lynd, and
+one of his old camps is still to be seen on the Lynd a
+little above this junction. It is really a beautiful river,
+with a clear running stream all the year round, and
+some deep reaches of still water; the banks are covered
+with scrubs of pencil cedar and a great variety of
+hanging vines and thick shrubs. The principal source
+of the river is near Port Douglas on the east coast,
+within six miles of the township, on the top of the
+range, from whence the water flows north-west, and
+continues its course to the Gulf of Carpentaria, where
+it empties itself in latitude 15 deg. 10 sec. In its
+course, it receives the waters of the Walsh, Lynd, and
+Palmer Rivers, as well as the Hodgkinson, and becomes
+a mighty stream. Indeed it is one of the most
+picturesque and interesting rivers in Queensland.
+The upper parts of this stream were explored by J.
+V. Mulligan and his party of prospectors in 1875.
+Leichhardt followed it below the junction of the Lynd
+when on his trip to Port Essington, before leaving it
+to cross to the Gulf country. The Mitchell River
+country is famous for its native game; the scrubs
+abound with wallaby, turkeys, and pigeons; the river
+and lagoons teem with fish of every variety, and waterfowl
+cover the shallow waters where the alligators
+are unable to reach them. The open country surrounding
+has the large kangaroo and the common
+bustard (plain turkey) in abundance. The country<span class="pagenum">[Pg 143]</span>
+fattens stock, and is well watered. It consists of
+alluvial soil and open ridges of a sandy nature, where
+the grass is coarse and is covered with a low mimosa
+scrub.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_E_5" id="Footnote_E_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_E_5"><span class="label">[E]</span></a> The word &#8220;Aramac&#8221; was coined by the late Mr. W.
+Landsborough, the well-known explorer, and is an
+euphonious abbreviation of the name of the late Sir Robert
+Ramsey Mackenzie, who was Colonial Secretary in the first
+Macalister Ministry (1866) and Colonial Treasurer and
+Premier 1867-8. Mr. Landsborough was fond of coining
+words by joining the first syllable of one name to the first
+syllable of another name&mdash;thus the run known as &#8220;Willandspey,&#8221;
+on Vine Creek, near Mount Hope, just below the
+junction of the Belyando and Suttor Rivers, is a combination
+of the names of William Landsborough and Peyton, the first
+lessee of the run.</p></div>
+
+<p>Among the many other disabilities that cattle were
+subject to in this new country was a poison bush or
+tree, growing along the banks of creeks and rivers,
+called the peach tree (Cannabis sp.) It is said to have
+been the cause of many deaths, for hundreds of cattle
+that were unused to the plant died along the bends
+of the rivers, though young stock bred in the country
+appeared to be immune to its evil effects. Notwithstanding
+all these drawbacks and discouragements,
+runs were taken up on the Archer and other rivers
+in the Peninsula as far as Cape York, and the rivers
+flowing into Princess Charlotte&#8217;s Bay were all occupied
+by the pioneers of settlement in face of all opposition
+and discouragement.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 144]</span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.<br />
+
+THE RISE OF THE NORTHERN TOWNS.</h2>
+
+<p>The site of Rockhampton, now the principal city
+of Central Queensland, was chosen in 1855 by
+Mr. Wiseman, a Land Commissioner of New
+South Wales who had been despatched from Sydney
+to confirm the Archer Brothers in the possession of
+their Gracemere run. The town received its name
+from the bar of rocks running across the river at the
+head of navigation. Its first expansion dates from
+the rush to the Canoona diggings, then called Port
+Curtis rush, which took place in 1858, as it was
+then the nearest port to the field, and therefore handled
+all the trade to and from the diggings. When the
+field was declared a &#8220;duffer,&#8221; and the miners departed
+in disgust, they left the nucleus of a settlement behind
+which was subsequently to become the seaport and
+distributing centre for all the rich pastoral country now
+comprised in the Central District.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Among the first settlers to open up Gladstone was
+R. E. Palmer, who built a large wool store and wharf
+so that the wool from Rannes and other stations lately<span class="pagenum">[Pg 145]</span>
+formed could be shipped from there. He then took
+up Targinie cattle station over the harbour on the
+north side. The town is now noted for its healthiness
+and pleasant climate, and the beautiful view of the
+harbour, studded with islands. A North Australian
+settlement was attempted here when the Gladstone
+Government was in power, in January, 1847. Colonel
+Barney was head of the colonising party in the &#8220;Lord
+Auckland.&#8221; Both these names are perpetuated in
+Barney Point, and Auckland Creek. The party were
+recalled after three months stay, and the locality was
+left alone until 1854, when Captain (afterwards Sir)
+Maurice O&#8217;Connell was sent up as Government Resident.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The first to discover and report on the grand
+harbour of Port Denison was Captain Sinclair, in the
+schooner &#8220;Santa Barbara.&#8221; An expectation had been
+held out by the New South Wales Government that a
+handsome reward would be given to anyone who discovered
+a good harbour north of Port Curtis.</p>
+
+<p>In hope of obtaining this reward, this little craft
+of only nine tons was fitted out at private expense,
+and sailed from Rockhampton on September 1st, 1859.
+The party consisted of Captain Sinclair, master; W.
+H. Thomas, seaman; and Messrs. James Gordon and
+Benjamin Poole, passengers. After piloting their way
+through islands and reefs and heavy storms, besides
+unknown dangers from the natives, they sailed into<span class="pagenum">[Pg 146]</span>
+Port Denison on October 17th, 1859, and were gratified
+and surprised to find such a capacious and
+secure harbour. They landed and examined the
+bay, surveying and sketching some parts of it,
+but owing to the hostility and treachery of the
+natives, who were very numerous both on the
+islands and the mainland, they were not permitted
+to extend their knowledge of the port. The
+&#8220;Santa Barbara&#8221; left Port Denison on October 19th,
+and after boxing about for some time among the
+Cumberland Islands, reached Keppel Bay on her return
+on October 31st. The harbour is of an oval
+form, probably some ten miles in extreme length, and
+about four miles across from Station Island to the
+mainland; it is formed partly by an indentation in the
+coast, and partly by two islands running across it.
+Here at last was a port that would be a starting
+point for further settlement in the interior, a
+most suitable and secure harbour, discovered and
+opened up without any expense to the Government,
+and with such small means and outfit that the journal
+of those enterprising and heroic voyagers reads like
+a tale of romance. Although successful in this matter,
+they were not able to obtain the promised reward,
+for just at that time the separation of the new colony
+took place, and their claim was handed over to the
+new Government. A petition presented to the
+Queensland Parliament procured no further recognition
+than that Captain Sinclair was made Harbour<span class="pagenum">[Pg 147]</span>
+Master, and Mr. James Gordon the first customs
+officer in Townsville.</p>
+
+<p>Very little was at that time known of the interior
+comprising the Kennedy district, which was thrown
+open to pastoral occupation on November 17th, 1859,
+by proclamation of the New South Wales Government,
+it being then part of that colony. Leichhardt had
+passed through it down the Suttor; Mitchell just
+touched its southern extremity; Landsborough penetrated
+from the direction of Fort Cooper, into the
+upper waters of the Bowen, which river he discovered
+and called the Bonnar.</p>
+
+<p>Bowen was settled by George Elphinstone Dalrymple,
+Police Magistrate and Commissioner of
+Crown Lands, and several squatters who had come
+overland with him, and also by a number of persons,
+including Mr. James Gordon, who arrived at Bowen
+from Rockhampton per schooner &#8220;Jeannie Dove&#8221; with
+stores, a few days before Mr. Dalrymple.</p>
+
+<p>On the organisation of the new Queensland
+Government, a proclamation was issued withdrawing
+the Kennedy district from occupation, and the tenders
+previously received were returned to the tenderers.</p>
+
+<p>These explorers of a new port and future city were
+deserving of a much higher and better recognition
+than was accorded them by either Government.</p>
+
+<p>The first sale of Bowen town lands was held in
+Brisbane on October 7th, 1861, when eighty-nine lots<span class="pagenum">[Pg 148]</span>
+were sold, realising £2,083. Many of those early investors
+were Brisbane men, well known in business
+and the professions. The lots were mostly half-acres in
+area, and averaged about £25 to £50 per acre, the
+first Bishop of Brisbane (Tuffnell) figuring largely
+among the land buyers. In 1863 the demand for land
+called for several sales, as the town was progressing
+on account of the large overlanding of stock and the
+shipments of supplies for parties taking up country
+to the north and west.</p>
+
+<p>A land sale on April 20th, 1863, was held in
+Bowen, when seventy-nine lots were sold, realising
+£1,718; all the lots went above the upset price. On
+June 8th, 1863, another land sale took place in Bowen,
+when seventy-four lots were sold, realising £1,135;
+among these were some country lands in ten-acre lots,
+which realised the upset price, £3 7s. 6d. per acre.
+For town lots the upset price was £20 per acre; the
+competition for fancy lots was keen enough to run
+them up to as much as £100 per lot. Still another
+land sale had to be held to keep pace with the growing
+town, and the demands of speculators. This was
+held in Bowen on August 3rd, 1863, when seventy-three
+lots found purchasers, realising £2,643. This
+sale consisted mostly of country lands, put up in lots
+of from seventeen to fifty acres, at the upset price of
+£1 per acre; 1,518 acres were sold at this last land
+sale. These figures from official sources testify to
+the rapidity of the expansion of the new town, and to<span class="pagenum">[Pg 149]</span>
+the high expectations that were formed as to its future
+rise and progress. Many familiar names occur in the
+annals of the official register, but most of the purchasers
+are now dead. Seaward, Marsh, and Genge,
+who had a large business as storekeepers, figure extensively
+as buyers, also Mr. J. G. Macdonald, James
+Hall Scott, Korah H. Willis, Thomas Cavanagh&mdash;a
+well-known celebrity of Bowen&mdash;and many other old
+identities are called to mind by looking through the
+list of the first land buyers in Bowen. Few now remain
+of those early speculators. The treasury of the
+young colony benefited by their ambition to hold land
+in the future capital of the north by the sum of £7,579.</p>
+
+<p>The town wore gay and holiday aspect when the
+Governor, Sir G. F. Bowen, landed in 1865. The jetty
+at that time was being built, and the town was filled
+with squatters from all parts of the north, getting supplies
+or tendering for new country. Flags were flying,
+addresses of welcome were presented, a bullock
+was roasted whole on the beach, barrels of beer were
+on tap alongside the bullock, tons of bread were there
+to go with it, and an assorted crowd was ready to do
+justice to both bullock and beer. A levee was held,
+an undress one, of course, as evening dress had not
+reached so far north at that time, but coats were found
+for every one in which to make a bow to the Governor.
+The only block hat that had reached the latitude of
+Bowen was worn by Mr. R. H. Smith, afterwards
+member for the district, who had the honor of escort<span class="pagenum">[Pg 150]</span>ing
+His Excellency up to the town. A ball was held
+in the evening in honor of the event, and many other
+things took place that this chronicle will pass over.</p>
+
+<p>Frederick Bode, at Strathdon, W. Powell, of Salisbury
+Plains, J. G. Macdonald, of Inkermann, Collings,
+at Eton Vale, A. C. Grant, at Dartmoor, all were
+settlers in Bowen district in the early days.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Townsville was named after Captain Robert
+Towns, of Sydney, of the firm of R. Towns and Co.,
+who held stations inland from Cleveland Bay, and as
+it became necessary to open some other port north of
+Bowen, which had hitherto been the distributing
+centre, explorations were made by some of the
+managers of these stations, foremost among whom
+was Mr. Ball, the result being the discovery of the
+site of the present town, which was gazetted as a port
+of entry in October, 1865. On the 10th of that
+month, Mr. James Gordon arrived to perform the
+duties of Sub-Collector of Customs, and a great number
+of other official duties as well.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Cardwell is situated near the head of Rockingham
+Bay, opposite the north end of Hinchinbrook Island,
+and distant north-west from Brisbane about 950 miles,
+in latitude 18 deg. 16 sec. S., longitude 146 deg. 4 sec.
+E. Population of district and town, 3,435. The first
+settlement in the locality took place in 1863, and it
+became a place of considerable importance, being the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 151]</span>
+nearest port on the east coast to the Gulf of Carpentaria,
+but since then other ports have been opened,
+offering greater facilities for shipping.</p>
+
+<p>The first telegraph line from the east coast to the
+Gulf of Carpentaria commenced at Cardwell, but the
+expense connected with keeping the line open across
+the Sea View Range and through the dense jungle
+on the coast side thereof, proved too great, and the
+route was finally abandoned. Up to 1873, Cardwell
+was the most northern port on the east coast of Australia,
+and the port of entry for the Herbert River
+district. The town is now in a languishing state, but
+the excellence of the port may yet redeem it from
+obscurity.</p>
+
+<p>It was from here that Kennedy&#8217;s expedition took
+its final departure for the north early in June, 1848,
+and in connection with that memorable event, we may
+quote a paragraph recently appearing in a Queensland
+journal:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p class="center">&#8220;A SAD REMEMBRANCE BRINGS.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Recently a remarkable discovery was made at the foot
+of the Coast Range to the north of Cardwell&mdash;relics of the
+vehicles left by Kennedy, the explorer, when on his ill-fated
+journey up York Peninsula. It may be remembered that
+the party landed at Tam O&#8217;Shanter Point, Rockingham Bay,
+on May 30th, 1848, and that on July 18th the carts were
+abandoned, the party going on with twenty-six pack horses
+and fifty sheep. The story of the fate of Kennedy and nearly
+all of those who accompanied him has been frequently told,
+and the discovery of the remains of the carts, which have lain
+for nearly half a century in the jungle, revives interest in one<span class="pagenum">[Pg 152]</span>
+of the saddest episodes in Australian exploration. The exact
+locality of the relics is kept a strict secret, the possessor of
+the secret being of opinion that he should profit by it.
+No doubt the Government would be glad to secure information
+which would enable it to establish the authenticity of
+statements which have been made on the subject.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The first intimation the southern parts had of the
+existence of gold in the north was a telegram from
+Cardwell dated September 9th, 1873. It ran as follows:&mdash;&#8220;Prospectors
+Mulligan, Brown, Dowdall, A.
+Watson, and D. Robertson, got one hundred and five
+ounces on the Palmer River, which they prospected
+for twenty miles. They say nothing of the country
+outside the river. Nearly all are leaving here.&#8221; This
+news spread like wild-fire and created a great
+sensation all over Australia; the difficulty was to get
+to the Palmer quick enough. The Government sent
+Mr. Bartley Fahey, Sub-Collector of Customs at Normanton,
+to explore the Mitchell River in order to open
+communication from Normanton towards the new
+field. Mr. G. E. Dalrymple, leader of the north coast
+expedition, was ordered to proceed to the Endeavour
+River, and he arrived at Cook&#8217;s Landing on October
+24th, 1873, but the expedition was recalled. In the
+meantime, the A. S. N. Co.&#8217;s steamer, the &#8220;Leichhardt&#8221;
+(Captain Saunders), left Brisbane on October
+15th with some members of the Endeavour River
+expedition on board. Mr. A. C. MacMillan and his
+party were taken on at Bowen. The &#8220;Leichhardt&#8221;
+arrived at Townsville on October 20th, and took on all<span class="pagenum">[Pg 153]</span>
+the horses, forty-six in number, and one hundred and
+fifty diggers, all for the new Palmer rush. Mr.
+Howard St. George and party embarked at Cardwell,
+and on Saturday, October 25th, 1873, the &#8220;Leichhardt&#8221;
+was made fast to the mangroves on the Endeavour
+River, in sixteen feet of water, and the new
+township began its existence on the site where the
+famous navigator, Captain Cook, on June 17th,
+1770; beached his damaged vessel for repairs.
+The gold fever was irresistible, and helped to
+lift the town into prominence at once, drawing people
+from all parts of Australia. Four months after the
+landing of Mr. St. George, J. V. Mulligan, arriving
+from the Palmer field, described Cooktown as a large
+progressing township, about half a mile long, with
+stores, public houses, and shops of all sorts, with
+steamers and other boats coming in and going out
+every few days, and containing not less than two
+thousand people, though some estimated the numbers
+at a much higher figure. Cooktown dates its existence
+from the landing of the passengers by the steamer
+&#8220;Leichhardt&#8221; in 1873. The first Police Magistrate
+appointed was Mr. Thomas Hamilton, who also acted
+as Sub-Collector of Customs. Mr. James Pryde was
+the first Clerk of Petty Sessions. When the first court
+was held on December 27th, 1873, it was to deal with
+the charge of stealing a goat from Townsville.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gold, Commissioner St. George, and Mr. A.
+C. MacMillan, soon started on their expedition after<span class="pagenum">[Pg 154]</span>
+landing at Cooktown, accompanied by eighty-six
+diggers, the command being one hundred and eight
+strong. They reported finding a good track to the
+Palmer. One reminiscence of their journey remains
+in the name of the original track, which is now known
+as Battle Camp, because the natives came down from
+the adjoining hills to dispute the right of the white
+men to travel through their country. Things in
+Cooktown kept booming along, and in April, 1874,
+there were from three to four thousand people camped
+between Grassy Hill and the outside boundary of
+Cooktown. During that month, sixty-five publicans&#8217;
+licenses were issued, and thirty more applied for;
+there were also twenty eating houses, twelve large
+stores, twenty small ones, six butchers, five bakers,
+three tinsmiths, four tent makers, six hairdressers,
+seven blacksmiths, besides doctors, chemists, fancy
+shops, watchmakers, bootmakers, saddlers, etc., in
+proportion, and all going full speed ahead. Until
+the discovery of the Palmer field, and the opening
+of Cooktown, Cardwell was the most northern
+port of call on the Queensland eastern coast,
+and was the telegraphic centre of news from the
+Etheridge and Gilbert goldfields. The golden news
+from these far northern diggings was of a most glittering
+nature, but there was a reverse side of the picture
+in the hardships and privations endured.</p>
+
+<p>In 1874, the Cooktown &#8220;Courier&#8221; was started,
+and shortly afterwards the &#8220;Herald.&#8221; The journal<span class="pagenum">[Pg 155]</span>istic
+standard of the early days of Cooktown was
+esteemed, comparatively speaking, brilliant. The
+Queensland National Bank opened a branch there in
+1874, followed by the Bank of New South Wales and
+The Australian Joint Stock Bank. Religion was not
+neglected either. In 1876, Cooktown was proclaimed
+a municipality, and from thence to 1878, it prospered
+mightily. Gold was plentiful, and its export was
+measured by the ton. The official returns in 1878
+showed something over forty tons as having passed
+through the Customs, but that did not represent the
+measure of the enormous richness of the Palmer, as
+thousands upon thousands of ounces of gold were
+secretly taken away to China. Since then the goldfields
+have gradually dwindled down in their returns,
+and the Palmer of to-day, or even the Palmer of a few
+years ago, was not the grand and glorious field that
+made Cooktown rise like magic by the side of its
+splendid harbour. The later discovery of tin on
+Cannibal Creek, and the Annan River, again caused
+some stir in business, but of a much quieter description
+than in the halcyon days of golden light. The
+beche de mer industry has also been a great help
+to business people in Cooktown. The great red-letter
+day in Cooktown was the turning of the first sod for
+the Cooktown-Maytown Railway, on April 3rd, 1884,
+by the Mayor, Mr. Edward D&#8217;Arcy, when a tremendous
+public demonstration took place. Mr. George
+Bashford was the contractor for the first section, and<span class="pagenum">[Pg 156]</span>
+he gave a great banquet on the occasion, inviting
+people from all parts of Queensland to be present.
+Like many other towns in Queensland, Cooktown in
+recent years has suffered from depression, but there is
+a solid future before it still. With one of the finest
+harbours on the east coast, it is the key to the Torres
+Strait route and to New Guinea. The reef-bearing
+country on the Palmer has still to be developed, and
+the great extent of this mineral wealth is as yet quite
+under-rated. Besides containing tin and coal in abundance,
+North Queensland has other grand resources
+in its back pastoral and agricultural country.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The town of Normanton was opened by the
+settlers as a better port for shipping for the Lower
+Flinders stations than Burketown, which was inconvenient,
+being too far to the west, and difficult of
+access. The Norman River, so called by Landsborough
+after the captain of the Victorian Government
+ship &#8220;Victoria,&#8221; is a fine and deep river.</p>
+
+<p>Messrs. W. Landsborough and G. Phillips were
+the first to navigate the Norman, in January, 1867.
+They chose the site for the township on the left side
+of the river, where some high ironstone ridges come
+close in on the river bank. Here was room for the
+extension of a large city, naturally drained, and free
+from the possibility of floods, with ready access to the
+back country. Unfortunately, the upper reaches of
+the river are obstructed by bands of rocks running<span class="pagenum">[Pg 157]</span>
+across from bank to bank, that hinder navigation.
+These, however, could be removed at small cost.</p>
+
+<p>Among the first to settle in the town was
+Dr. Borck, a popular medical man; his brother
+still keeps a store in the town. Another hotel built
+in the first days was that of Mr. A. McLennan, who
+had been concerned in the first occupation of Burketown.
+Ellis Read, trading for R. Towns and Co.,
+soon had a fine store established, and carried on a
+large business with the stations, and also with the
+diggings opening on the Etheridge River. The first
+team to arrive in the town was driven in down Spear
+Creek by George Trimble from his station on the
+Saxby, at the head of the Norman River. Then wool
+commenced to arrive from Donor&#8217;s Hills and other
+stations on the Flinders, even as early as 1868, and
+was shipped away to Sydney by any chance vessel
+offering. One of the early traders to the Norman
+was a well-known skipper on the east coast, Captain
+Till, of the &#8220;Policeman,&#8221; schooner, who made several
+voyages there. Normanton was never affected by
+sickness as Burketown had been, and its progress was
+steady, though slow. The country around was well
+watered, but not adapted to agriculture. Lagoons
+of fresh water fringed the river, and were well supplied
+with game, the river full of splendid fish, some of
+which ranged up to twenty pounds in weight.
+Alligators abounded in all the brackish waters,
+as they do in all tidal rivers in the Gulf,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 158]</span>
+while the crocodile (so called), a smaller but quite
+harmless creature, is found in fresh water only.
+Being amphibious in its nature, it can adapt itself
+to pools and rivers a long way inland, and is
+found wherever there are deep lagoons, and in
+all the waters flowing into the Gulf of Carpentaria.</p>
+
+<p>In the early times, when one of R. Towns and
+Co.&#8217;s vessels was unloading at the bank of the river,
+one of the Kanakas employed was seized by an alligator.
+The man held on to a mangrove tree, and his
+mates beat the alligator over the head until he let go,
+but not before he had so torn the flesh from the man&#8217;s
+leg that he bled to death.</p>
+
+<p>Among those who are to be reckoned as
+the oldest inhabitants of the Gulf country, was John
+Harrix, who came over with the first cattle of
+Mr. J. G. Macdonald from Bowen in 1864, and who
+owned some teams and a small station near Normanton.
+A partner of his named Macdonald came down
+the Flinders early in 1865. Percival E. Walsh, a
+nephew of Mr. W. H. Walsh, of Degilbo, helped to
+settle some runs in the Gulf country. He took up a
+run on the Dugald, naming it Granada, which was
+sold afterwards to Messrs. Hopkins Brothers. He
+also restocked Iffley after its desertion by its first
+owners, the Earle Bros., now of Yacamunda, on the
+Suttor River. The early citizens of Normanton include
+the names of Peter Armstrong, David Swan,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 159]</span>
+Charles B. Hely, Charles Borck, John Edgar Byrne,
+for many years proprietor of &#8220;Figaro,&#8221; and a hundred
+others who more or less helped to form this city of
+the Gulf. Many of them are now resting in the cemetery
+outside the town.</p>
+
+<p>R. Towns and Co. had forty thousand sheep on
+the Leichhardt, near Floraville, and a shearing shed
+near tidal water lower down the river, where a small
+steamer (the old &#8220;Pioneer,&#8221; the remains of which are
+still to be seen at Sweer&#8217;s Island), came for the wool.
+The country proving subject to terrible floods and
+unsuitable for sheep, the numbers gradually decreased
+until the remnant were finally removed.</p>
+
+<p>The Etheridge goldfield was opened in the early
+days of Normanton, and found occupation for many
+teams and much labour.</p>
+
+<p>Prices in the early days were at a really famine
+level; flour was often sold at £40 a ton, and other
+goods at a corresponding rate. The writer had experience
+of these prices when loading his own team in
+those early days.</p>
+
+<p>Normanton had many advantages over her sister
+settlement, Burketown, and when the port became
+known, all the station trade drifted there, and Burketown
+declined in consequence.</p>
+
+<p>Normanton was, in 1891, connected with
+Croydon by a railway ninety-four miles in length,
+which cost £211,000, and was constructed by
+Mr. G. Phillips, C.E., on a principle new to<span class="pagenum">[Pg 160]</span>
+Queensland, the sleepers being of mild steel, instead
+of wood, on account of the ravages of the white
+ants. The line between Croydon and Normanton
+passes through a perfectly level and very uninteresting
+country, a melancholy sandy waste of ti-tree flats,
+covered with the innumerable pinnacles and mounds
+made by white ants; the pasturage is as poor as the
+country looks.</p>
+
+<p>From Normanton a number of carriers are employed
+to carry goods to Cloncurry and the many
+stations trading therewith. Many teams are found
+carrying loading by the side of the railway line to
+Georgetown and the Etheridge past Croydon, ignoring
+the services of the railway. A punt service connects
+the town with the carrier&#8217;s camp on the opposite
+side of the river, where loading starts for the Etheridge.
+The carrier&#8217;s waggon is loaded fully up to its
+carrying capacity of from six to seven tons, and is
+drawn on to the punt by the team; on its arrival on
+the opposite side, the team draws the load on to the
+bank ready to depart on its journey. The country to
+Georgetown is generally of an inferior description.
+Towards the Cloncurry (southwards) for the first
+twenty miles, the road passes through timbered country,
+bloodwood and messmate of a poor class, then it
+opens out after passing Reaphook Range into open
+treeless plains and black soil, with excellent pasturage,
+and this extends for hundreds of miles to the
+interior, the whole of which is occupied by cattle and<span class="pagenum">[Pg 161]</span>
+sheep stations that draw their supplies from Normanton
+up to a certain point, when the trade is induced by
+special arrangements of rebates on traffic rates, to diverge
+to Townsville, at the expense of the Gulf ports.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>About the same time that Townsville was
+opened as a port in order to meet the requirements
+of the new movements in stock on the country surrounding
+the Gulf, Burketown commenced its rather
+chequered career as a commercial port in 1865.</p>
+
+<p>The first supplies were brought by the &#8220;Jacmel
+Packet,&#8221; chartered and loaded by R. Towns and Co.,
+from Sydney. She was the second vessel in the Albert
+River, the first being the brig &#8220;Firefly,&#8221; in which Mr.
+Landsborough brought his horses, which were landed
+a mile below the site of the town. The old vessel
+afterwards went to pieces in the river. The manifest
+of the &#8220;Jacmel Packet&#8221; was perhaps the most varied
+and strangely assorted that a trading vessel ever carried;
+the general cargo included pigs, dogs, fowls,
+houses, building materials, outfits of every kind,
+drays, rations, rum, and other spirits. In such fashion
+was the mercantile trade of Carpentaria commenced.
+On the opening of the goods, a saturnalia ensued, and
+the times were lively. The overlanders having money
+to spend, and not having indulged in a &#8220;spree&#8221; for
+years, took advantage of the absence of all control,
+and thoroughly enjoyed themselves in bush fashion;
+a fight every half hour, horse racing on the plain, or<span class="pagenum">[Pg 162]</span>
+in &#8220;the street&#8221; as it was called, and strong rum for
+everyone. Other vessels quickly followed the first
+venture with more supplies. One of them, the
+&#8220;Gazelle,&#8221; from Sydney, made a very quick trip of
+sixteen days to the mouth of the river, where she
+broke her back on a sandbank; the hulk was towed
+up the river, and gradually mouldered away just opposite
+the town. In 1866 the first wool was shipped
+to Sydney from the Gulf; the first load of wool taken
+into Burketown being from Conobie station, shorn
+in November, 1865, on the Cloncurry, about 200 miles
+distant. The assistance the first settlers received from
+the Government amounted to little or nothing; the administration
+situated nearly two thousand miles away,
+had little care or thought for the struggling outsiders
+in the far-away Gulf country. The settlers had to
+protect themselves from blacks as well as from whites,
+and as it was some years before Burketown was made
+a port of entry, goods had to be cleared at Brisbane
+before sailing for Burketown. When the port was
+opened, the Customs Officer, Mr. Sandrock, was kept
+at Sweer&#8217;s Island, where supplies had to be cleared before
+going on to the mainland. This meant a great loss
+of time to those who brought in teams for loading.
+All departmental work had to be done in Brisbane,
+and there also the first applications for runs and declarations
+of stocking had to be made.</p>
+
+<p>The tide of settlement had been too swift and too
+strong for the authorities to keep pace with, and<span class="pagenum">[Pg 163]</span>
+although a Land Commissioner, in the person of Mr.
+J. P. Sharkey was sent out in 1866, and the Government
+were represented the same year by Mr. W.
+Landsborough in Burketown, the fact was evident that
+people were pretty well left to do as they liked.
+Burketown in 1866, and for the two or three following
+years, made some little progress, or appeared to do so.
+The drovers and shepherds, paid off after long trips
+with stock, had good cheques to spend, and their
+money was laid out in the lavish way peculiar to the old
+bush hand. Wages were high for all sorts of employment,
+35s. to 45s. a week being the lowest. Everything
+was dear in the new town, but that made little
+difference to men who had not been in a town for
+years and had money to spare.</p>
+
+<p>One of the first vessels to arrive in the Albert
+River in 1866 was the &#8220;Margaret and Mary.&#8221; She
+was said to have touched at some infected port in
+Java, and after arrival a fatal sickness broke out in
+Burketown that nearly carried off all the population.
+All hands that came in the ship died except the
+captain, his wife also falling a victim. A new crew
+had to be engaged to work the vessel before she could
+get away. There is little doubt but that the great
+mortality among the residents of Burketown during
+1866 was traceable to the infection brought by this
+vessel. It was the wet season at the time, and this,
+in conjunction with the reckless life led by most of the
+people, and the want of medical assistance, increased<span class="pagenum">[Pg 164]</span>
+the danger of the disease, and scores of strong men succumbed
+to its malign influence.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It would be difficult to say how many men fell
+victims to the epidemic, but there must have been at
+least a hundred, besides those who died on the surrounding
+stations. The disease, which ended in fever
+and delirium, was as fatal to the strong as to the weak,
+and the little cemetery soon looked like that of an old
+established town, so numerous were the graves. This
+outbreak gave Burketown an evil name. People began
+to leave it, and when Normanton was opened in
+1867 with the prospect of becoming a more suitable
+port for the district, many removed there to carry on
+their business. Shortly after this, Burketown was
+absolutely deserted, not a living soul remained, and
+nothing was left to mark the spot except heaps of
+empty bottles and jam tins, and some large iron pots
+belonging to a boiling-down plant. A few stumps
+remained standing on the open plains where once
+had been buildings. The hulls of the &#8220;Gazelle&#8221; and
+&#8220;Firefly&#8221; lay falling to pieces in the river, and none
+were left to sigh over Burketown&#8217;s fallen fortunes, or
+sing a dirge in memory of its history; its short and
+merry life was over, and none lamented.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>In these early days, Sweer&#8217;s Island was a kind of
+marine suburb belonging to Burketown, a sanatorium
+about thirty-five miles from the mouth of the Albert,
+where the fever-stricken people were taken to recover.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 165]</span>
+Mr. W. Landsborough, the Police Magistrate, or
+Government resident, lived there with his family.
+Mr. J. P. Sharkey, the first Land Commissioner, and
+Mr. Ellis Read, in charge of R. Towns and Co.&#8217;s
+stores, also resided on the island. Life was much
+pleasanter there than on the dead plains surrounding
+Burketown, and the sea breezes were constant and
+refreshing. On Sweer&#8217;s Island, which is only about
+nine miles long, and from half a mile to three miles
+in width, vegetables and watermelons grow in profusion.
+A township was surveyed called Carnarvon,
+after the Earl of Carnarvon, allotments were sold
+and buildings erected. The first Customs House in
+the Gulf was here, and Mr. Sandrock was the first
+officer. The soil on Sweer&#8217;s Island is sandy, and the
+grass thick in places. The turtle ponds made there
+by Captain Norman of the &#8220;Victoria&#8221; in 1861-2, were
+still to be seen in 1866, as also was the well sunk by
+Flinders in 1803, from which fresh water was still
+obtainable. Opposite the island, towards the west,
+lay Bentinck Island, much larger than Sweer&#8217;s, though
+unoccupied, except by the natives, whose fires could
+be seen every evening after dark. About forty miles
+north-east of Sweer&#8217;s Island is Bountiful Island, noted
+for its oysters, and also for turtles, large numbers
+resorting there at certain seasons. Sweer&#8217;s Island has
+been deserted for many years, and is no longer a
+health resort. The buildings are gone, and the people
+also. The only residents now (1897), are a family of<span class="pagenum">[Pg 166]</span>
+the name of Creffield, who keep some cattle, goats and
+sheep on the island.</p>
+
+<p>To the south-west of Burketown is a fine run
+called Lawn Hill, comprising a lot of good country
+surrounded by mountains, and well watered. This
+property was taken up by Mr. Frank Hann and Mr.
+E. R. Edkins in 1875. The former bought up many
+of the brands of cattle left in the district by former
+occupiers, and also travelled stock from Lolsworth
+on the Burdekin, and by this means a large herd was
+soon raised. At the same time the Watson Brothers
+stocked Gregory Downs, which is only ninety miles
+from Burketown. Then Mr. F. H. Shadforth, who
+had come all the way from Victoria overland with his
+family, took up Lilydale, next to Lawn Hill. In
+those days the supplies had to be obtained from Normanton,
+so Hann, Watson, and Shadforth chartered
+a schooner, loaded her with station supplies and
+material for a store for Foulkes and Harris to start
+business. The schooner arrived, and the store was
+erected on the site of old Burketown, but disaster followed.
+Foulkes was drowned, and Harris was killed
+by his team of horses bolting and dragging the waggon
+over him. Then Watson Brothers ran the store
+for a time, Mr. P. S. Watson taking charge and enlarging
+it in every way. Shortly afterwards Mr. Michael
+Kelly opened a public house, and the town commenced
+its second term of existence. Mr. Jack Reid soon
+opened another public house, and Burns, Philp and<span class="pagenum">[Pg 167]</span>
+Co. began another store under the management of
+Mr. Theodore C. Amsden. Then police protection
+under Senior-constable Synnott, arrived, as the people
+were becoming rather lawless. Mr. P. Macarthur
+was appointed Customs Officer, and in conjunction
+with this appointment held many other offices.
+Finally the Queensland National Bank opened a
+branch. The town now progressed quickly owing to
+the great number of cattle passing through to the
+northern territory and the reoccupation of all the deserted
+runs. A Divisional Board was formed in 1884, and
+the population of the town rose to three hundred and
+fifty. Burketown resumed her old activity in business
+matters, and the evil name died out with the memories
+of the old days. So mote it be!<span class="pagenum">[Pg 168]</span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.<br />
+
+THE MINERAL WEALTH.</h2>
+
+<p>An expedition under the leadership of William
+Hann, sent out by the Queensland Government
+left Fossilbrook station on June 26th, 1872, and
+on August 5th, reached the Palmer River, named after
+the then Premier of Queensland, Sir A. H. Palmer.
+They found traces of gold in the ravines, and on
+both sides of the river, so that it was Hann&#8217;s party
+who first discovered the existence of gold on the
+Palmer. This expedition went right through to where
+Cooktown now stands, and on to the Bloomfield River.
+From the description of the country given in Hann&#8217;s
+journal, one of the well-known old northern prospectors
+named James V. Mulligan, concluded that gold
+would be found in quantities, and with the restlessness
+proverbial among his class, formed a party to go out
+and prospect the Palmer country. His expedition
+consisted of himself, James Dowdal, Alexander Watson
+(these two miners leaving Charters Towers with
+him), David Robertson, Peter Brown, and Albert
+Brandt, who joined him at Georgetown. Mulligan
+and his party left the Etheridge on June 5th 1873,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 169]</span>
+passed Mount Surprise and Fossilbrook, the farthest
+out station in those days, and went on to the Tate
+River, through poor, rough country, only obtaining
+colours. They proceeded northwards to the Walsh
+River, and saw one of W. Hann&#8217;s camps on their way.
+After travelling down the Walsh a few days, they
+crossed Elizabeth Creek to the Mitchell River, where
+they had some trouble in finding a ford, the river
+being quite six hundred yards wide, with high and
+scrubby banks on either side, and a strong flowing
+stream. After effecting a crossing with their packs,
+rations, etc., they passed on to Mount Mulgrave,
+fifteen miles further north. This well-known landmark
+is a precipitous bare rock dominating the surrounding
+country, and visible for many miles. They
+soon reached the Palmer River, where they continued
+prospecting, and obtained a good show of gold in the
+river and tributary creeks. Blacks were very numerous
+along the main river, necessitating guard being
+continually kept; they caught abundance of fish while
+camped on the river, where they spent a month, finding
+gold almost everywhere, some of it coarse, and
+some very fine. The party started back for the Etheridge,
+following the same route by which they had
+come. The scene of their operations was a little above
+Palmerville, and they prospected thence to Maytown.
+They were absent from Georgetown three months, and
+procured one hundred and two ounces of gold, valued<span class="pagenum">[Pg 170]</span>
+at £4 an ounce. It was a prosperous trip, and all the
+party returned in good health.</p>
+
+<p>In 1874, J. V. Mulligan went on another prospecting
+expedition from Cooktown. He named the
+St. George, a tributary of the Mitchell River, and the
+party did a lot of prospecting and exploring in the
+country on the Upper Mitchell, where some fine pastoral
+country was discovered. While on this trip they
+made the discovery of the hot boiling springs at the
+head of the Walsh, mistaking the steam of it for the
+smoke of a blackfellows&#8217; fire.</p>
+
+<p>Before the end of 1873, there were over five hundred
+diggers on the Palmer, and the escort left in
+December with 5,058 ounces of gold, leaving a balance
+of 3,000 ounces in the banks. The first warden on the
+Palmer was Howard St. George, and the field developed
+at a furious rate. In the course of two years
+there were over fifteen thousand white men and twenty
+thousand Chinese located in and about the Palmer.
+The discovery of the field came as salvation to the
+north after the stagnation following upon the low
+prices and depression ruling since 1867. The price of
+cattle went up enormously, and horses could be sold
+anywhere at good prices. The workings were along
+the creeks and rivers where water was plentiful, and the
+gold was obtained in quantities on the bars or ledges
+crossing the river. Rations were dear in the early
+days; carriage to Maytown was up to £120 a ton,
+beef was selling at 1s. per lb. A great deal of the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 171]</span>
+loading was carried by pack horses from Cooktown,
+the diggings being situated among the highest
+tablelands in North Queensland, and scattered over
+a large extent of mountainous country. Byerstown,
+near the source of the Palmer is about fifty-five
+miles south-west from Cooktown. The situation
+is elevated, being near the culminating line of the
+Great Dividing Chain. Tin occurs in the low ranges
+to the south that separate the Mitchell from the
+Palmer, and also in the valley of the Bloomfield to the
+east. The blacks were dangerous, the wet seasons
+severe on the Palmer, and the first diggers had many
+and bitter trials. Early in 1874, the last of the flour
+was selling at 3s. 6d. per pannikinful, and even an old
+working bullock when killed was eagerly bought up
+at 1s. per pound; the last pairs of Blucher boots were
+sold at 38s. Horseshoe nails were exchanged for
+their weight in gold, and old horseshoes were eagerly
+sought after. As early as April, 1874, a riot occurred
+in Cooktown, when the dissatisfied diggers
+rushed the &#8220;Florence Irving,&#8221; steamer, for free passages.
+It was said there were three thousand people
+waiting to get away, and the police and miners had
+a fierce fight for the upper hand. Then other rushes
+took place on the goldfield as new discoveries were
+made, and the &#8220;Palmer fever&#8221; became bad again.</p>
+
+<p>In 1871 the following party of prospectors had
+been in the vicinity of the country that afterwards became
+so famous for its golden produce, but they<span class="pagenum">[Pg 172]</span>
+missed the rich deposits, and kept a lower course down
+in the level country towards the Gulf of Carpentaria,
+namely, Messrs. T. Leslie, J. Edwards, Charles Ross,
+T. Hackett, and J. Duff. Some of these men became
+wealthy afterwards through buying cattle and retailing
+them and by buying gold. Leslie, Duff, Edwards, and
+Callaghan joined in a company and fairly coined
+money on the Palmer goldfield; all were extremely
+popular men. Maytown was called Edwardstown for
+some time after it was opened, and the name was so
+printed on the bank&#8217;s cheque forms. Another of these
+early prospectors was W. T. Baird, known as Bill Baird,
+who had led a most adventurous life and had amassed
+several small fortunes; the last one he made was at
+Mount Romeo tin mines; he led a rough knockabout
+life, doing bush work or cattle droving when hard
+up, etc.; he was killed by the natives of Batavia River
+while prospecting there; he was a general favourite
+for his good humour and kindheartedness.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Croydon, a reefing field on the waters of the Norman
+River was discovered about 1886 by W. C. Brown
+and Aldridge, who obtained the reward of £1,000.
+The field comprises several mining centres scattered
+about in the hill country, which commences here and
+extends away to the east. No alluvial gold has been
+discovered on this field; reefing has been the only way
+of working the gold, which is more or less connected
+with refractory ores. The future of this field is well<span class="pagenum">[Pg 173]</span>
+assured, as the reefs maintain their character at all
+depths reached, and the place is decidedly businesslike
+and stirring. The absence of good timber adds
+to the cost of working the reefs, but the extension of
+the railway to Georgetown, which is contemplated, will
+add to the facilities for obtaining supplies, and will
+also increase the traffic in other ways.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Georgetown is on the left bank of the Etheridge
+River, so called after D. O. Etheridge, one of Mr. J.
+G. Macdonald&#8217;s drovers who came out to the Gulf
+with the first lot of cattle through this country. It is
+about one hundred and sixty miles west, in a straight
+line from Cardwell. The surrounding country is gold-bearing,
+and known as the Etheridge goldfield; silver,
+copper, tin, and lead are also among its mineral products.
+This was one of the first reefing districts
+opened in the North of Queensland, but owing to the
+expense of carrying on the mines on account of the
+cost of carriage, labour, and mining appliances, none
+but the best mines have been worked. The formation
+is granite, and pyrites with the stone has helped
+to increase the cost of working. The field is very extensive,
+and embraces a large number of small mining
+centres covering an enormous area of gold-bearing
+country. In the first days, alluvial gold was sought
+for over large portions of the field. A specimen
+nugget found in June, 1896, at Mount Macdonald,
+weighing 151 ounces was dollied and smelted, yielding<span class="pagenum">[Pg 174]</span>
+85 ounces of gold, valued at £3 5s. per ounce. Other
+large specimens were found recently in the same locality.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Cloncurry is the commercial centre of a district
+rich in various minerals. It is situated on the right
+bank of the Cloncurry River, a tributary of the Flinders,
+and is about 430 miles west-south-west, in a
+straight line from Townsville, and about 240 miles
+south from Normanton. The copper deposits are very
+extensive, the whole surrounding mountainous district
+being more or less copper-bearing. Lodes of gray
+ore and blue carbonates are numerous, and virgin
+copper and malleable ore have also been found. The
+difficulty and expense of carriage has prevented the
+field from taking that position as a mining centre to
+which it is entitled; other metals found are gold, silver,
+lead, iron, and bismuth. The Cloncurry goldfield includes
+a large tract of country, extending eastwards
+to the Williams River, and southwards to an equal
+extent. Reefing has been carried on of late, but not
+to any great extent. In the early days of gold discovery,
+alluvial sinking attracted a large population,
+and some splendid nuggets were found (mostly on
+Sharkey&#8217;s Flat), weighing from five to forty ounces, the
+gold being of the highest Mint value, £4 3s. 6d. per
+ounce. Gold is still produced at some of the outlying
+diggings, extending over to the Leichhardt River in
+the west, where the whole country is mineral-bearing.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 175]</span>
+The Cloncurry Copper Company expended large sums
+of money in machinery and sinking shafts and prospecting
+in opening up some of the lodes of copper
+so abundant there, but owing to the depreciation in the
+value of the mineral and the great expense of mining
+and carriage to port, the operations had to be entirely
+suspended. The first to discover copper and make use
+of it was Mr. Ernest Henry, in 1865. Henry discovered
+lodes of copper on the Leichhardt and in several other
+places, and has distinguished himself not alone as an
+enterprising pioneer squatter and settler, but also as
+an early and most indefatigable prospector for
+minerals. In conjunction with Mr. R. K. Sheaffe, at
+one time member for the district, and subsequently
+Mayor of Sandgate, he helped to open much of the
+Gulf country, and has spent a fortune and a lifetime
+in pioneering in outside districts.</p>
+
+<p>The Black Mountain is on the opposite side from
+the town across the river, and is, as its name denotes,
+a real black mountain. It is a most extensive outcrop
+of nearly pure metallic iron ore, and it is calculated
+the amount in sight is over thirteen millions of
+tons: great masses of the ore are lying all round the
+base of this enormous outcrop.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Clermont is situated on a tributary of the Nogoa
+River, about two hundred and twenty-seven miles distant
+by railway from Rockhampton, and well known
+for its mineral resources. Since 1862 large quantities<span class="pagenum">[Pg 176]</span>
+of copper have been obtained, and the surrounding
+country is also auriferous, alluvial mining having been
+carried on with more or less success. Four miles from
+Clermont are the ruins of old Copperfield, a township
+prosperous from 1864 to 1870, in the palmy days of
+the Peak Downs Copper Company, which paid dividends
+of eighty per cent., and in 1867 sold copper to
+the amount of £120,000. Owing to a great fall in
+the value of copper, the property was sold for £3,000,
+and this mining enterprise collapsed.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 177]</span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.<br />
+
+INCIDENTS OF THE EARLY DAYS.</h2>
+
+<p>The early arrivals with stock in the Gulf country
+were obliged to obtain rations and supplies
+from Bowen, on the east coast, as that was the
+only port then opened in the North of Queensland.
+The distance was from five to seven hundred miles
+through the desert country and down the Flinders,
+and as the old-fashioned pole bullock-dray with only
+two wheels was then in vogue, no great quantity
+could be carried in one dray load. The opening of
+Burketown in 1865 as the second port after Bowen
+in North Queensland, enabled the early settlers to
+obtain supplies more easily, although the cost was still
+excessive. But the rations were fresher than those
+the overlanders had been used to. Some of the flour
+that had come out with the parties had been years on
+the road, and was very much the worse for the long
+journey. This flour could only be used after much
+sifting and airing; it was made into small thin cakes
+called Johnny cakes, which were cooked in the ashes
+and eaten hot; even then it was bitter and nearly
+brown in colour. The grubs and worms had long<span class="pagenum">[Pg 178]</span>
+since left it, or died in it from old age. It was said
+that some flour from Bowen Downs that had left
+Sydney years before and come out to the Gulf stations
+just formed, being too strong to use, was thrown out,
+and the dingoes and crows were found lying dead
+round it. The sugar in those days was the dark,
+treacly kind, that left a stain on the floor like blood;
+it came in casks. However, people were not very
+particular as to the quality of the supplies, provided
+there was anything at all to eat. Pig weed (portulacca),
+boiled or roasted on a shovel was one of the
+changes open to travellers; tea was made from the
+marjoram bush; and very fair coffee was made from
+the scrapings of the burnt edges of dampers, and was
+called Scotch coffee. When Burketown was opened,
+the fresh supply of flour and stores was very welcome
+to the early settlers.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>For the first year or two of Burketown&#8217;s existence,
+a saturnalia of a most original and determined
+fashion set in. There were only two or three women
+in the town, and no police, and the crowd enjoyed
+themselves in their own breezy, sunshiny way. Burketown
+was the haven of refuge for all the outsiders and
+outlaws from the settled districts when they had made
+other places too warm to hold them any longer.</p>
+
+<div class="poem" style="width: 28em;">
+<span class="i0">&#8220;God forsaken, devil may care,</span>
+<span class="i0">Every one with his sins to bear;</span>
+<span class="i0">From East, from West, they are camping there;</span>
+<span class="i0">Where all the bad lots go.&#8220;</span>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 179]</span></p>
+
+<p>All kinds of characters made their way out to the
+Gulf in those early days. Men went there who had
+been wanted by the police for years. Horse stealing
+and forging cheques were very common pastimes
+among the fancy, and Burketown society, in its first
+efforts to establish itself, was of a kind peculiarly its
+own.</p>
+
+<p>An ex police officer (O&#8217;Connor), who started business
+in Burketown, and who hailed from the land of
+the shamrock, knew many of the &#8220;boys,&#8221; as he called
+them. One noted character broke out of the lock-up,
+swam the Albert River, swarming with alligators, got
+a horse somewhere or somehow, and was followed by
+Mr. W. D&#8217;Arcy Uhr far into New South Wales, and
+brought back to Burketown, only to be discharged,
+whilst Mr. Uhr, who was one of the smartest officers
+of the police was asked for an explanation for leaving
+his district without permission.</p>
+
+<p>The following case of horse-stealing will serve to
+show the lawless state of things prevailing in the
+outside regions when the borders of civilisation were
+undefined, and no laws could be enforced.</p>
+
+<p>Three men were implicated, all notorious characters,
+even for those days. They were called Dublin
+Bob, Firearm Jack, and One-armed Scotty. They had
+spent some time mustering the horses and in building
+yards to hold them, on Bowen Downs run. As soon
+as the theft was discovered, they were followed by
+Mr. J. T. C. Ranken, the manager, Mr. J. Moffat,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 180]</span>
+Junior, a blackfellow, Jacky, and another man. They
+overtook the horse-stealers on the range near Betts&#8217;
+Gorge, took possession of the horses, and arrested the
+thieves, as Mr. Ranken and the other white men
+had been sworn in as specials before starting. As
+they were riding along, Mr. Ranken saw a horse down
+a gorge that he thought he recognised, and leaving
+the prisoners in charge of the others, giving them strict
+instructions to guard them carefully, he went to look
+at the horse. On returning, he found the men had
+escaped, and no satisfactory explanation was ever
+given as to their departure. This was in the year 1866,
+when there was a great demand for horses in
+consequence of so much stock being driven to take up
+new country. In the previous year, 1865, the first
+sheep were brought on to Bowen Downs, and another
+mob of cattle was sent out to the Gulf country in charge
+of J. Neil, who stocked the country on the Alexandra,
+a tributary of the Leichhardt River, where
+there was a large waterhole ten or twelve miles long.
+The Mud Hut on the Thomson had to be abandoned
+owing to the scarcity of grass and the waterhole drying
+up before the end of the year. The year 1865
+was a very dry one on the Thomson, the Barcoo,
+and the Flinders&mdash;waterholes went dry that year that
+have never gone dry in the thirty-five years that have
+followed. Law and order in those days was a
+&#8220;go-as-you-please&#8221; sort of arrangement. At a shanty
+about twenty-five miles from Burketown, a man was<span class="pagenum">[Pg 181]</span>
+shot by the keeper of the shanty, and died. The man
+was prosecuted, but owing to his detention waiting
+trial, and his long sea voyage west about the
+Leeuwin, and other extenuating circumstances in
+the case, the man being compelled to keep order
+in a lonely place amongst a very disorderly crowd,
+he got off.</p>
+
+<p>During the year 1864, a man named G. Nicol, and
+his wife, both of whom had been employed at Bowen
+Downs, and had left with the intention of going to
+Rockhampton, were found dead between Bowen
+Downs and Stainbourne. They had been offered quiet
+horses for the journey, but they preferred to walk.
+As they did not turn up at Stainbourne, a search was
+instituted, and they were found on one of the branches
+of Bullock Creek, both dead. The woman had been
+dead much longer than the man, as portions of her
+corpse were missing, while the body of the man was
+whole; the woman had a hole in her skull; the man
+had a revolver with two chambers empty. She was
+the first white woman on the Thomson, and was a very
+kind decent little body. The story remains one of
+the mysteries of the bush that will never be solved.
+Another tragedy that marked this year was the murder
+of Mr. Meredith, of Tower Hill station, and his
+overseer by the blacks. Mr. Meredith had been away
+from his station on a visit, and when returning passed
+his teams loaded with rations on the road somewhere
+between Bully and Cornish Creeks. In passing them<span class="pagenum">[Pg 182]</span>
+he promised either to meet them himself or to send
+someone else. When he got to Cornish Creek, he saw
+so many blacks that he decided to meet them himself;
+therefore, on arrival at the station, he obtained fresh
+horses, and started back, taking his overseer, Mr.
+Robert McNeely, with him. He intended to stay
+with the teams until they were past all danger, but he
+never reached them. Both men were killed on Cornish
+Creek, about fifty miles above Bowen Downs.
+The exact spot was unknown, nor were the bodies ever
+recovered; but their clothes, watches, etc., were found
+in the blacks&#8217; camp. The men with the teams were the
+first to find out that something was wrong, for on
+bringing up their horses one morning, they found some
+of the Tower Hill station horses among them, one
+in particular that Mr. Meredith always rode himself.
+Suspecting trouble, they went on to the Bowen Downs
+teams, a few miles ahead, and the teamsters went back
+with them to search, and in the blacks&#8217; camp articles
+were found which left no doubt that both Mr. Meredith
+and his overseer had been killed. No doubt there
+had been a night attack when the two pioneers were
+asleep in their camp, unaware of the approach of the
+observant enemy. Blacks seldom attacked during the
+day, but preferred to steal stealthily upon their victims
+and kill them in their sleep. Numerous cases of
+this description might be mentioned, and it was the
+rule among experienced bushmen to either keep watch
+at night, or else to shift camp after dark.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 183]</span></p>
+
+<p>In the early days, the blacks of North Queensland,
+and especially of the Peninsula, used to be
+troublesome to stock, and never failed to kill horses
+and cattle whenever a chance offered, cutting up and
+carrying away the carcase to the scrubs or ridgy
+country. Great numbers of stock were killed by them
+in the early days of settlement all over the Cook district.
+Even teamsters&#8217; horses have been known to be
+killed close to the road during the night, cut up, and
+carried away, or skinned of the flesh and the skeleton
+left entire. Not alone to stock did they confine their
+attacks, for many a white man and Chinaman, of whose
+death there is no record, fell before their spears, and
+it is maintained they ate their victims on many occasions.
+The usual war of reprisals went on between
+the intruders and the native race, and the latter soon
+went under, although the tribes inhabiting the country
+around the main rivers were numerous. In no district
+in Queensland have the blacks shown themselves more
+hostile to the settlers than in the Peninsula. The Jardine
+Brothers&#8217; journal of their trip to Cape York is
+a record of continued and unprovoked attacks by
+blacks on their little party. One of the early settlers,
+a Mr. Watson, was killed on his own verandah at his
+station on the Archer, and Gilbert, the naturalist belonging
+to Leichhardt&#8217;s party, was killed in a night
+attack by blacks, not far from the Mitchell River.
+The lonely gullies about the Palmer hide the record of
+many a lost prospector done to death by the savages;<span class="pagenum">[Pg 184]</span>
+while the sight of one of them was enough to cause
+a stampede among a camp of a hundred Chinese, for
+the poor Chinamen always fell easy victims to the
+blacks, as they would never show fight, and seldom
+carried firearms. It was a very common occurrence
+for the early settlers to bring in cattle to the yard for
+the purpose of drawing broken spears out of their
+sides. Horses were hunted down as readily as cattle,
+and this in a district noted for its native game.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 185]</span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>CHAPTER X.<br />
+
+THE MEN OF THE NORTH.</h2>
+
+<p>There were never lacking men ready for the
+enterprise and hardship of pioneering when
+there was such a field of profitable work open
+before them, work that was for those trained in bush
+experience, hardy and acclimatised as they were. The
+life, in spite of hardships, was not without attraction
+and satisfaction to many who took part in it. There
+was a kind of fascination to many bushmen in the idea
+of being the first to enter upon new and unknown
+scenes; to note the surprise of native game beholding
+for the first time the presence of the stranger, and to
+observe the terrified astonishment of the aborigines
+when first they saw the white intruders; all this tended
+to add to the romance and interest of helping to open
+a new district. But outside pioneer life in early days
+had a reverse side; there was little or nothing of comfort
+or relaxation; there was always hardship and exposure;
+there was no Sunday for rest, no holiday, no
+Eight Hour Day, nothing but constant movement
+and watching. The duties were shared by all alike;
+each had to take a turn at anything and everything,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 186]</span>
+cooking one time, driving a team another, shepherding
+sheep occasionally, herding cattle sometimes, cutting
+timber, making bough-yards for sheep, lambing
+down a flock of ewes, shifting hurdles, and poisoning
+dingoes, killing and salting beef, ear-marking, washing
+and shearing sheep, looking for stragglers, yoking
+bullocks, building huts, tracking and hunting stock,
+all little duties that made up the routine life of the outside
+grazier. They all took their turn, and generally
+there was one dish and one table. Where the ways
+and customs consequent on the life brought all on a
+partial level, the man who could turn his hand to
+anything from shoeing a horse to weighing out a dose
+of quinine or driving a bullock team, was the most
+valuable.</p>
+
+<p class="title">THE STOCKMAN, OR STOCKRIDER.</p>
+
+<div class="poem" style="width: 28em;">
+<span class="i0">He was native to the soil and bred,</span>
+<span class="i0">Merely a cowboy he;</span>
+<span class="i0">A nomad&#8217;s life was what he led.</span>
+<span class="i0">And all he wished to be.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>He is a class of his own, and is a man of some
+importance in the daily life of a station. The term
+may mean to many any man who can climb into a
+saddle; but a good stockman is not so easily picked
+up, nor is he made out of any material to hand. A
+good and experienced stockman, one who knows his
+work thoroughly, is active, and can ride well, can command
+wages all the year round. His work is not by
+any means easy; there are long hours, in fact all hours,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 187]</span>
+hard fare, and often no lodging but the bare ground;
+he must endure hunger and thirst, cold, heat, and wet,
+and often has to take a watch at night. When at work
+in the yard branding and drafting, he has either to
+endure tremendous dust, or else he is covered with
+mud. But the trained stockrider makes light of
+all these discomforts, in fact he looks on them as all
+in the bill of fare, and belonging to the day&#8217;s work.
+He is hardy, wiry, as well as possessed of a good deal
+of endurance and pluck, and like all men who ride
+much, is nearly always lean in condition. He is generally
+the owner of a couple of horses and an outfit of
+saddle, swag, stock whip, and spurs, and takes an
+interest in all racing and sporting matters. As a rule,
+he is not a saving man, although some may lay up
+enough money to start a small store. The native
+youth makes the best all-round stockman; many follow
+horse-breaking at times, or take a turn at droving.
+To draft on horseback in the cattle yard, or in the
+yard on foot, to castrate and brand horses and calves,
+to ride a young horse, to make a leg or head rope
+out of green hide, or a pair of hobbles, to counterline
+a saddle, to cook a damper, all comes within the province
+of the stockman. Towns and townspeople are
+not much in his way, any more than the customs of the
+city are congenial to his free-and-easy style of
+associations. Moleskin trousers, Crimean shirt,
+cossack boots, and felt hat, are his rig out. The
+modern type is less pronounced than he of the ancient<span class="pagenum">[Pg 188]</span>
+school, the flash, hard-riding, tearing, loud-swearing,
+rowdy stockman of olden days, with a stockwhip sixteen
+feet long, sporting breeches and leggings, and a
+loud red shirt. Stockmen have very little to do with
+unions, but are seldom without employment on stations
+or on the road.</p>
+
+<p class="title">THE COOK.</p>
+
+<p>Bush cooks are of every shade of colour, complexion,
+and social standing, from the foreign count
+who has been expatriated for political leanings, to the
+squalid shuffling Chinee, or the wily, treacherous Cingalee.
+Hut keeper was the term employed in the
+olden days when two shepherds had each a flock of
+sheep folded for the night inside a yard made of
+movable hurdles, and a hut keeper was joined to them
+to do a bit of cooking, as well as to shift one set of
+hurdles each day. He was supposed also to watch
+at night against native dogs, strychnine not being so
+much in use then to reduce the numbers of these pests.
+They were men of dirty, lazy habits; their cooking was
+fearful, consisting simply of boiling a bit of beef or
+mutton, making a damper, and rinsing out a tin
+pannikin. Greasy-looking, growling, and drunken
+they were, with scarcely energy enough to fetch a little
+wood or water; to wash their clothes was an unheard-of
+thing. Those who cook for drovers on the road
+have to be more alert; a good man on the road is a
+great consideration, and it is no sinecure to cater for a
+party while travelling with stock. The cook is exempt<span class="pagenum">[Pg 189]</span>
+from watching, as he has to be up during the night
+to get breakfast ready by daylight for the men to
+start on with their cattle. Some good cooks will provide
+hot suppers for the men in all weathers. The
+shearers&#8217; cook is quite another variety. He is often
+a boss man employs one or two others under him,
+and gets top wages, but he has to be up to the mark,
+for our shearer is a fine specimen of an inflated
+growler, and will have nothing but of the best, and up
+to time, tea and cake between meals, duff and all the
+luxuries for dinner; in any case he comes in for
+a full share of the shearer&#8217;s arrogance and abuse.
+Station cooks comprise all sorts, good, bad, and indifferent,
+clean and unclean; but one who can make
+real good bread is a rarity, and all are self-taught.
+They frequently get good wages, but soon become
+lazy and dirty, and often a Chinaman has to be put on
+to do the kitchen cooking. About the towns it is
+notorious that European cooks cannot be relied on
+for any time on account of their drinking habits, and
+once again the Chinaman has to be resorted to.</p>
+
+<p class="title">THE SHEARER.</p>
+
+<p>This class of labourer has been very much in
+evidence of late years in Queensland on account of
+the numerous strikes that have taken place, brought
+about by them or their leaders, although it is the best
+paid of all unskilled work in the colony. The
+Shearers&#8217; Union attempted to rule all labour and
+labour interests throughout the whole colony, and<span class="pagenum">[Pg 190]</span>
+succeeded for a long time in keeping things in a very
+disorganised state. There is nothing in shearing that
+any man could not master in a few days, although the
+work may be laborious when long continued. The
+money earned is out of all proportion to what other
+classes of labour receive, nevertheless the shearer is
+the most discontented and turbulent of all classes, and
+very decidedly aggressive. He can earn in a few
+months enough to keep him for the rest of the year
+without work, he is gregarious in his habits, and travels
+about in mounted groups, generally armed. He may
+be said to be a flash man, given to gambling, dicing,
+and other sports, and a good deal of his money is
+spent at roadside shanties. When at work, however,
+he is sober and industrious, as most of them are desirous
+of making a good tally at the end of the shearing,
+and the rules of the shed forbid any latitude for
+loafing or mischief. Shearing by machine instead of by
+hand will tend to modify the aspects of the work, and
+allow more men to learn the art. Shearers travel
+from shed to shed during the season, and sometimes
+earn from four to six pounds a week. They live on
+the best that can be got. Instances are common of
+men shearing over two hundred sheep per day for days
+running. Amongst the shearers will be found many
+respectable men, who have homes or selections of their
+own on which their families reside, and who travel
+round a few large sheds to earn enough money to
+carry on with and support their homes.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 191]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">THE BULLOCK DRIVER.</p>
+
+<p>The man of strong body, and of stronger language,
+the old &#8220;bull-puncher,&#8221; is going out. He was
+an institution of early days when the pole-dray was
+in vogue, a fearful kind of vehicle that tipped up going
+out of a steep creek with a load on, and going down
+would bear on the polers fit to break their necks. The
+four-wheeled waggon has for a long time superseded
+the old bullock-killing dray, but the driver remains
+much the same. Instead of driving ten bullocks in a
+pole-dray, he yokes up eighteen or twenty to a waggon
+and draws instead of three and a half tons, about
+seven or eight tons.</p>
+
+<p>His whip is a terrible long plaited thong with a
+strip of green hide attached, and a handle like a flail,
+with it he wakes the echoes and his oxen at the same
+time. The crack of the whip is accompanied by a
+voice as deep and hoarse as the bellow of one of his
+own long-suffering yoked-up slaves, and his lurid
+language makes even his bullocks shudder. To see
+the &#8220;bullocky&#8221; at his best is only given to those who
+travel with him for a whole trip, and observe his style
+of getting out of difficulties that would dishearten
+many another man. He is full of resource, and not
+lacking in energy, and when his team is bogged in a
+creek in a seemingly hopeless mess, and beyond all
+appearance of ever being extricated, after exhausting
+his ample stock of dire profanity, he proceeds in a
+methodical manner to dig under his wheels and cordu<span class="pagenum">[Pg 192]</span>roy
+the track with branches and limbs of trees, weeds
+out his jibbing bullocks, and with renewed energy and
+awful voice, he calls on his patient and weary team for
+a big effort, and out they walk with their load on to
+the bank. The &#8220;bullocky&#8221; was a great factor in the
+early days of settlement, where there were no roads
+and loading had to be dragged over mountains and
+through steep creeks and over all obstacles. His
+bodily strength, great experience, and energy, came
+in to help in no small degree to keep settlement alive.
+The arrival of the bullock teams was quite an event,
+perhaps after being months on the road, and when
+all supplies had run short&mdash;not that the fact of supplies
+being short on the station would induce them to hasten
+their progress, for no bullock driver was ever known
+to hurry or go out of his slow, crawling pace for any
+inducement whatever. The &#8220;bullocky&#8221; could drink
+rum in buckets, and was always given to use his fists.
+Take him all round, he was about as rough a specimen
+of a bush artist as could be found; but he was hospitable
+in his camp; it was always &#8220;Come and have a pot
+of tea, mate,&#8221; to any traveller. The quicker-moving
+horse teams and the railways, are elbowing the bullock
+driver out into the never-never, where there are still
+opportunities for his special faculties, and it is not often
+that bullock teams, with their wood and iron yokes,
+and dusty, hairy drivers, are seen on any roads coming
+into railway stations. To ask a bullock driver where
+he got his beef from was not always a safe or prudent<span class="pagenum">[Pg 193]</span>
+question; it was looked upon as a piece of wanton impertinence
+that would require suppression. After
+putting down so much on the debit side, something
+should be said to the credit of the carrier. He must
+have been hard-working and thrifty to have acquired
+the necessary capital to purchase his waggon and team.
+Physically, he must be exceptionally strong to stand
+the life he leads. Mentally, he must be full of resource
+to overcome the obstacles he meets with on unformed
+and often uncleared roads. Morally, he must be passing
+honest, for he often carries loads of great value,
+for the safety of which he alone is responsible for
+weeks and often months. These men take up the
+work of distributing goods where the railways end.
+Their duties are arduous and responsible, and they
+deserve more consideration than they generally receive.</p>
+
+<p class="title">THE TRAMP.</p>
+
+<div class="poem" style="width: 28em;">
+<span class="i0">&#8220;My life is a failure, the weary one said,</span>
+<span class="i1">And the days of my youth are past;</span>
+<span class="i0">But I still tramp along, and am not afraid,</span>
+<span class="i1">While grub in the bush shall last.</span>
+<span class="i0">&#8220;My shirt is patched, and my trousers are torn,</span>
+<span class="i1">My hat is a sight to see,</span>
+<span class="i0">The nap of my blanket has long been worn,</span>
+<span class="i1">And is patched with an old soogee.&#8221;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The tramp is found everywhere in the world. The
+bush tramp is only another variety, and since the big
+strikes took place in Queensland some years ago, the
+tribe has multiplied, as it taught them to loaf on the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 194]</span>
+stations for rations. Now they make a practice of
+getting all their supplies for the road from the station
+stores, pleading they have no money, and from policy
+rations are given them, and no questions asked.
+Many men carrying their swags on their backs are
+really looking for work, and deserve encouragement
+by the gratuity of a little rations to help them along,
+as stations are far apart in the outlying districts.
+As station owners are dependent on these same swagmen
+for the extra labour they require from time to
+time, it is policy to keep on good terms with a
+class that can work incalculable damage to station
+men that have miles of grass in sheep paddocks to
+burn, woolsheds to demolish, and gates on the main
+road to be left open, with no evidence forthcoming
+as to how fires were started, etc., and no police to
+supervise or control the actions of these irresponsible
+wanderers. But the tribe of &#8220;whalers,&#8221; as they were
+called in New South Wales, men who tramped up
+one side of the Darling River, and tramped down on
+the other side, never betraying any desire to find work,
+these can be found in the Queensland bush too, but
+not far out, where there are long dry stages between
+the stations, and a shortness of water which terrifies
+these old &#8220;bummers.&#8221; There are men who have
+tramped all over the colonies&mdash;every colony in
+Australia they have been through, and know all the
+tracks. They come up to a station and ask for work
+in a sort of a way, and then ask for rations to carry<span class="pagenum">[Pg 195]</span>
+them on, even asking for a bit of tobacco; they say
+they have no money (and their appearance confirms all
+they say), and have done no work, for six months past,
+or longer, tramping all the way, and never a job.
+Their rags and swag betray dire poverty; their clothes
+patched in every colour, so that a blackfellow would
+hardly wear them, and they are dirty in the extreme.
+These men are not decrepid or weak, but are simply
+lazy, whilst the fine dry climate enables them to live
+without hard work. Occasionally, in order to procure
+some tobacco or a little money for a spree at a shanty,
+they will take a job for a time as rouseabout or wood-chopper,
+but they are soon off on the &#8220;wallaby track&#8221;
+again. It is a recognised custom now among stations
+in the west and north-west to ration the swagmen as
+they pass along, and the cost to some stations during
+the year is very considerable; they just bring up their
+ration bags and get them filled, and go to the creek
+to camp and cook the evening meal they have walked
+perhaps twenty miles to obtain, but which cost them
+nothing but the exercise. Poverty is the inheritance
+of some, but many of these wanderers are poor because
+as soon as they do earn a few pounds at odd jobs
+during shearing time, they march at once to the
+nearest bush shanty and drink what they have earned
+until turned away, and then tramp back to the stations,
+begging rations as they go along, and at the same time
+regarding the donors with a consuming and persistent
+malice. The professional tramp is not a nice character,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 196]</span>
+there can be no mistaking him, with his swag done up
+in a long roll, and hung round his shoulder and down
+his side, a billycan and water-bag in his hand. He
+creeps along slowly with sore feet and shuffling steps,
+camping in the shade when he can to rest; he has no
+companions generally, and his life is a joyless and
+miserable one; but there he is, and there he will remain,
+for his tribe will not die out, because no one will
+refuse to give a little rations to a wayfarer because he
+is hard up, ragged, and penniless.</p>
+
+<p class="title">THE DROVER.</p>
+
+<div class="poem" style="width: 28em;">
+<span class="i0">He knew of every drover&#8217;s way,</span>
+<span class="i1">From Normanton to Bourke;</span>
+<span class="i0">From far Port Darwin&#8217;s ample bay,</span>
+<span class="i1">Right through to Muswellbrook.</span>
+<span class="i0">The desert plains he knew full well,</span>
+<span class="i1">Where duststorms blind the eye;</span>
+<span class="i0">And oft he had come from Camooweal,</span>
+<span class="i1">Drivin&#8217; stock to Narrabri.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The life of a drover, under the most favourable
+circumstances, is the reverse of a pleasant one, but
+like all nomadic occupations, it has a fascination for
+many bushmen. The drover would appear to be regarded
+as the common enemy of every owner or
+superintendent through whose run he passes, although
+in many cases it is a fact that roads are fenced off so
+that a drover cannot leave them without breaking
+down the fences. In many instances the only permanent
+water on the stock routes has been fenced in by
+the owner of the run. The principal wealth of Aus<span class="pagenum">[Pg 197]</span>tralia
+is stock, and these, both sheep and cattle, to be
+marketed need bringing down to some seaport or market,
+either as stores or fats. Sometimes long distances
+are travelled, from one end of Australia to the other,
+the journey occupying months. At starting, the stock
+are counted and handed over to the charge of a competent
+drover, who delivers them at the end of the
+journey, and is paid either by contract at so much per
+head, with an allowance for losses, or else by weekly
+wages, the owner finding the whole plant and money.
+Overlanding is a constant source of anxiety from start
+to finish of the journey. The varying items, such as
+floods, droughts, disease, incompetent hands, lost
+stock, and the surveillance from the owners of runs
+through which they pass, make up the daily routine of
+a drover&#8217;s life. Stormy nights, when cattle become
+very restless, keep the drover awake and anxious. His
+duties are of a responsible nature, and he requires a
+good deal of tact and patience to manage his men
+properly, for he may have over a dozen employed
+with him on a droving job. With sheep the anxiety is
+not so great as with cattle or horses, as sheep are much
+easier to manage. The law provides that unless detained
+by flood, stock shall be driven not less than six
+miles every twenty-four hours. In most instances
+this distance is exceeded, but should the drover fail
+to travel the prescribed distance, through any accident,
+the owner or manager of the run turns up at the camp
+and gives the drover the option of either moving his<span class="pagenum">[Pg 198]</span>
+stock on the proper distance, if it is only one mile
+ahead, or of appearing at the nearest police court,
+perhaps a hundred miles away, to answer an information
+for a breach of the Pastoral Leases Act or the
+Crown Lands Act. Although, perhaps only a nominal
+fine may be imposed, the vexatious delay, loss, and inconvenience
+of attending at the court, induce the
+drover to avoid any needless infringements of the Act.
+Some managers of runs are ever ready to pounce on
+any unfortunate drover who may deviate a few yards
+from the regulated half mile on each side of the road,
+and then it will be so arranged that the drover will not
+get a summons until he is a hundred miles away from
+where the offence was committed, when he has to leave
+his stock in the hands of the men, while he returns
+to answer the trivial charge; he is always fined, as he
+cannot well defend his case, and he is anxious to return
+to his duties.</p>
+
+<p>As a rule, the drovers in Queensland are a trustworthy
+and respectable class of men&mdash;of course there
+are exceptions, but these are soon found out. Cases
+have come to light where cattle sold on the road have
+been returned as knocked up lame, or dead from
+pleuro, and grog has been entered in the accounts as
+stores supplied. The owner is a good deal at the
+mercy of the drover after the latter has taken charge
+of the stock, as he has then very little control over
+them until they reach their destination. Some drovers
+have a plant of their own, twenty or thirty good horses,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 199]</span>
+a dray or waggonette, and saddles, and make contracts
+to shift cattle or sheep at so much per head,
+paying their own men, and finding everything. The
+wages of drovers are always high, but not too high
+when the care and constant work are taken into consideration.
+Sundays and week days alike, rain or fine,
+grass or no grass, whatever turns up, it all means that
+the drover, or man in charge has to be on hand and
+see to things himself. The life is monotonous, wearying
+and fatiguing in the extreme. Man and boss alike
+have to rise before dawn, roll up blankets or swag,
+get breakfast, catch horses, and move the cattle off
+the night camp as soon as it is light, then ride all day
+with them, keep them moving slowly along feeding on
+any grass to be found, watering them when a chance
+offers, carrying a bit of lunch on the saddle, and a
+quart pot to boil some tea in. After the day&#8217;s journey
+is over, the cattle have to be rounded up on the camp
+at sundown and then each takes his turn at watching
+during the night, which means three hours solitary
+riding round in the darkness, turning in any cattle
+inclined to stray out from the camp, and keeping up
+one&#8217;s spirits by calculating how long the trip will last.
+When the weather is fine, the life is bearable, if
+monotonous, but when it rains, especially in cold rain
+and wind, the pleasures of droving are limited; with
+wet ground to lie on, wet clothes to ride in, and scarcely
+fire enough to cook at, with stock restless and
+troublesome at night, the drover will sometimes think<span class="pagenum">[Pg 200]</span>
+longingly of the home and the comforts he once despised.
+Still, droving is a popular calling, and men
+have followed it constantly for years, procuring a long
+droving job during the season, and spelling their
+horses when work is scarce.</p>
+
+<p>More provision should be made for regular stock
+routes throughout the country, and the area of these
+should not be included in the runs on which lessees
+have to pay rent, as the case is now. The drover&#8217;s
+calling is a necessary one, and he should have more
+protection and greater facilities for getting his stock
+to market, and not a continual fight for the rights of
+the road as he has now.</p>
+
+<div class="poem" style="width: 28em;">
+<span class="i0">&#8220;In my wild erratic fancy, visions come to me of Clancy,</span>
+<span class="i1">Gone a-droving down the Cooper, where the western drovers go;</span>
+<span class="i0">As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,</span>
+<span class="i1">For the drover&#8217;s life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.&#8221;</span>
+</div>
+<p class="center">&mdash;&#8220;Banjo.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p class="title">A. S. N. CO.</p>
+
+<p>Not least among the forces that worked for the
+settlement of the north, may be reckoned the steamer
+services. In this respect, the old A. S. N. Co. held the
+premier position, as their steamers were the first in
+all the ports of Queensland, and the colony is much
+indebted to the energy and enterprise of that Company.
+From Brisbane to Cooktown, their steamers
+were the first to cast anchor in the new harbours and
+help to develope the trade of the coast. Although not<span class="pagenum">[Pg 201]</span>
+always very popular, for the public complained often
+at the charges made for freight and passages, the Company
+gave a good helping hand towards the opening
+up of the young country.</p>
+
+<p>A few notes about the history of this pioneering
+Company, obtained through the agency of their secretary,
+Mr. F. Phillips, may be of interest to some. It
+was originally established under the name of the Hunter
+River Steam Navigation Company, in August,
+1839, with a capital of £40,000, and premises at the
+foot of Margaret Street, Sydney. In April, 1841, the
+&#8220;Rose,&#8221; steamer, arrived from England, 172 tons burden.
+In October of the same year, the &#8220;Shamrock&#8221;
+arrived from England, under Captain Gilmore, being
+123 days out. The &#8220;Thistle&#8221; had previously arrived.
+In 1841, the Company advertised their intention of
+sending one of their steamers to Moreton Bay, and the
+&#8220;Shamrock&#8221; sailed thither in December of that year.
+The fares were £8, £6, and £4; freight, 20s. wool,
+20s. per bale. After five months, the steamer was
+withdrawn, as the trade was not remunerative. In
+September, 1842, the &#8220;Tamar,&#8221; and &#8220;Sovereign,&#8221;
+steamers, were purchased by the Company from Mr.
+Grose for £12,000; they were then carrying on a
+trade with Twofold Bay, Melbourne, and Launceston.
+In July, 1844, two water frontage allotments in Brisbane
+were secured for £50, and Mr. James Paterson
+was appointed manager in October, 1845. The Company&#8217;s
+engineering works were established at Pyr<span class="pagenum">[Pg 202]</span>mont
+in February, 1846, the land being leased for that
+purpose. The &#8220;Eagle,&#8221; steamer, a well-known old
+northerner, was built for the Company at their Pyrmont
+works. On March 11th, 1847, their steamer,
+the &#8220;Sovereign&#8221; was wrecked in the south passage in
+Moreton Bay, and forty-four lives lost. In March,
+1851, the Company&#8217;s name was changed to the Australian
+Steam Navigation Company, it was incorporated,
+and its scope enlarged. The capital of the Company
+was £320,000, divided into 16,000 shares of £20
+each, and the opposition of the Melbourne Steamship
+Company, which had been carried on at a great loss
+to both, ceased. In May, 1858, the Company offered
+the colonies a mail service to Galle, and in September
+of the same year the rush to the Port Curtis diggings
+set in, and land was purchased by the Company at
+Rockhampton in 1860. Their steam service was extended
+to Bowen, a port which was just then opening a
+way to inland settlers to obtain their supplies from,
+and the Company obtained a contract for a mail
+service between Adelaide and King George&#8217;s Sound.
+In February, 1863, a new opposition was started by the
+inauguration of the Queensland Steamship Company.
+The following year the A. S. N. Co. had extensive
+wharves and stores built for themselves both in Brisbane
+and Rockhampton. The &#8220;Leichhardt,&#8221; steamer,
+was built at their works for the northern trade, and
+the Company&#8217;s operations were extended to Townsville
+in 1865, Captain Trouton being appointed<span class="pagenum">[Pg 203]</span>
+manager the next year. In January, 1868, the Queensland
+Steamship Company was wound up, and its
+steamers and wharves bought up by the A. S. N. Co.
+In 1870, the Californian mail service was opened by
+H. Hall, who chartered the company&#8217;s steamers
+&#8220;Wonga&#8221; and the &#8220;City of Melbourne&#8221; for that purpose.
+Campbell&#8217;s Wharf in Sydney was bought for a
+large sum in 1876, and the next year Captain O&#8217;Reilly
+leaving the Brisbane agency, Mr. W. Williams was
+appointed.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>In 1878, three Chinese crews were obtained for
+the A. S. N. Co. steamers, a circumstance which
+caused a strike in November, 1879, lasting until the
+following January. The Company had been engaged
+in the trade between Newcastle and Sydney, but this
+was abandoned in September, 1880, when the plant and
+stores were sold to the Newcastle Steamship Co.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>In January, 1887, the extensive intercolonial trade
+of the A. S. N. Co. ceased, and all their steam fleet
+was sold to a new company called the A. U. S. N. Co.
+The fleet stood at £481,000 in their books, and was
+sold for £200,000. The shareholders received
+£20 8s. 9d. per share, the par value being £20 per
+share; the shares when the fleet was sold were
+£9 10s. in the open market, but the increase in the
+value of the landed properties of the Company helped
+to this satisfactory result.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 204]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">BURNS, PHILP &amp; CO.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout Australia, but above all in the northern
+parts of Queensland, the name of Burns, Philp and
+Co. ranks foremost among the many wealthy and
+large companies that have helped to develop trade in
+the northern parts, and a short account of the growth
+of this great business may prove interesting. Intimately
+associated with North Queensland, the business of the
+Company has grown and prospered with the growth
+and prosperity of the youngest colony of the group,
+and much of the rapid opening of new ports and harbours
+on the northern coast line, and also among the
+Pacific Islands, is due directly to the natural business
+capabilities of the founders of the Company.</p>
+
+<p>A number of shipping agencies are also held in
+North Queensland, Western Australia, and Sydney,
+and the Company itself owns a fleet of small vessels
+used in the coasting, lightering, and island trade.
+Altogether there are between sixty and seventy steamers,
+sailing vessels, and lighters owned and chartered
+which fly the flag of Burns, Philp and Co., and the
+red, white, and blue, with Scotch thistle in the
+centre, is a flag well known throughout the Pacific
+Islands and all round Australia. A mail service is
+run by the Company between Cooktown, New Guinea,
+and Thursday Island, also a three years&#8217; contract was
+in 1897 entered into with the Government of Western
+Australia to run weekly between Albany and
+Esperance. Considerable trade is done with the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 205]</span>
+Solomon Islands, and steamers run regularly from
+Sydney in this trade. The Company have also steam
+and sailing services with the New Hebrides, Louisades,
+New Guinea, New Britain, Ellice, and Gilbert, and
+many other islands in the Pacific, having a ten years&#8217;
+contract with the Commonwealth Government for
+regular communication with all the islands which are
+practically under British control, while branch businesses
+have been established at Port Moresby and
+Samarai in British New Guinea, at Elila in the New
+Hebrides, Nukualofa in the Friendly Islands, and elsewhere.
+The first steam service down the Gulf of
+Carpentaria from Thursday Island was inaugurated
+by the senior partner of the Company, Mr. James
+Burns, in the year 1881, by means of the little steamship
+&#8220;Truganini,&#8221; which used often to be overcrowded
+with passengers and freight for Normanton.</p>
+
+<p>The Company is the largest colonial shipper to
+the European and Eastern markets of Pacific Island
+produce, such as copra, beche de mer, sandalwood,
+ivory nuts, tortoise shell, and, above all, pearl shell,
+for which Torres Straits is so famous; add to this the
+amount of tallow, wool, and other Australian produce
+annually exported, and it will give some idea of the
+export business done. The Company has two fleets
+of pearl shelling luggers, comprising about forty
+pearlers in all.</p>
+
+<p>Burns, Philp and Co. is essentially a company of
+a co-operative character, and a glance at the share list<span class="pagenum">[Pg 206]</span>
+will show that the great bulk of shareholders are
+managers, employees, and others actually working in
+the company. This tends to a live interest all round,
+and each branch vies with the other in good management
+and success. The business was originally established
+at Townsville, thirty years ago by the senior
+partner, Mr. James Burns, and the new offices lately
+completed there at a cost of £15,000 are the finest in
+North Queensland, while recently, premises costing
+£50,000 were erected in Sydney. Mr. Philp, now the
+Hon. Robert Philp, Premier of Queensland, joined
+Mr. Burns some twenty-five years ago. Both are
+Scotchmen, the one hailing from Edinburgh, and the
+other from Glasgow. The Company was formed into
+a limited liability company twenty-one years ago.</p>
+
+<p>Much could be written of the varied character of
+the business of Burns, Philp and Co., which embraces
+almost every colonial interest besides, while they are
+allied to a group of other colonial companies which
+act in accord with them, notably the North Queensland
+Insurance Company, and other concerns. For
+some years the Company engaged in the whaling
+enterprise with fairly successful results, but the detention
+of Captain Carpenter, and the seizure of the
+whaling barque &#8220;Costa Rica Packet&#8221; by the Dutch
+authorities in the Malay Archipelago, abruptly terminated
+what promised to be a most important
+colonial enterprise. It will be remembered that the
+Dutch Government had to pay a considerable sum to<span class="pagenum">[Pg 207]</span>
+the captain, owners, and crew of the vessel for this
+wrongful seizure.</p>
+
+<p>The total turnover of this Company now exceeds
+two millions sterling, and it is one of the largest and
+most progressive of the purely Australian concerns.</p>
+
+<p>In the Sydney office a special telegraphic operator
+is always at work, and cable and telegraphic messages
+are sent to, and received from, all parts of the
+world direct. This is the only company in the colonies
+which has a Government operator established on the
+premises solely for its own business.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 208]</span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>CHAPTER XI.<br />
+
+ABORIGINALS OF NORTH QUEENSLAND.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Where did the natives come from?</p>
+
+<p>How long ago?</p>
+
+<p>Where did they land first?</p>
+
+<p>Where are their ancestors?</p>
+
+<p>Were they ever civilised?</p>
+
+<p>These and similar questions occur to those who
+regard the natives of Australia with interest. They
+live only in the past, there is no future for them, here
+at least. Their origin is involved in impenetrable
+obscurity. Scarcely on the earth is to be found a
+race similar to the aboriginals, whilst their antiquity
+is beyond doubt, and also the fact that they have a
+common origin. Their speech, habits, colour, customs,
+and superstitions, proclaim in the strongest terms
+that they all came from a common source; from the far
+north of Australia to the farthest south, a hundred
+proofs are forthcoming to show a common ancestry.
+Words that have a similar meaning are used on the
+Darling River and in places in the Gulf of Carpentaria;
+the weapons are similar all over the continent; their
+faces and figures are similar, allowing for the effects<span class="pagenum">[Pg 209]</span>
+of varieties of food and climate. In the three hundred
+years since the first contact between Europeans and
+the New Hollanders, no change has occurred; they
+were then spread over Australia, the same in habits
+and life as they are now, and the only result of the
+contact of the two races of men, the civilised and the
+savage, is that the native is fading away before the
+white man like mist before the morning sun. Nothing
+can avert the doom that is written as plainly as
+was the writing on the wall at Belshazzar&#8217;s feast.
+And to what purpose would we preserve them? What
+good could accrue from maintaining a remnant of a
+race that it is impossible to civilise. The buffalo of
+America, like the Red Indian himself (the hunter and
+the hunted), pass over the river in front of the advancing
+tide of civilisation.</p>
+
+<p>As a study, the native race of Australia is eminently
+interesting, for in them we have living representatives
+of the stone age; remarkable for their pureness
+of race, having had no admixture from any other
+nation through countless generations for their great
+antiquity, for before the pyramids of Egypt were built,
+they had occupied Australia and for the silence of all
+history and traditions concerning them and their destiny
+of doom; as a race problem they are full of
+interest.</p>
+
+<p>From Cape York to the Great Australian Bight,
+and from the Leeuwin to the Great Sandy Spit on
+Frazer&#8217;s Island, there is no difference in the type of the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 210]</span>
+native of Australia, although the quality and
+quantity of their food has caused some of the
+tribes to be more robust and better developed
+than others. In the north, where food is plentiful,
+there are many fine specimens of men over the
+average height of the European. Many of the
+northern aboriginals are tall, muscular men, of great
+activity and endurance, with keen sight and observation,
+and they often attain to a good old age. Nearly
+all are bearded, with hair that is wavy rather than
+straight or curly. They are not a cowardly race, as
+among themselves they conduct their fights with a
+certain degree of honour, and with great pluck, not
+taking advantage of an opponents&#8217; accident. They
+excel in throwing their spears with the wommera or
+throwing stick, and can hit a mark at a distance of
+seventy to eighty yards with great force; the boomerang
+is used for game, such as ducks or pigeons, as
+well as in warfare, and is really a formidable weapon.
+On the north-east coast, they use a wooden sword
+which is wielded with both hands, and seems to have
+been an improvement or an innovation on the boomerang,
+where the dense scrubs prohibited the use of the
+throwing weapon.</p>
+
+<p>They appear to have been from all time a race of
+hunters, ever living on the products of the chase, and
+from the scarcity of game, and difficulty in keeping it
+when killed, they seldom remain more than one or two
+nights in one camp, but move about in small parties.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 211]</span>
+Although the tribes or families are always on the
+move&mdash;a nomad hunter race&mdash;their districts are well
+defined, and they seldom trespass on the hunting
+grounds of an adjoining tribe, unless with consent.
+This strict delimitation of districts and dislike of trespass,
+has led to a great diversity in their dialects, and
+every little tribe seems to have a different language;
+in a distance of one or two hundred miles, the names
+for the commonest things may be altered, although
+the same social system prevails substantially throughout
+all tribes, with little or no variation.</p>
+
+<p>In their original state they could not have been
+an unhappy people; when food was plentiful, they
+made weapons and shaped their stone tomahawks,
+which of itself was a work of slow progress; they wove
+nets for their game, and composed or sang their wild
+songs, or still wilder corroborrees, or dances. Obedient
+to the laws and customs handed down from their
+ancient forefathers, and following out the rites of their
+marriage laws with great strictness, they lived healthy
+lives to a good old age, while the increase of the race
+was checked by the amount of food each district could
+supply. With the advent of the white race, the social
+system that held them together for thousands of years,
+became disturbed and broken into, and their natural
+food supplies were destroyed. Thus, with the introduction
+of new diseases, this primitive race of mankind
+is fast disappearing, apparently without a
+thought or struggle or hope, and after a few years not<span class="pagenum">[Pg 212]</span>
+a remnant of them, or any sign of their occupation of
+the country will remain. Some of their customs appear
+to be very general, such as knocking out the two
+front teeth among women, and sometimes among
+men; this is done by a sudden blow on the end of a
+stick which is placed on the tooth, and then knocked
+inwards. A very general custom is boring a hole
+through the septum of the nose, although it is not
+often that an ornament is put through it. Another
+manner of adornment is by raised cicatrices made on
+the chest and back and arms, by cutting the skin with
+a piece of sharp flint and putting in gum or clay. In
+their native state, they do not appear to have made
+any attempt at any kind of covering or dress,
+either male or female, except that young girls
+wore an apron round the loins made of fibre or
+grass hanging down a few inches. For camping
+at night they used ti-tree or other bark as a
+shelter when procurable, and always slept between
+two or three small fires, making a slight hollow in the
+ground so as to get the warmth of the fire above them,
+and generally choosing the sandy beds of rivers away
+from the wind. In the Gulf country, during the wet
+season, they made small sleeping benches raised on
+forks driven in the ground, about three feet high, with
+sheets of bark laid flat, and over them other sheets of
+bark bent in a half-circle, so as to throw off rain;
+beneath these structures or sleeping places they kept
+up a smoke to save them from the mosquitoes, which<span class="pagenum">[Pg 213]</span>
+in the Northern Peninsula, were dreadfully annoying.
+It was the duty of the gins to keep the fire going
+during the night. In dry weather or windy nights,
+a breakwind made of boughs or branches was used as
+a protection, behind which they made their small fires
+for sleeping by. The cooking was generally done
+away from their camp fires, mostly during the daytime.</p>
+
+<p>In the Gulf country also, the coast blacks make
+small gunyahs of bent twigs thatched with grass.
+These are only used during the wet season as a protection,
+chiefly from mosquitoes.</p>
+
+<p>The treatment of the native races has always been
+a difficult question. Whenever new districts were
+settled, the blacks had to move on to make room; the
+result was war between the races. The white race were
+the aggressors, as they were the invaders of the blacks&#8217;
+hunting territory. The pioneers cannot be condemned
+for taking the law into their own hands and defending
+themselves in the only way open to them, for the
+blacks own no law themselves but the law of might.
+The protection of outside districts by the Native
+Police, was the only course open, although the system
+cannot very well be defended any more than what
+was done under it can be. The white pioneers
+were harder on the blacks in the way of reprisals when
+they were forced to deal with them for spearing their
+men or their cattle or horses even than the Native
+Police. But how were property and the lives of stockmen,
+shepherds, and prospectors in the north to be<span class="pagenum">[Pg 214]</span>
+protected unless by some summary system of retribution
+by Native Police or bands of pioneers? The
+vices and diseases of the white race have been far
+more fatal to the blacks than the rifles of the pioneers,
+more particularly when they were allowed about the
+towns, where they always exhibit the worst traits of
+their character, becoming miserable creatures, useless
+for any purpose, and an eyesore to everyone. Those
+employed on stations as stockriders and horse-hunters
+become very useful and clever at the business, having
+a special aptitude for working among stock, and they
+are, as a rule, well treated, clothed, and fed. The
+Northern Peninsula up to Cape York is the only territory
+in Queensland where the natives may still be
+found in their original state, and on some of the rivers
+flowing into the Gulf they are still numerous.</p>
+
+<p>Their cave drawings show their taste for drawing
+or sketching to have been of the rudest; just a few
+marks on their boomerangs, line drawings on water
+koolimans, and some attempts at drawing figures on
+rocks in caves are all that have been discovered. The
+drawings are found wherever sandstone caves are
+found, and many of these are to be met with on the
+range about the Normanby River, near Cooktown,
+where the steep cliffs have been eaten into by the
+weather or by landslips, leaving hollows or caves in
+which the blacks have camped and ornamented with
+figures rudely drawn and coloured with red ochre or
+pipeclay; many of these drawings represent nothing at<span class="pagenum">[Pg 215]</span>
+all; in some a hand is drawn, occasionally an attempt
+at some bird, or animal, or tree. Sir George Grey describes
+some elaborate drawings on the north-west coast
+of Australia found in caves of a similar nature, and
+large numbers are found on the coast near the Roper
+River in the Gulf of Carpentaria, and at Limmen&#8217;s
+Bight, in the hollows of rocks, where, sheltered from
+the weather, the face of the stone is entirely covered
+with their rude attempts.</p>
+
+<p>All the lands in the southern seas are supposed to
+have been populated by castaways, driven by gales out
+of their reckoning, and landing haphazard at the first
+land or shore. The first visitor to the unknown and
+uninhabited land, arriving by accident, would have a
+struggle for existence, and a hard one too; he would
+have to improvise his weapons for the chase, and to
+learn to adapt himself to his new surroundings. His
+only chance of existence would be to become a
+nomad, a hunter; and all his spare time would be
+taken up in finding food and making weapons for the
+chase; for which Nature provided in a rude way
+the materials such as flints that break with a cutting
+or conchoidal edge that would answer very well for
+carving flesh, fashioning spears, or hollowing vessels
+for carrying water, though large shells could be used
+for this; the gum that exudes from many trees would
+serve to fasten handles to these flint knives. Hard
+rocks, such as diorite, would be used for axes. These
+stones require a vast amount of patience in chipping<span class="pagenum">[Pg 216]</span>
+and grinding into shape. To make canoes out of
+sheets of bark would become a necessity for fishing and
+visiting the islands, and they would have to be sewn
+together with twine made from the inner bark of a
+tree. Wonderfully well made some of those canoes on
+the coast are; three sheets of thin bark tapered to a
+point; one sheet for the bottom and one each to form
+the sides; the fire is laid on some mud on the bottom,
+with a shell to bail out. Using a single paddle on
+each side alternately, the natives will make long voyages
+among the islands on the coast. Primitive
+Nature would be the castaway&#8217;s granary or storehouse;
+the herbs and fruits as they grew naturally, and the
+wild animals and fish would form the only means of
+subsistence.</p>
+
+<p>Arriving in the country with such surroundings
+and difficulties to contend with, no wonder the castaways
+remained in a state of savagery. Without any
+means to better their condition, or even to know that
+it could be bettered, they remained as they landed,
+simple savages or children of Nature, quite satisfied
+with their surroundings, and happy enough if left
+alone to follow their own mode of life. What spare
+time they had would be passed singing songs or
+composing them. The women would assist in all the
+work of life and perform all the drudgery, collecting
+roots, nuts, and fibre; grinding the seeds, making the
+fire, and carrying wood and water to the camp. It is
+well known that savage women are possessed of un<span class="pagenum">[Pg 217]</span>common
+endurance and vitality. In the course of
+ages, as their numbers increased, they would gradually
+spread abroad, carrying with them the customs
+and habits of their forefathers, but not improving or
+adding to the knowledge of the tribe. The natural
+instincts of the aboriginals are sharpened by exercise,
+and their skill in tracking is marvellous; they can follow
+the trail of another black over bare rocks or on
+the driest earth; they can recognise an acquaintance
+by the track of his foot. As bushmen they excel,
+having the faculty of being able to steer a course to
+any place they may wish, even in the dark, although,
+from superstitious ideas, they do not travel about
+much at night. Most of their quarrels are over their
+women; one man appropriating the wife of another.
+It is allowable by their laws for a man to have several
+wives, and marriage by arrangement is the general
+course. They are betrothed at a very early age, and
+the girl remains with her parents till the man comes
+to claim her. The brother-in-law has the right to
+marry the widow, and is expected to do so. The
+mother-in-law never looks on the face of her son-in-law,
+avoiding him on every occasion, even if in the
+same camp; this is a custom peculiar to all parts of
+Australia, and even to other savage peoples outside
+the continent.</p>
+
+<p>They are all compelled to marry within their class,
+and all tribes come under the same system, an equal
+rule prevailing all over Australia. The system of their<span class="pagenum">[Pg 218]</span>
+marriage laws is puzzling to white people, but it is well
+understood by every black, male or female, old or
+young, and will be referred to further on, under the
+class system, the writer having collected information of
+several class systems for Mr. A. W. Howitt, of Victoria.</p>
+
+<p>The blackfellow generally wears his hair long,
+and usually caked into thick matted rope-like coils,
+with a band of red above the forehead, or else a
+native dog&#8217;s tail. When dressed for a dance or corroborree,
+the hair is sometimes tied in a tuft with
+cockatoo feathers on the top. The married women
+wear their hair shorter, but the unmarried women
+generally wear it long. When mourning for the dead,
+the hair is plastered all over with mud, and the eyes
+and forehead are painted round with pipeclay.</p>
+
+<p>The natives are fond of singing, and their voices
+are melodious, while they keep excellent time by beating
+two boomerangs together; they sing a sort of
+monotonous chant, and keep it up in camp to a late
+hour. Their songs of mourning are always pitched in
+a minor key, and convey a dreadfully sorrowful expression;
+they are sung by both male and female, but
+the chant is soon varied, as their natural inclination
+is to be merry, and they look on most things in a
+ludicrous light. Their sense of humour is very keen
+and to mimic everything is their chief delight. The
+clear ringing laugh that they indulge in, and their
+merry chatter, are an indication of the cheerful nature<span class="pagenum">[Pg 219]</span>
+and freedom from care, that help to make them so
+contented and easily pleased.</p>
+
+<p>They believe that the spirits of the dead, which
+are good and bad, go about at night and hold communication
+with some members of the tribe, particularly
+with the medicine men, or doctors. The
+medicine men claim to have power to talk with the
+spirits, and the blacks firmly believe that they have
+such power of communication. These old men are
+also supposed to preserve the traditions and superstitions
+of the tribe, and they alone can perform with
+efficacy the various ceremonies attendant on the healing
+of the sick; they also instruct the young men in
+the beliefs of the tribe and as to the proper conduct
+of their lives, and this they do at special meetings
+known as bora meetings. It is the special privilege
+of the old men to hold communication with the spirits
+of the departed, by which they become possessed of
+much knowledge which they impart to their tribe.
+They believe they have the power of making rain and
+healing the sick. The blacks live in continual dread
+of death, which they attribute to some spirit agency
+or to witchcraft. Scarcely any death is put down to
+natural causes, except those killed in fight; sickness
+and death are always regarded by them as the works
+of an enemy at a distance. This belief is universal
+among Australian blacks. They have various ideas as
+to how this evil influence is brought about; one of
+them is by pointing a bone at the victim, and for this a<span class="pagenum">[Pg 220]</span>
+piece of a human leg bone sharpened to a point and
+several inches long is used. They live in dread of this
+bone (Thimmool) being pointed at them, and have a
+great aversion at any time to touch or even look at
+any bones of deceased members of the tribe. It is
+supposed that the pointing of the bone causes a
+gradual wasting away of the victim until death takes
+place. Another process is to take the pinion of a
+bird, the two bones fastened together with wax, including
+some hair of the person whose injury is intended;
+this is stuck in the ground and surrounded
+with fire, then it is set in the sun, and again returned
+to the fire, varying the performance according as to
+the extent of the harm to be caused; when sufficient
+sickness has been caused, they place the bone in water,
+thus dispelling the charm. This process is called
+&#8220;Marro.&#8221; There is a superstition about abstracting
+the kidney fat of a blackfellow for promoting luck
+in fishing, and this is said to be done in various ways.
+The blacks are very good to the aged and infirm,
+and carry them from camp to camp; they are also
+good to the blind, whom they feed and care for, and
+when death ensues, they will mourn and chant their
+death song nightly.</p>
+
+<p>The aborigines believe that the spirit survives
+after death, and that it walks about on earth for a time,
+and then departs for another country which is supposed
+to be among the stars, the road to which is
+by the milky way, and the ascent by the Southern<span class="pagenum">[Pg 221]</span>
+Cross, as by a ladder. The life supposed to be led
+there is similar to that on earth, but the food is abundant
+and shade trees and water are everywhere. They
+have names for all the constellations, and understand
+their times and movements. The Pleiades they call
+&#8220;Munkine,&#8221; the name for a virgin or unmarried girl.
+Orion&#8217;s Belt is called &#8220;Marbarungal,&#8221; they believe him
+to have been a great hunter who formerly dwelt among
+them. The moon is a male, who, they say, was once
+a blackfellow, who killed a lot of their people. The
+latter burnt him in the struggle, and they point to
+the shadows on its surface as marks of the scars. A
+paper was read before the Royal Society of Brisbane
+by E. Palmer on October 2nd, 1885, &#8220;Concerning
+some superstitions of North Queensland aborigines.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Cannibalism is practised among the blacks everywhere,
+but more from custom following certain traditions
+than for the sake of food; certain blacks are
+eaten, while others are not; those killed in a fight
+are generally eaten. In some places they skin the
+dead blackfellow, and twist the skin round a bundle
+of spears with the hair sticking up on top, and they
+carry this to different camps, sticking it in the ground
+by the points of the spears; children are sometimes
+eaten when they die.</p>
+
+<p>They are expert at all game hunting, and in
+snaring wildfowl; the plain turkey can be caught with
+a long reed on the end of a spear with a running
+noose made of twine and quills; with this in one hand,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 222]</span>
+and a bush in the other, a man with patience will
+creep up close enough to catch a turkey round the
+neck. They make strong nets of cordage, having a
+large mesh to catch emus, kangaroos, or wallabies.
+These nets they stretch in certain places, and drive
+the game into them; small hand nets are used to
+catch fish with; pigeons and ducks are snared in nets
+which are stretched across creeks. The habits of
+birds and animals are closely studied, and their instincts
+are overmatched by the cunning of the savage,
+who wants them for food.</p>
+
+<p>All their food is cooked before being eaten, generally
+on stones made red-hot. It is wrapped in green
+leaves, and then covered over with hot ashes to steam.
+In the north they eat the alligator when they can
+manage to kill one, and the small fresh-water crocodile,
+found in most of the Gulf rivers, is also an article
+of food.</p>
+
+<p>Seeds of various grasses are ground into a paste
+with water and poured into the ashes to cook, while
+some fruits and nuts require great preparation before
+using, as they are extremely poisonous without such
+treatment. In preserving game, the blacks are very
+cruel, they twist the legs out of joint to prevent them
+getting away, and keep them alive in this way until
+they are wanted for cooking.</p>
+
+<p>They eat the dingo, and everything else that lives;
+and are very clever at discovering the nests of the
+native bees; honey, or &#8220;sugar-bag,&#8221; as they call it, is<span class="pagenum">[Pg 223]</span>
+a favourite food of theirs. It is only by constant
+moving about from camp to camp that a supply of food
+can be kept up, the women doing their share of providing
+by digging up yams and roots, fishing for crayfish
+and mussels, and grinding seeds between two
+stones. Their life is a constant worry for food from day
+to day, and nothing passes them that can be eaten.
+A favourite food of theirs is the tuber of the water-lily
+growing in lagoons, of this they even eat the
+stalks or stems of the seed stalk.</p>
+
+<p>The dugong, a large marine grass-feeding mammal
+is netted and speared; the flesh, when dried, is
+similar to bacon, and in the Wide Bay dialect is
+called &#8220;Koggar,&#8221; the same name they give to the pig.
+White ants are esteemed a treat, and their nests are
+broken into, and the young ones, with the eggs winnowed
+from the dirt are eaten raw, as well as the
+grubs, which are the larva; of some locusts or beetles,
+and which are cut out of the trees.</p>
+
+<p class="title">THE CLASS SYSTEM.</p>
+
+<p>All natives acknowledge the same system of class
+divisions, and these correspond all over Australia.
+The blacks are born into these divisions, and the
+idea is instilled into them from the beginning that
+they are to observe them as sacred.</p>
+
+<p>Though differing in name or in totem, the classes
+and divisions prevail everywhere, and a blackfellow
+knows at once which of the divisions corresponds to
+his own in a distant tribe.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 224]</span></p>
+
+<p>All things in Nature are divided into the same
+classes, and are said to be male and female; the sun,
+moon, and stars are believed to be men and women,
+and to belong to classes similar to the blacks themselves.</p>
+
+<p>The following is an instance of the system of
+class divisions belonging to a tribe on the Upper
+Flinders River, in the Gulf of Carpentaria, calling
+themselves &#8220;Yerrunthully.&#8221; They had four class
+divisions, namely:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Aboriginal class divisions">
+<tr><td align="center">Male</td><td align="center"> &nbsp;marries &nbsp;</td><td align="left">Female.</td><td align="left"> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="center">Children are</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Bunbury</td><td align="center">...</td><td align="left">Woonco</td><td align="center">...</td><td align="left">Coobaroo</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Coobaroo</td><td align="center">...</td><td align="left">Koorgielah &nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="center">...</td><td align="left">Bunbury</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Koorgielah &nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="center">...</td><td align="left">Coobaroo</td><td align="center">...</td><td align="left">Woonco</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Woonco</td><td align="center">...</td><td align="left">Bunbury</td><td align="center">...</td><td align="left">Koorgielah</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>Each boy and girl in the tribe is born under one
+of these divisions, and is subjected to the laws, connected
+with tribal marriages. These classes are represented
+by totems, which are different in other tribes
+lower down the river:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="5" summary="Class totems">
+<tr><td align="left">Bunbury</td><td align="left">Carpet Snake</td><td align="left">Tharoona</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Coobaroo</td><td align="left"><div style='float:left;'>
+
+<p style="float:left;text-indent:0;margin-top:1em;"> </p>
+    <div style='float:left;padding-right:4px;'>
+<p style='font-size:250%;font-weight:lighter;margin:0;line-height:.95em;text-indent:0;'>{</p>
+</div></div> Brown Snake<br />Emu&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="left" valign="top">Warrineyah<br />Gooburry</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">Koorgielah</td><td align="left"><div style='float:left;'>
+
+<p style="float:left;text-indent:0;margin-top:1em;"> </p>
+    <div style='float:left;padding-right:4px;'>
+<p style='font-size:250%;font-weight:lighter;margin:0;line-height:.95em;text-indent:0;'>{</p>
+</div></div>Plain Turkey<br />Native Dog&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="left" valign="top">Bergamo<br /> Cubburah</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">Woonco</td><td align="left">Whistling Duck</td><td align="left">Chewelah</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>Many other instances could be given, but they
+all partake of the same divisions and classes. A
+blackfellow can only marry into one class, namely that<span class="pagenum">[Pg 225]</span>
+opposite to his name, the other three are forbidden to
+him strictly. The descent seems to be reckoned
+through the mother, for the child takes its name, not
+from its mother&#8217;s class, but from the grandmother&#8217;s
+class. The class name always goes back to that of
+the grandmother on the female side, the father&#8217;s class
+name having no influence in the matter. Woonco&#8217;s
+daughter is always Coobaroo, and Coobaroo&#8217;s
+daughter is always Woonco, and so on through
+succeeding generations. The father might possibly
+be of a name representing the proper class, but
+from a far away tribe, for they correspond in class
+though not always in name; still the children take
+their name through the mother in this tribe. The
+blacks understand these relationships well, and exemplify
+them with two sticks crossed.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 226]</span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>CHAPTER XII.<br />
+
+PHYSICAL FEATURES.</h2>
+
+<p>The annual reports issued by the Water Supply
+Department of Queensland give detailed
+accounts of the annual and average rainfall
+over the whole of the colony, with the results of boring
+for artesian water, both privately and by Government.
+It is one of the most valuable and interesting reports
+issued, and with the rain maps accompanying it, conveys
+in a moment an accurate estimate of the average
+rainfall both on the coast and in the far interior.
+Beginning at Mackay, where the tropical rains commence,
+and following the coast line to Cape York, the
+record is higher than anywhere else in the colony,
+owing to the near approach of the high ranges to the
+coast. The maximum rainfall recorded in one year is
+reported at Geraldton, where 211.24 inches fell in 1894;
+Cairns can boast of 174.56 inches as its highest rainfall;
+this occurred in 1886. At Cape York, the average
+is 60.87; and at Mackay, 72.73 inches; these numbers
+give a general indication of the humidity of the
+climate on the east coast of North Queensland. As we
+advance into the interior a far different climate prevails,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 227]</span>
+and the farther west we go, the lighter becomes the
+rainfall, till it would almost appear as if it scarcely
+ever rained in some places in the interior, which are not
+much raised above the level of the sea. At Birdsville,
+low down on the Diamantina River, on the borders
+of South Australia, the rainfall taken for three years,
+amounted to only 5.72 inches, and on the Mulligan,
+where for six years an average was taken, it amounted
+to only 5.77 inches. At Boulia, on the Burke River,
+the average for nine years was 13.54 inches.</p>
+
+<p>Between these extremes of great dryness and
+excessive moisture, the intervening country shows
+a graduated increase or decrease as one approaches
+or recedes from the eastern coast. As very few water-ways
+exist to carry off surplus water, the drainage
+being often imperceptible to the eye, this seems a
+merciful dispensation of Nature, as under such conditions
+any great rainfall would place the whole country
+under a sea of water long enough for all animal
+life to become extinct. The water that flows down the
+usually dry channels of the western rivers southwards
+comes from the Gulf watershed, where the rainfall is
+much heavier, averaging at Cloncurry 20.80 inches.
+The amount of rainfall determines largely the nature
+of the fauna and flora of a country, and causes it to
+vary, even in the same latitudes. Between the high
+coastal districts and the vast rolling plains and downs
+of the interior these differences are so marked and
+distinct that they seem like two separate countries;<span class="pagenum">[Pg 228]</span>
+climate, timber, herbage, and even animal life are so
+different in the two regions that it seems extraordinary
+such contrasts should exist in the same latitude in one
+country. All along the east coast, where the rainfall
+is heavy, we find forests of splendid hardwood and
+scrubs containing cedar and pine of gigantic growth.
+In the interior, the timber is as a rule dwarfed, hollow,
+and crooked; the principal timbers being the acacia
+family, such as the gidya, myall, brigalow, boree, etc.
+The grasses of the interior adapt themselves to the
+climate, and are of a far hardier growth than the coast
+grasses; one season without moisture does not impare
+their wonderful vitality; the salt bushes are the hardiest
+of all vegetation in the interior, and are of the
+greatest value to pastoralists. Birds are found on the
+coast that never visit the interior districts; while the
+galas and corellas are never found in a wild state
+near the coast. During the wet season in the summer
+months many seabirds migrate to the interior for a
+few weeks.</p>
+
+<p>Accompanying the report of the Hydraulic Engineer
+is a coloured map showing the sites of artesian
+bores and tanks and the supposed area of the lower cretaceous
+or water-bearing strata, as well as the underlying
+impermeable palæozoic rocks. The whole of Western
+Queensland may be said to belong to the lower cretaceous
+formation; here and there, where it has not
+been denuded by the action of the atmosphere, the
+desert sandstone may be found overlaying it. The<span class="pagenum">[Pg 229]</span>
+whole of this vast area of water-bearing rocks has been
+proved by artesian bores, most of which are far below
+the level of the sea. The knowledge of the area of the
+water-bearing country in the interior is extending as
+additional bores are put down. Some of the bores
+within the known belt of the water area have been
+abandoned owing to causes that may be generally
+classified as accidents.</p>
+
+<p>The Government have sunk a number of wells,
+while hundreds of flowing bores that now stud the
+great western country have been put down by private
+enterprise. The policy of the Government has been
+to determine the area within which artesian water may
+be hopefully searched for, and to provide water in arid
+country or on stock routes, and excellent results have
+attended the carrying out of this policy. The Winton
+bore is down in the lower cretaceous beds 4,010 feet,
+it gives a flow of 720,000 gallons of water a day, at
+a temperature of 192 degs.; the surface level is 600
+feet above the sea; it will take about £8,000 to cover
+the total cost of sinking, etc. The Charleville bore
+has the largest flow of any Government bore, giving
+3,000,000 gallons in the twenty-four hours, but some
+bores on Tinenburra, on the Warrego River, give as
+much as 4,000,000 gallons. About 800 private bores
+have been sunk in search of artesian water in the western
+area of Queensland; of these 515 give a total output
+of 322 millions of gallons in the twenty-four hours,
+and the total cost of them amounted to nearly<span class="pagenum">[Pg 230]</span>
+£2,000.000. This expenditure made within sixteen
+years, is creditable to the energy and forethought of
+the western settlers. Some of the bores are not overflowing,
+and the water is raised by pumping, though
+the supply is inexhaustible. By the flow of water thus
+brought to the surface, the devastating effects of the
+periodical droughts have been minimised, and large
+areas have become available to profitable occupation
+that previously were waste country. The flow of this
+artesian water from the private and public bores is
+worth more to Queensland than a river of gold. They
+have completely changed the face of the country, and
+removed the anxiety of the stock owners towards the
+end of the season, when all surface water (except the
+most permanent lagoons) has dried up and formed
+mud traps to catch all weak stock that venture near
+them. These tiny perforations of the earth&#8217;s surface
+have helped to solve the difficulty of settlement on the
+western lands, where we find the rainfall diminishing
+as we go further west. As these little threads of water
+find their way across the plains and form into small
+ponds in the hollows, the wildfowl resort to them as
+if they were natural waters, while the bulrushes (typha
+angustifolia), soon follow and grow in masses,
+although these are only to be found round springs,
+and never in permanent lagoons or rivers. Some
+curious features are connected with the artesian water
+supply; sometimes the temperature is very high,
+that of the Dagworth bore reaching 196 degrees, while<span class="pagenum">[Pg 231]</span>
+the pressure of the Thargomindah bore is over 230 lbs.
+to the square inch. The water supply tapped is perhaps
+beyond calculation, and up to the present time
+there is no indication of exhaustion.</p>
+
+<p>The source of this enormous pressure of water
+that is capable of sending a jet over a hundred feet
+above the surface, is still unexplained, and many
+theories are afloat as to its origin; some of these go
+far afield for reasons for the great supply and strong
+pressure. The enormous rainfall on the coast ranges,
+where the intake probably occurs, and where the impermeable
+rocks approach the surface, carrying the
+water under the lower cretaceous, or more recent formation
+(which is shown to be the most extensive in
+Western Queensland), seems to be the most reasonable
+to adopt at the present time. These water-bearing
+strata must cover very large areas in Australia,
+for a bore at Tarcanina, near the south coast on the
+Great Australian Bight, is down over 1,000 feet below
+the level of the sea, and throws the water to a great
+height above the surface.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. R. L. Jack, the Government Geologist, in a
+paper on artesian water in the western interior of
+Queensland read before the Australian Association for
+the Advancement of Science, in Brisbane, January,
+1895, argues in a most convincing manner as to the
+source of artesian supplies of water, giving the intake
+or gathering ground at about 55,000 square miles,
+over a region where the mean average rainfall taken<span class="pagenum">[Pg 232]</span>
+at thirteen meteorological stations along the line of
+outcrop, amounts to 27 inches annually, which is considerably
+greater than that of the interior of the downs
+country. The greater part of the rainfall is not carried
+away by the channels of the rivers, neither is it evaporated,
+but sinks through porous strata into the earth,
+and does not return except through springs or submarine
+leakage. The fact of all this great supply of
+water finding its way to the sea at great depths,
+shows what little effect a few bores can have on the
+enormous annual supply. It is an encouragement to
+extend the number of bores, which are so necessary
+to successfully settle the arid plains of the distant interior,
+in order to anticipate the waste of water.</p>
+
+<p>The fact of an artesian bore diminishing its flow
+may be due to many causes other than shortage of
+supply, faults in the tubing or caving in of the strata
+may account for it. We have here the secret of successful
+settlement in inland Australia&mdash;an inexhaustible
+supply of water fit for all the wants of man.</p>
+
+<p>The Normanton bore, practically on the edge of
+the Gulf, and sunk from a level of about 30 feet above
+the sea, struck artesian water at a depth of 1,983 feet,
+or 1,950 feet below sea level. This bore and the one
+at Burketown, both of which were successful in reaching
+artesian water, were put down by the Government
+during the time Mr. G. Phillips represented Carpentaria
+in the Legislative Assembly, 1893-5.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 233]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">THE GRASSES AND FODDER PLANTS.</p>
+
+<p>An enumeration of all the fodder plants and herbage
+common to North Queensland would require a
+long catalogue, as variety is Nature&#8217;s law in this case,
+and the western soil teems after the wet season with
+flowers, herbs, grasses, and fruits all more or less
+adapted for use as fodder. The prospect on the wide
+spreading plains after the early thunder showers in
+November and December is very refreshing to the
+eye that has been for months staring on the dry stalks
+of the Mitchell grass, or else on the brown bare earth.
+Trailing vines of the melon and cucumber family
+spread themselves in profusion, the fruit of which is
+eagerly sought after by stock. Convolvolus flowers
+and vines grow among the young green grasses, and
+many varieties of the compositæ show in bright yellow
+their gleaming flowers, mingled with hibiscus of
+every hue. The growth of plant life is marvellous
+after the fall of soft rain on the warm rich soil. Portulaca,
+known as pigweed, is among the first of the
+plants to spring up, and grows in great masses; the
+seeds form a principal article of food for the birds that
+frequent the plains, the young plants are also used by
+stock, and are not despised by man in an emergency.
+All life, vegetable and animal, revives suddenly after
+the surface of the earth has been saturated with the
+life-giving element; frogs and locusts sing their songs
+of joy day and night; flies increase beyond conception,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 234]</span>
+and mosquitoes and sandflies torment to distraction
+both man and beast.</p>
+
+<p>On the plains, the first vegetation to spring up is
+the sensitive plant, spreading its delicate foliage over
+the surface, the leaves closing during the heat of the
+day, and opening in the evening. The small creeping
+plant said to be poisonous to stock (Euphorbia Drummondi),
+appears immediately after rain. The climbing
+vine (Capparis lucida), which bears a sub-acid
+fruit not unlike passion fruit, at this time of year gives
+out its white flowers and fruit at the same time. The
+scent of the innumerable flowers on the plains, the
+tender herbage, the young grasses sending their seed
+stalks several feet high, and all the soil covered densely
+with vegetation and herbage suitable for stock present
+a picture to the eye, so utterly opposed to that which
+prevailed but a few weeks before the advent of the
+rains, that the spectator can scarcely believe it to be
+the same country. The seeds of some plants will remain
+dormant for years, and then suddenly spring up
+in profusion; for instance, the plant commonly known
+as peabush, a leguminous annual (botanically Sesbania
+aegyptica), has only a periodical growth, and
+at such times, varying for many years, it covers the
+plains in such rank masses that the stockriders get
+quite bewildered when searching for stock through
+its scrublike density; for several years after this abundant
+growth, the plant will scarcely be noticeable; it
+is said that every three years is a peabush year, but<span class="pagenum">[Pg 235]</span>
+the writer cannot support the theory, as he can only
+call to mind four or five really bad peabush seasons
+in a period of thirty years. The seeds which fall to
+the ground in great quantities form the sustenance for
+flocks of pigeons and other birds, but much seed must
+also fall down the cracks of the earth and bide their
+time for a chance of springing into life. The flowers
+of this plant grow in lilac and yellow on the same stalk.
+Cattle are fond of it when young, and mustering stock
+in a peabush year has many extra difficulties on
+account of the prolific growth of this intermittent
+annual. It will sometimes grow to a height of fifteen
+feet, and in swampy places is so dense that it is difficult
+to keep even a few horses in sight when driving
+through it; after it dries and the seeds fall to the
+ground, the stalks break off, and the sweep of the water
+over the plains during the succeeding year gathers
+these dry stems against the trees in enormous masses
+like small haystacks, and there they remain until a
+bushfire reduces them to ashes. The masses of peabush
+carried down creeks and watercourses at
+certain seasons will yet prove a source of danger to
+railway and road bridges when such structures come
+to be built on the western plains comprising the watersheds
+of rivers flowing into the Gulf of Carpentaria.
+Though peabush grows strongly on flooded ground,
+it can be found of a sturdy growth on ridges
+or high plains or downs during a favourable year,
+especially where water lodges between ridges. It is<span class="pagenum">[Pg 236]</span>
+an ancient and historical plant, for the flowers that
+composed the wreath found on an Egyptian mummy
+of ancient date, when softened and opened with warm
+water, were found to be identical with the flowers of
+the peabush of the Flinders River and western plains
+of North Queensland.</p>
+
+<p>The native pastures have not been improved by
+the introduction of stock; the evils of overstocking
+and the want of bushfires to keep down the under-growth,
+have in some districts deteriorated or exterminated
+some of the best of the fodder grasses. The
+best of all indigenous grasses is known as Mitchell
+grass, a perennial of strong growth, and capable of
+resisting the driest weather; there are many varieties
+of this grass, which is found only on the plains and
+downs of the interior. It possesses the faculty of
+shooting green from the old stalks at the joints, and
+taking up moisture, renewing its youth again. The
+Mitchell grass grows in isolated strong bunches, and
+its presence is a sure sign of a fattening country. The
+following are the best known varieties:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Astrebla pectinata,&#8221; common Mitchell grass,
+growing in erect tussocks of two or three feet high.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A. triticoides,&#8221; wheat-eared Mitchell grass; this
+plant is taller and coarser than the last, attaining a
+height of four or five feet.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A curvifolia,&#8221; or curly Mitchell grass; plant
+forming erect tufts one or two feet high, the leaves
+narrow and much curved.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 237]</span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A. elymoides,&#8221; weeping Mitchell grass; plant
+decumbent, the stems several feet long.</p>
+
+<p>The blue grass (Andropogon sericeus), is an annual
+of soft rapid growth, with a branching seed-stalk
+that breaks off and is blown by the wind in
+masses into waterholes; the blacks use the fine seeds
+of this grass for food.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Anthistiria membranacea,&#8221; called the Flinders or
+Barcoo grass, is an annual of a reddish colour, found all
+over the western plains. It is soft and brittle, breaking
+easily off to fall on the ground, when stock will
+pick it up; it makes excellent hay, keeping sweet
+for years, and is one of the most fattening grasses.</p>
+
+<p>The varieties of the indigenous grasses that cover
+the great western plains are innumerable; all are more
+or less eaten by stock, even the triodia or spinifex
+that is looked on as a desert grass, and of a formidable
+and forbidding nature. Spinifex is a very drought-resisting
+plant, and in times of great scarcity and extreme
+drought, when all other grasses have dried out
+and been blown away, the spinifex is there with its erect
+spiney leaves, possibly bitter to the taste, but still life
+sustaining to stock, as has been proved in many a
+severe drought. It grows on sandy sterile ridges,
+and seems to adhere to the latest geological formation,
+the sandstone or cainozoic period; it is found on ridges
+adjacent to alluvial flats where the richest herbage
+and grasses are found in abundance.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 238]</span></p>
+
+<p>Kangaroo grass (Anthistiria ciliata), is found
+mostly in coastal districts, and although a good pasture
+grass when green, it soon dries and requires burning.</p>
+
+<p>There are two prominent varieties of spear grass
+in the north, the worst being the black spear grass
+(Andropogon contortus), which grows in sandy spots
+along the banks of creeks, or on sandy ridges; it is
+not of much use as a fodder grass, but becomes a
+terrible scourge to sheep when ripe and seeding. The
+seeds are barbed, and as sharp as needles, and having
+once entered the skin they work into the bone, causing
+intense annoyance and irritation, and ultimately death.
+The other spear grass (Andropogon Kennedeyii), not
+so dangerous, but of little use to stock, is a coarse-growing,
+strong grass, seven or eight feet high, with a
+reddish bloom, and strong seeds that penetrate saddlecloths
+and clothes in countless hundreds.</p>
+
+<p>Herbage fills the spaces between the tufts of
+grasses soon after the rains, and the plains develop
+a dense growth of pasturage; but after continued dry
+seasons, all herbage disappears, and the grasses follow
+in time, until very little is left except the roots,
+and a few of the more hardy salsolaceous plants.
+These form a striking feature in the economy of
+Nature in the plain country, the salt bushes are ever
+present in one variety or another, and help to keep
+stock in health and condition. The various species
+of &#8220;Atriplex&#8221; abound, and being very drought-resist<span class="pagenum">[Pg 239]</span>ing,
+they are reckoned amongst the most valuable
+fodder plants. Sir Thomas Mitchell was the first to
+make salt bush known after his first expedition over
+sixty years ago.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A. Nummularia,&#8221; passing under the curious vernacular
+of &#8220;Old Man Salt Bush,&#8221; is truly grey enough.
+Some of these plants have been propagated in north-west
+America with great success, turning the barren
+alkali lands that were never known to grow anything,
+into valuable pastures. Tons of seeds are raised annually
+for Utah, Arizona, and other States. In Africa
+the salt bushes are cultivated from seeds and even
+cuttings, and their value is acknowledged everywhere.
+They endure scorching heat, live without rains, are
+eaten by all kinds of stock, proving nutritious and
+wholesome to them, are easily raised from seed, and
+can, with a little care, be propagated from cuttings.</p>
+
+<p>The blue bush (Chenopodium), is common all
+over the Gulf of Carpentaria watershed, growing in
+swampy spots where water lies; it is a great favourite
+with all kinds of stock, and is getting scarce owing to
+its being eaten out so much.</p>
+
+<p>Wild rice (Oryza sativa), grows in swampy places
+throughout the Gulf country; the grain is well-defined,
+but small; all stock are fond of it, when green; it
+grows to a height of three or four feet. The rice of
+commerce is the produce of cultivated varieties of this
+grass.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 240]</span></p>
+
+<p>Edible shrubs are extremely plentiful, and are of
+great value when grass becomes too dry to be
+nutritive. A peculiar feature in the vegetation of
+the western plains is the &#8220;roley-poley,&#8221; which is called
+in America the &#8220;tumble weed.&#8221; This is an annual of
+quick growth after rains, growing in a spherical form
+from a common root; when the stem dries, it breaks
+off close to the ground, and the ball of dried vegetation
+is driven by the winds over the plains at a furious
+rate, topping the fences, and piling up against them in
+masses. It causes the greatest consternation to
+horses as it is driven across the downs. It possesses
+no virtue as a fodder plant.</p>
+
+<p class="title">FOSSILS OF ANCIENT AUSTRALIA.</p>
+
+<p>The Australian continent has undergone great
+changes during the past geological ages, and most
+probably has been connected in remote times with
+part of Asia, and not unlikely with South America
+by some now submerged land. But whatever the
+connection may have been in the very distant past,
+it has been shut off from the larger northern land
+masses at so remote a period that the higher forms
+of mammals have not found their way to it, as in
+Africa and South America. Great changes have
+taken place in the continent itself. It is supposed
+that, at one time, in what is called the cretaceous
+or chalk age, a great sea spread from the north right
+across from what is now the Gulf of Carpentaria,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 241]</span>
+covering immense tracts of level plain country in the
+interior of Australia, including Western Queensland,
+and part of New South Wales, so that the western
+half of the continent was separated from the eastern
+at least in the northern parts. Gradually the land
+rose and great lakes were formed in the interior,
+especially in the region of Lake Eyre, and a growth
+of vegetation sprang up of a more luxuriant type
+than is to be found now in those western parts, otherwise
+the enormous animals, such as the giant
+diprotodon, huge extinct kangaroos, birds larger than
+the moa, as well as crocodiles and turtles, could never
+have found sustenance to multiply in such numbers
+as their fossil remains testify they did in nearly every
+part of central Australia, and in the interior of
+North Queensland. In this sea, which washed the
+base of the mountains on the west, was deposited
+the sandy formation which has become the level inland
+plains. From some cause so far unknown, the
+land became desiccated, the lakes lost their freshness,
+and became great salt pans, the vegetation and
+the animals dependent on it became extinct, until a
+dry and arid region was produced, with a river system
+that fails to reach the sea, but becomes absorbed in
+the great sandy interior. The smaller types of marsupials
+of a hardier nature and capable of removing
+to greater distances for food, maintained their existence,
+while the giants of a similar race have left only
+their bones embedded in the drift to testify to the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 242]</span>
+mighty changes that Nature has wrought out in the
+past ages. Fossil diprotodons of gigantic size and
+struthious birds rivalling in stature the New Zealand
+moa, are found in Central Australia. At Lake Callabonna
+in the great salt Lake Eyre basin, there are
+hundreds of fossil skeletons of these animals, many
+of which have been removed to the Adelaide Museum.
+In that locality they are found most frequently on the
+surface of the dry salt lake, and have been preserved
+by a natural coating of carbonate of lime; the bones
+are found at various depths.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly the whole of interior Australia, including
+Western Queensland, is one vast cemetery of extinct
+and fossilised species, scattered along the surface, or
+buried deep in cement or drifts, and in clays hidden
+beneath the present surface formation. The open
+plains of the Upper Flinders disclose great deposits
+of marine fossil shells, belemnites and ammonites, and
+also remains of extinct animals. On the Lower
+Leichhardt River, in the Gulf of Carpentaria, forty or
+fifty feet beneath the alluvial deposits forming the
+banks of the river, and firmly embedded in the hard
+cement, which is an ancient drift formed of water-worn
+stones in an ironstone clay, are found the bones of
+innumerable extinct gigantic species of animals that
+found sustenance and multiplied in enormous numbers
+over the Gulf country in some far back pre-historic
+age. On the Walsh River are found large
+numbers of fossils, mostly shells of the ammonite<span class="pagenum">[Pg 243]</span>
+species. The bones that have been buried for countless
+ages in these ancient drifts are well preserved,
+and are not very dissimilar in appearance to the bones
+of animals dying recently on the surrounding plains,
+although they are completely fossilised and changed
+into the appearance of stone. The utter extinction
+of these gigantic species, comprising diprotodon,
+nototherium, and zygomaturus, and other species,
+grasseaters and flesheaters alike, can only be accounted
+for by a great change of climate, and great and
+long-continued droughts, reducing the herbage and
+causing the remaining living animals to crowd into the
+drying-up lagoons and lakes, there to become bogged
+in thousands, and die as the stock die in the waterholes
+after a long drought. Some of the fossils are
+those of animals of a gigantic size, much larger than
+any existing native animals; the teeth found are twice
+the size of an ordinary bullock&#8217;s, and the jaws carrying
+them are of enormous size and strength. There
+are remains of alligators over thirty feet long,
+and turtles of much greater dimensions than any existing
+in the present day. The vegetation in the
+marshes and territory forming North Queensland
+must have been of a luxuriant and tropical description
+in those days to have supported such large types of
+marsupials&mdash;animals that would require a more
+abundant moisture, larger rainfall, and heavier foliage,
+than are now to be found on the western slopes
+of the ranges. Deeply interesting is the study of the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 244]</span>
+ancient forms of life that roamed over the densely-wooded
+marshes of the interior, when the flora represented
+a type found now only along the rich alluvial
+banks of the rivers on the east coast.</p>
+
+<p class="title">GEOLOGY OF QUEENSLAND.</p>
+
+<p>The following facts are summarised from the
+geology of Queensland written by Mr. Daintree, as
+the result of his investigations, whilst prosecuting the
+search for new goldfields on behalf of the Queensland
+Government in the northern portion of their territory,
+as also from the official reports of the Geologist
+of Southern Queensland, and other sources.</p>
+
+<p>The consideration and history of the different
+formations will be taken in their sequence of time, as
+far as the stratified or sedimentary rocks are concerned.
+The igneous rocks will be described under
+the various groups of Granitic, Trappean, and Volcanic.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Igneous rocks">
+<tr><td align="left" colspan="2"><i>Aqueous</i>:&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="left">Alluvial (recent).</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="left" colspan="2">Alluvial, containing extinct faunas.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="left">Desert sandstone, Cainozoic.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="left">Cretaceous&nbsp; &nbsp;<br />Oolitic&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<br />Carbonaceous&nbsp;</td><td align="left"><div style='float:left;'>
+
+<p style="float:left;text-indent:0;margin-top:1em;"> </p>
+    <div style='float:left;padding-right:4px;'>
+<p style='font-size:250%;font-weight:lighter;margin:0;line-height:1.25em;text-indent:0;'>}</p>
+</div></div>
+ &nbsp;<br /> Mesozoic</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="left">Carboniferous<br />Devonian&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<br />Silurian&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; </td><td align="left"><div style='float:left;'>
+
+<p style="float:left;text-indent:0;margin-top:1em;"> </p>
+    <div style='float:left;padding-right:4px;'>
+<p style='font-size:250%;font-weight:lighter;margin:0;line-height:1.25em;text-indent:0;'>}</p>
+</div></div> &nbsp;<br /> Palæozoic</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left" colspan="2"><i>Metamorphic.</i></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 245]</span></p>
+
+<p>Alluvial.&mdash;Fresh-water deposits skirt all the present
+watercourses, but the accumulations are insignificant
+on the eastern watershed, except near the embouchures
+of large rivers, such as the Burdekin, Fitzroy, etc.
+On the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria, however,
+and in the south-western portions of the colony, where
+the watercourses have scarcely any fall, and where in
+seasons of excessive rain the country is nearly all
+inundated, fluviatile deposits are very extensive.
+Though the dense lavas of the Upper Burdekin
+(volcanic outbursts of a late Tertiary epoch) are
+traversed by valleys of erosion, in some cases 200 feet
+deep, and five miles broad, yet very narrow and shallow
+alluvial deposits skirt the immediate margin of the
+watercourses draining such valleys. It is only near
+the mouths of the larger rivers that any extent of
+alluvium has been deposited, and even these areas are
+at the present time in seasons of excessive rain, liable
+to inundation, showing that little upheaval of this portion
+of Australia has taken place since the last volcanic
+disturbances terminated.</p>
+
+<p>The meteorological or climatic conditions during
+this period were nearly identical with those of the
+present time, heavy rains during the summer months
+causing violent floods, removing seaward the aërial
+decompositions and denuded materials from year to
+year.</p>
+
+<p>What lapse of time is represented during this
+period of erosion is a matter of speculation, but it<span class="pagenum">[Pg 246]</span>
+seems certain that the mollusca of the present creeks
+were also the inhabitants of the waters during the
+whole period of denudation since the last volcanic
+eruption.</p>
+
+<p>From the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north, to
+Darling Downs in the south, however, the fossil remains
+of extinct mammalia have been found in
+breccias and indurated muds, which are the representatives
+of the beds of old watercourses through which
+the present creeks cut their channels. At Maryvale
+Creek, in latitude 19 deg. 30 sec. S., good sections
+of these old brecciated alluvia occur. The fossils
+from this section, as determined by Professor Owen,
+are &#8220;Diprotodon Australis, Macropus titan, Thylacoles,
+Phascolomys, Nototherium,&#8221; crocodile teeth,
+etc.</p>
+
+<p>Imbedded in the same matrix occur several
+genera of mollusca undistinguishable from those inhabiting
+Maryvale Creek.</p>
+
+<p>The fact of these older alluvia forming both the
+bed and the banks of the present watercourse, goes to
+prove that Diprotodon and its allies inhabited the
+Queensland valleys when they presented little difference
+in physical aspect or elevation from that of the
+present time. The crocodile (Crocodilus Australis),
+however, had then a greater range inland than it has
+now. A study of these Diprotodon breccias leads to
+the conclusion that the remains are chiefly entombed
+in what were the most permanent waterholes in sea<span class="pagenum">[Pg 247]</span>sons
+of excessive drought, and that the animals came
+there in a weak and exhausted state to drink and die,
+just as bullocks do under similar conditions at the
+present time.</p>
+
+<p>No human bones, flint flakes, or any kind of
+native weapons have yet been discovered with the extinct
+mammalia of Queensland.</p>
+
+<p class="title">CAINOZOIC.</p>
+
+<p>Desert Sandstone.&mdash;On the eastern branches of
+the Upper Flinders and elsewhere, fine sections are
+exposed of lava resting on horizontal beds of coarse
+grit and conglomerate, which lie in turn unconformably
+on olive-coloured and gray shales with interstratified
+bands and nodules of argillaceous limestone
+containing fossils of cretaceous affinities. I have
+called this upper conglomerate series &#8220;Desert Sandstone,&#8221;
+from the sandy barren character of its disintegrated
+soil, which makes the term particularly applicable.</p>
+
+<p>Without doubt, it is the most recent widely-spread
+stratified deposit developed in Queensland.
+The denudation of the &#8220;Desert Sandstone&#8221; since it became
+dry land has been excessive, but there still remains
+a large tract &#8220;in situ,&#8221; and all the available
+evidence tends to show that this &#8220;Desert Sandstone&#8221;
+did at one time cover nearly, if not quite, the whole of
+Australia. The journals of the two Gregory&#8217;s description
+of the new settlement of Port Darwin, all bear<span class="pagenum">[Pg 248]</span>
+evidence to the continuity of this so-called &#8220;Desert
+Sandstone&#8221; over all the extended areas investigated
+by them.</p>
+
+<p>Augustus Gregory&#8217;s description of the sandstones
+of the Victoria River agrees with those of the &#8220;Desert
+Sandstone&#8221; of Queensland, the specimens from either
+locality being undistinguishable the one from the
+other, while the same barren soil, the same hostile
+spinifex, the same fatal poison plant, mark its presence
+from Perth to Cape York.</p>
+
+<p>In Queensland, the upper beds are ferruginous,
+white and mottled sandy clays, the lower being coarse
+alternating grits and conglomerates; the extreme observed
+thickness has not exceeded 400 feet. A
+characteristic view of the upper &#8220;Desert Sandstone&#8221;
+beds is shown in Betts&#8217; Creek, on the Upper Flinders.
+Whether these are marine, lacustrine, or estuarine
+deposits, there is hardly sufficient evidence to show.</p>
+
+<p>What may be the value of this &#8220;Desert Sandstone&#8221;
+for free gold, is at present unsolved; but the
+very nature of its deposition seems to preclude the idea
+that that metal will be found in paying quantities,
+except where direct local abrasion of a rich auriferous
+veinstone has furnished the supply.</p>
+
+<p class="title">MESOZOIC.</p>
+
+<p>Cretaceous.&mdash;As early as 1866 a suite of fossils
+was collected by Messrs. Sutherland and Carson, of
+Marathon station, Flinders River, and forwarded for<span class="pagenum">[Pg 249]</span>
+determination to Professor McCoy, in Melbourne.
+They were never figured, but his manuscript names
+are as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Fossil Collection">
+<tr><td align="center"><i>Reptilia.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Ichthyosaurus Australis.</td><td align="left"> &#8220;M&#8217;Coy.&#8221;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Plesiosaurus Sutherlandi.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Plesiosaurus macrospondylus.</td><td align="left"> &#8220;M&#8217;Coy.&#8221;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><i>Cephalopoda.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Ammonites Sutherlandi.</td><td align="left"> &#8220;M&#8217;Coy.&#8221;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Ammonites Flindersi.</td><td align="left"> &#8220;M&#8217;Coy.&#8221;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Belemnitella diptycha.</td><td align="left"> &#8220;M&#8217;Coy.&#8221;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Ancyloceras Flindersi.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><i>Lamellibranchiata.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Inoceramus Carsoni.</td><td align="left"> &#8220;M&#8217;Coy.&#8221;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Inoceramus Sutherlandi.</td><td align="left"> &#8220;M&#8217;Coy&#8221; (identical with the English species I. Cuvieri).</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>In company with Mr. Sutherland, who supplied
+McCoy with the before-mentioned materials, Mr. R.
+Daintree visited the Upper Flinders, and carefully collected
+the fossils from three localities, viz., Marathon
+station, Hughenden station, and Hughenden cattle
+station.</p>
+
+<p>At Marathon, which is some forty miles further
+down the Flinders than Hughenden, there is, close
+to the homestead, an outcrop of fine-grained yellow
+sandstone, which has been quarried for building purposes,
+and below this, to the edge of the waterhole
+supplying the house, is a series of sandstones and<span class="pagenum">[Pg 250]</span>
+argillaceous limestones, containing numerous organic
+remains. These were submitted to Mr. Etheridge for
+examination and correlation, the result of which
+appears in the appendix to his work. The Hughenden
+cattle station is twenty miles further up the Flinders
+than the Hughenden head station. Here hundreds
+of Belemnites are strewn over the surface of
+the two ridges which front the cattle station huts,
+but they are rarely found in the soft shales which crop
+out from under an escarpment of &#8220;Desert Sandstone.&#8221;
+The lithological character of these cretaceous strata
+is such that decomposition is rapid; the resulting
+physical aspect being that of vast plains, which form
+the principal feature of Queensland scenery west of
+the Main Dividing Range; but that the &#8220;Desert Sandstone&#8221;
+has extended over all this country is evidenced
+by its existence either in the form of outliers, or as a
+marked feature &#8220;in situ&#8221; in all main watersheds, or by
+its pebbles of quartz and conglomerate, which are
+strewn everywhere over the surface of the plains.
+The height of the watershed between the Thomson
+and Flinders Rivers is locally not more than 1,400
+feet above sea level, and as the former river has to
+travel as many miles before reaching the sea, it is easy
+to understand why, in a country subject to heavy
+tropical rains at one period of the year, followed by
+a long dry season, the river channels are ill-defined,
+and vast tracts of country covered by alluvial deposits.
+Down the Thomson and its tributaries, these<span class="pagenum">[Pg 251]</span>
+mesozoic rocks are known to extend, though much
+obscured by flood drifts. That this portion of the
+mesozoic system extends throughout the whole of
+Western Queensland to Western Australia is also
+more than probable, hidden, however, over large areas
+by &#8220;Desert Sandstone.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Mineral Springs.&mdash;There is one other subject of
+practical interest connected with the great mesozoic
+western plains, and that is the occurrence of hot alkaline
+springs, which suggest the possibility of obtaining
+supplies of water on the artesian principle over some
+portion at least of this area.</p>
+
+<p>At Gibson&#8217;s cattle station, Taldora, on the Saxby
+River, a tributary of the Flinders, a spring of hot
+water rises above the surface of the plain, and its overflow
+deposits a white encrustation, which on analysis
+by Dr. Flight, under the direction of Professor
+Maskelyne, afforded:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Mineral analysis">
+<tr><td align="left">Water</td><td align="right">27.793</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Silica</td><td align="right">0.600</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Chlorine</td><td align="right">3.369</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Sodium</td><td align="right">2.183</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Carbonic Acid &nbsp;  &nbsp;  &nbsp; </td><td align="right">33.735</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Soda</td><td align="right" style="border-bottom: solid 1px;">31.690</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="right">99.370</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>Apart, therefore, from the 5.552 per cent. of
+chloride of sodium, the deposit consists of sequi car<span class="pagenum">[Pg 252]</span>bonate
+of soda or native &#8220;Trona,&#8221; and as such is used
+by the settlers for culinary purposes, etc.</p>
+
+<p class="title">PALÆOZOIC.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Carboniferous.&#8221;&mdash;Whilst the affinities of the
+southern coalfield of Queensland are mesozoic, a
+northern field, of even larger extent, has a distinct
+fauna more resembling the Palæozoic Carboniferous
+areas of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>The Dawson, Comet, Mackenzie, Isaacs, and
+Bowen Rivers drain this carboniferous area; and
+numerous outcrops of coal have been observed on
+these streams. No commercial use, however, has yet
+been made of any of these deposits, as the measures
+generally are too far inland to be made available until
+the railway system of the country is extended in that
+direction.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Devonian.&#8221;&mdash;From the southern boundary of
+Queensland up to latitude 18 deg. S., a series of
+slates, sandstones, coral limestones, and conglomerates
+extend to a distance 200 miles inland; these are
+sometimes overlain by coal measures, sometimes by
+volcanic rocks, and consequently do not crop out on
+the surface over such districts. North of latitude
+18 deg. S., however, over the Cape York Peninsula,
+this series (so far as we have any evidence), is absent,
+granites and porphyries capped by &#8220;Desert Sandstone&#8221;
+forming the ranges on the eastern, and their
+abraded ingredients the sandy ti-tree flats, those on<span class="pagenum">[Pg 253]</span>
+the western side of that inhospitable tract of country,
+a never-ending flat of poor desert-looking sandy ti-tree
+country, stretching away to the shores of the Gulf
+of Carpentaria.</p>
+
+<p>In the limestone bands, which form the lower
+portion of the series, corals are very numerous; in
+fact, the limestones, where little alteration has taken
+place, are a mass of aggregated corals; and as this
+class of rock has resisted aerial destruction better
+than the associated slates and sandstones, the barriers
+thus formed mark the trend of the rock system to
+which they belong, in a very picturesque and decided
+manner; their bold, massive, and varied outline
+chiselled into the most delicate fretwork by Nature&#8217;s
+hand, is relieved by a wealth of richly-tinted foliage,
+unknown in the surrounding bush; and the eye jaded
+with the monotony of the eternal gum tree turns with
+delight to the changing tints and varied scenery presented
+by these barrier-like records of the past. This
+class of country is very much in evidence at Chillagoe.
+On the track from the Broken River to the Gilbert
+diggings, Devonian rocks several thousand feet thick
+may be observed, as they are continuous in dip, without
+being repeated, for at least five miles across the
+strike, with an average inclination of 60 deg.</p>
+
+<p>Although on the Broken River and its tributaries
+a breadth of thirty miles with a length of sixty miles,
+is occupied by a persistent outcrop of Devonian
+strata, gold has only been discovered in remunerative<span class="pagenum">[Pg 254]</span>
+quantities in a small gully, where a trapdyke has
+penetrated the Palæozoic rocks of the district.</p>
+
+<p>The following districts, however, where Devonian
+rocks prevail, have been the centres of gold mining
+enterprise:&mdash;Lucky Valley, Talgai, Gympie, Calliope,
+Boyne, Morinish, Rosewood, Mount Wyatt, Broken
+River, portion of Gilbert.</p>
+
+<p>In every case here cited, the country is traversed
+by trap rocks of a peculiar character, either diorite,
+diabase, or porphyrite; and tufaceous representatives
+of these are also found interstratified in the upper
+portion of the same formation, and occasionally
+throughout the other beds.</p>
+
+<p>At Gympie, the auriferous area is confined to
+veins traversing a crystalline diorite, or within a certain
+limit of its boundary, marked by the presence of
+fossiliferous diabase tufas.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever may have been the solvent and precipitant
+of the nobler metals in the auriferous veinstones
+associated with trap intrusions, all other but hydrothermal
+action may safely be eliminated, the very
+nature of the reefs, composed as they are of alternating
+layers of a promiscuous mixture of quartz, calcspar,
+pyrites, etc., affording unmistakable evidence
+on this point. The gold also contained in the trap
+dykes themselves is always accompanied by pyrites,
+both (according to Daintree), hydrothermal products
+separating out during the cooling down of the trap
+intrusions. Auriferous lodes, occurring in areas<span class="pagenum">[Pg 255]</span>
+where hydrothermal action has attended trap disturbances
+of a special character in Queensland, are generally
+thin&mdash;to be estimated by inches rather than feet;
+but taken as a whole they are far richer in gold than
+those enclosed by sedimentary rocks.</p>
+
+<p class="title">GRANITIC.</p>
+
+<p>Outcrops of granite extend along the eastern
+coast of Queensland from Broad Sound to Cape York,
+and inland as far as the heads of streams running
+direct from the inner coast range to the sea.</p>
+
+<p>Very little rock of this character is met with west
+and south of the Dividing Range which separates
+rivers flowing to the eastern and northern coast, and
+those trending south to the Murray or Cooper&#8217;s
+Creek.</p>
+
+<p>The granites of Queensland vary very much in
+their crystalline texture, passing from true granites
+into porphyry and quartz porphyry.</p>
+
+<p class="title">TRAPPEAN.</p>
+
+<p>Much stress has been laid on the value of certain
+intrusive trap rocks as specially influencing the production
+of auriferous veinstones in Queensland.</p>
+
+<p>The petrology of these may be divided into four
+type classes:&mdash;1. Pyritous porphyrites and porphyries.
+2. Pyritous diroites and diabases. 3. Chrome iron
+serpentines. 4. Pyritous felsites.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 256]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">VOLCANIC.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst the older trappean rocks have apparently
+had so much influence on the disturbance and fracture
+of the sedimentary strata older than the Carboniferous,
+and by a secondary process have evidently been centres
+of mineralising action, the volcanic seem to have
+played the most important part in determining the
+elevation and present physical outline of north-eastern
+Queensland. The main outbursts of lava have taken
+place along the Dividing Range which separates the
+eastern and western waters, and therefore on the line
+of the highest elevation of the country. The more
+northern volcanic areas, are probably contemporaneous
+with the upper volcanic series of Victorian
+geologists, so extensively developed in the western
+districts of that colony. These have issued from well-defined
+craters still in existence, and are probably of
+Pliocene Tertiary age.</p>
+
+<p>The southern areas, viz., Peak and Darling
+Downs, etc., are older, agreeing with the lower
+volcanic of Victoria, which have been ejected through
+fissures, and have in no case a very extensive flow
+beyond the lines of fracture through which they issued.
+These may be referred to the Miocene Tertiary epoch.
+The rock masses forming both the upper and lower
+volcanic are basic in character, and may be all termed
+or grouped under the general term &#8220;dolorites.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The volcanic soils of Queensland are those best
+adapted for the grazier and agriculturist.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 257]</span></p>
+
+<p>To epitomise:&mdash;With the exception of the McKinlay
+Ranges, a line drawn parallel to the eastern
+coast, at a distance of 250 miles, would include all the
+palæozoic, metamorphic, granitic, trappean, and
+volcanic rocks represented in the colony, both coal
+groups lying within the same area.</p>
+
+<p>The mesozoic and cainozoic systems occupy the
+surface area to the westward. The volcanic rocks
+follow the line of greatest elevation on the main watershed
+at altitudes from 1,500 to 2,000 feet above sea
+level. The chief granitic mass extends from Broad
+Sound to Cape York, with an occasional capping of
+&#8220;Desert Sandstone.&#8221; Westward from the Dividing
+Range, &#8220;Desert Sandstone&#8221; and the cretaceous and
+oolitic groups alternate one with the other to the extreme
+limit of the colony.</p>
+
+<p class="title">AREA OF FORMATIONS.</p>
+
+<p>Estimating the entire extent of the colony at
+600,000 square miles, a rough approximation to the
+areas occupied by the different geological formations
+is as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Areas of geological formations">
+<tr><td align="left" colspan="2"></td><td align="center">Square Miles.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left" colspan="2">Valueless land, &#8220;Desert Sandstone&#8221;</td><td align="right">150,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Scrubby and thickly timbered inferior pastoral,<br /> but valuable as containing coal, iron ore, &amp;c.</td><td align="center"><div style='float:left;'>
+
+<p style="float:left;text-indent:0;margin-top:1em;"> </p>
+    <div style='float:left;padding-right:4px;'>
+<p style='font-size:250%;font-weight:lighter;margin:0;line-height:1.25em;text-indent:0;'> { </p>
+</div></div>
+ Carbonaceous<br /> Mesozoic and <br /> Palæozoic&nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="right"><div style='float:left;'>
+
+<p style="float:left;text-indent:0;margin-top:1em;"> </p>
+    <div style='float:left;padding-right:4px;'>
+<p style='font-size:250%;font-weight:lighter;margin:0;line-height:1.25em;text-indent:0;'> } </p>
+</div></div>&nbsp; <br />24,000</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">Fair pastoral, and valuable for its<br /> associated minerals and metals</td><td align="center"><div style='float:left;'>
+
+<p style="float:left;text-indent:0;margin-top:1em;"> </p>
+    <div style='float:left;padding-right:4px;'>
+<p style='font-size:250%;font-weight:lighter;margin:0;line-height:1.25em;text-indent:0;'> { </p>
+</div></div> Devonian<br /> Silurian&nbsp; &nbsp;<br />Metamorphic&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="right"><div style='float:left;'>
+
+<p style="float:left;text-indent:0;margin-top:1em;"> </p>
+    <div style='float:left;padding-right:4px;'>
+<p style='font-size:250%;font-weight:lighter;margin:0;line-height:1.25em;text-indent:0;'> } </p>
+</div></div>&nbsp; <br />60,000</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="pagenum">[Pg 258]</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Fair pastoral</td><td align="center">Granitic</td><td align="right">114,000</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="left">Good pastoral</td><td align="center"><div style='float:left;'>
+
+<p style="float:left;text-indent:0;margin-top:1em;"> </p>
+    <div style='float:left;padding-right:4px;'>
+<p style='font-size:200%;font-weight:lighter;margin:0;line-height:1.25em;text-indent:0;'> { </p>
+</div></div> Cretaceous <br />and Oolitic</td><td align="right"><div style='float:left;'>
+
+<p style="float:left;text-indent:0;margin-top:1em;"> </p>
+    <div style='float:left;padding-right:4px;'>
+<p style='font-size:200%;font-weight:lighter;margin:0;line-height:1.25em;text-indent:0;'> } </p>
+</div></div>&nbsp; <br />200,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">First-class pastoral and agricultural</td><td align="center"><div style='float:left;'>
+
+<p style="float:left;text-indent:0;margin-top:1em;"> </p>
+    <div style='float:left;padding-right:4px;'>
+<p style='font-size:250%;font-weight:lighter;margin:0;line-height:1.25em;text-indent:0;'> { </p>
+</div></div> Alluvial <br />Volcanic<br />Trappean&nbsp; &nbsp; </td><td align="right"><div style='float:left;'>
+
+<p style="float:left;text-indent:0;margin-top:1em;"> </p>
+    <div style='float:left;padding-right:4px;'>
+<p style='font-size:250%;font-weight:lighter;margin:0;line-height:1.25em;text-indent:0;'> } </p>
+</div></div>&nbsp; <br />52,000</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right" colspan="3">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" colspan="3">600,000</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>Looking at the matter from an economical point
+of view, we find that one-fourth of the Colony of
+Queensland is valueless, whereas three-fourths furnish
+good pastoral land. Of this latter 60,000 square miles
+contain extensive and very valuable mines of gold,
+with numerous outcrops of copper and lead ores, to
+which may be added rich deposits of tin ore; 24,000
+square miles are capable of producing illimitable supplies
+of coal and iron; 52,000 square miles are, as
+far as soil is concerned, best adapted for the agriculturist
+and squatter. In conclusion, it may be asserted
+that there is here a wealth of material resource which
+compares favourably with that of any other Australian
+colony.</p>
+
+<p class="title">THE GREAT BARRIER REEF.</p>
+
+<p>North Queensland owes one of its chief claims to
+distinction to its numerous ports and harbours. In
+fact, the whole coast from Lady Elliott Island northwards
+to Cape York is one large harbour; protected
+as it is from the ocean swell by the Great Barrier
+Reef, a natural breakwater, extending for nearly a<span class="pagenum">[Pg 259]</span>
+thousand miles, with a depth from ten to twenty
+fathoms, and a distance from the main land which
+varies from twenty to fifty miles. The sea outside is
+profoundly deep, and a few islets are found on the
+line of reef, also a few ship canals through the Barrier
+Reef. &#8220;The Great Barrier Reef of Australia; its products
+and potentialities,&#8221; by W. Saville Kent, F.L.S.,
+is a splendid work, and beautifully illustrated. This
+work shows the reef to be full of marine wonders and
+is intensely interesting; its various forms of life and
+marine vegetation would fill volumes. The Great
+Barrier Coral Reef of Australia, the marvellous extent
+of which was first made known by Captain Cook, is
+one of the wonders of the universe. Its linear
+measurement is no less than 1,250 miles, extending
+from 9-1/2 deg. of south latitude to Lady Elliott&#8217;s Island,
+the most southern true coral islet in the chain or
+system. Its whole area lies within the territorial
+jurisdiction of Queensland, and the greater portion in
+North Queensland of which it forms one of the most
+valuable possessions. Raw material to the value of
+over £100,000 annually is obtained from the reefs and
+waters for exportation. The distance from the main
+land to the outer edge or boundary of this gigantic
+reef varies from ten or twelve miles to thirty. It is
+mostly formed of a chain of detached reefs and coral
+islets, many submerged or partially exposed at low
+water, with several openings, a few of which offer
+secure passage for large vessels.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 260]</span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII.<br />
+
+SOME LITERARY REMAINS.</h2>
+
+<p>The late Mr. Palmer had some skill as a versifier,
+although the exigencies of his arduous life in
+the pioneering days would not permit of his
+adding the extra finish to the lines which, more often
+than not, were as he himself phrased it, &#8220;strung together
+as the result of sleepless hours passed during the
+nights while camping out on a large cattle run in the
+west.&#8221; A few of his efforts are here preserved:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="title">THE GIDYA TREE.</p>
+
+<p class="center">(Acacia Hom&#339;ophylla.)</p>
+
+<div class="poem" style="width: 28em;"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where roll the great plains to the west,</span>
+<span class="i1">Near a homestead pleasant to see,</span>
+<span class="i0">With far-stretching limbs and spreading crest,</span>
+<span class="i1">Grows a grand old acacia tree.</span>
+<span class="i0">Nor winter winds, nor sun&#8217;s fierce heat</span>
+<span class="i1">Can change its staunch solidity,</span>
+<span class="i0">For many a century&#8217;s storms have beat</span>
+<span class="i1">On this great, grey, gidya tree.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">At early morn, their joyous lay,</span>
+<span class="i1">The butcher-birds sing in melody.</span>
+<span class="i0">And merrily pass the hours away,</span>
+<span class="i1">All under the gidya tree.</span>
+<span class="i0">The grey doves in its shade rejoice,</span>
+<span class="i1">From eyes of kites they&#8217;re free,</span>
+<span class="i0">And call their loves in plaintive voice,</span>
+<span class="i1">From under the gidya tree.</span>
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 261]</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In scarlet bloom, the mistletoe swings,</span>
+<span class="i1">From its branches droopingly;</span>
+<span class="i0">And all around its odour flings,</span>
+<span class="i1">Right under the gidya tree.</span>
+<span class="i0">The milk-plant twines its length along,</span>
+<span class="i1">As if &#8217;twould hidden be;</span>
+<span class="i0">Creeping its way &#8217;mong the leaves so strong,</span>
+<span class="i1">Of this ancient gidya tree.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The panting cattle gladly come,</span>
+<span class="i1">And sheltered fain would be,</span>
+<span class="i0">From burning heat of noonday sun,</span>
+<span class="i1">Camped under the gidya tree.</span>
+<span class="i0">Like the shade from a great rock cast</span>
+<span class="i1">O&#8217;er the land so soothing lay;</span>
+<span class="i0">All Nature seeks some rest at last,</span>
+<span class="i1">Far under the gidya tree.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When life is o&#8217;er and troubles past,</span>
+<span class="i1">How sweet that rest will be,</span>
+<span class="i0">For weary ones who come at last,</span>
+<span class="i1">Safe under the gidya tree.</span>
+<span class="i0">&#8220;Nunc dimittis,&#8221; my work is done,</span>
+<span class="i1">And soon from care set free;</span>
+<span class="i0">That peace I wish will soon be won,</span>
+<span class="i1">Deep under the gidya tree.</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="title">MY OLD STOCK HORSE.</p>
+
+<p class="center">(Norman.)</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Norman,&#8221; a large bay horse, bred on Conobie about
+1870, broken in three or four years after, and worked on till
+twenty-four or twenty-five years old as a stock horse, and
+then nearly as good and safe to ride as ever. A surer, better
+stock horse was never ridden, and always ridden by the writer.</p>
+
+<div class="poem" style="width: 28em;"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I have a friend&mdash;I&#8217;ve proved him so</span>
+<span class="i1">By many a task and token;</span>
+<span class="i0">I&#8217;ve ridden him long and found him true,</span>
+<span class="i1">Since first that he was broken.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 262]</span>
+<span class="i0">For twenty years we both have been</span>
+<span class="i1">In storm and sunny weather,</span>
+<span class="i0">And many a thousand miles we&#8217;ve seen,</span>
+<span class="i1">Just he and I together.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From Cooktown&#8217;s breezy seaborn site,</span>
+<span class="i1">By Palmer&#8217;s golden river;</span>
+<span class="i0">Where Mitchell&#8217;s waters clear and bright,</span>
+<span class="i1">Roll on their course for ever.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Across the Lynd and Gilbert&#8217;s sands,</span>
+<span class="i1">And many a rocky river;</span>
+<span class="i0">Through trackless desert, forest lands,</span>
+<span class="i1">We&#8217;ve journeyed oft together.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then on the great grey plains so vast,</span>
+<span class="i1">Where the sun&#8217;s rays dance and quiver,</span>
+<span class="i0">Through scorching heat and south-east blast,</span>
+<span class="i1">We&#8217;ve toiled on Flinders River.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Through tangled scrubs and broken ground,</span>
+<span class="i1">We have often had to scramble;</span>
+<span class="i0">To wheel the cunning brumbie&#8217;s round,</span>
+<span class="i1">From where they love to ramble.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Old Norman ne&#8217;er was known to fail,</span>
+<span class="i1">Or in the camp to falter,</span>
+<span class="i0">And just as sound to-day and hale,</span>
+<span class="i1">As when he first wore halter.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Good horse, you well have earned your rest,</span>
+<span class="i1">Your mustering days are over;</span>
+<span class="i0">For all your time you&#8217;ll have the best,</span>
+<span class="i1">And pass your life in clover.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The Indian&#8217;s simple faith is plain,</span>
+<span class="i1">That in the land of shadows,</span>
+<span class="i0">He&#8217;ll have his faithful dog again</span>
+<span class="i1">To hunt in misty meadows.</span>
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 263]</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And should a steed a soul attain,</span>
+<span class="i1">This surely then will follow&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">I&#8217;ll meet that grand old horse again,</span>
+<span class="i1">And hail him &#8220;Good old fellow!&#8221;</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="indent">Conobie, October 8th, 1894.</p>
+
+<p class="title">THE WATCHER.</p>
+
+<div class="poem" style="width: 28em;"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The night wind keen and chill is creeping</span>
+<span class="i1">Across the plains with moaning sound;</span>
+<span class="i0">A rider there his watch is keeping,</span>
+<span class="i1">Where cattle camp in peace around.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The Southern Cross shines clear and bright,</span>
+<span class="i1">And marks the hour that speeds;</span>
+<span class="i0">While Nature&#8217;s sounds, borne on the night,</span>
+<span class="i1">Accustomed to, he little heeds.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The hooting of the mopoke owl</span>
+<span class="i1">Floats on the midnight air;</span>
+<span class="i0">The prowling dingoe&#8217;s dismal howl</span>
+<span class="i1">Is chorused wide and far.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The curlew&#8217;s cry, so wild and shrill,</span>
+<span class="i1">Pierces the air with startling sound;</span>
+<span class="i0">While o&#8217;er the waters calm and still,</span>
+<span class="i1">The wild fowl chase each other round.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He cares not for the keen wind cold,</span>
+<span class="i1">Nor for the hour that&#8217;s past;</span>
+<span class="i0">For thoughts of other days still hold</span>
+<span class="i1">His memory to the last.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He minds him of his youth time ever,</span>
+<span class="i1">And the farm where he was born;</span>
+<span class="i0">The meadows green, and the flowing river,</span>
+<span class="i1">And the fields of tasselled corn.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The sweet perfume of the apple&#8217;s bloom,</span>
+<span class="i1">The sight of the mountain&#8217;s blue,</span>
+<span class="i0">The drooping willows and yellow broom,</span>
+<span class="i1">And waving wheatfields too.</span>
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 264]</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He sees the cows from the pasture land,</span>
+<span class="i1">As down the lane they come,</span>
+<span class="i0">And sister Nell, with pail in hand,</span>
+<span class="i1">To wait their coming home.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He sees again his father ploughing,</span>
+<span class="i1">In the old-fashioned sturdy way,</span>
+<span class="i0">He hears again the cock&#8217;s shrill crowing,</span>
+<span class="i1">That waked him oft at break of day.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His memory takes him back apace,</span>
+<span class="i1">To early manhood&#8217;s prime,</span>
+<span class="i0">When a gentle voice and pleasant face</span>
+<span class="i1">Impressed him for all time.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For loving lass and wandering lad,</span>
+<span class="i1">Since ever the world began,</span>
+<span class="i0">Though parted in grief, the love they had,</span>
+<span class="i1">Will come to each again.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His wayward life he ponders on</span>
+<span class="i1">With anguish deep and keen,</span>
+<span class="i0">And as the past he looks upon,</span>
+<span class="i1">Sadly thinks&mdash;it might have been.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But vain regrets will help him not.</span>
+<span class="i1">Nor vanished hopes renew;</span>
+<span class="i0">He only knows his present lot</span>
+<span class="i1">Has duties stern to do.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He cares not now whate&#8217;er befalls,</span>
+<span class="i1">His faith he still will keep;</span>
+<span class="i0">The next on watch in turn he calls,</span>
+<span class="i1">And folds himself in sleep.</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="indent">Conobie, June 21st, 1894.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 1]</span></p>
+
+<h2>
+LIST OF BOOKS<br />
+<br />
+PUBLISHED BY<br />
+<br />
+ANGUS &amp; ROBERTSON</h2>
+
+<p class="center">89 CASTLEREAGH STREET, SYDNEY<br />
+<br />
+205 SWANSTON STREET, MELBOURNE</p>
+
+<p class="center gap4">SOLD IN ENGLAND BY<br />
+<br />
+THE AUSTRALIAN BOOK COMPANY<br />
+<br />
+38 WEST SMITHFIELD, LONDON, E.C.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 2]</span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<p class="title">THE COMMONWEALTH SERIES</p>
+
+<p class="center">Crown 8vo., 1s. each (<i>post free 1s. 3d. each</i>).</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="The Commonwealth Series books in print">
+<tr><td align="left" colspan="2"><b>ON THE TRACK: New Stories.</b></td><td align="right"><i>By HENRY LAWSON</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left" colspan="2"><b>OVER THE SLIPRAILS: New Stories.</b></td><td align="right"><i>By H. LAWSON</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left" colspan="2"><b>POPULAR VERSES.</b></td><td align="right"><i>By HENRY LAWSON</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="right"><i>Now first published in book form.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left" colspan="2"><b>HUMOROUS VERSES.</b></td><td align="right"><i>By HENRY LAWSON</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="right"><i>Now first published in book form.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left" colspan="2"><b>WHILE THE BILLY BOILS: Australian Stories.</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="right"><b>First Series.</b></td><td align="right"><i>By HENRY LAWSON</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left" colspan="2"><b>WHILE THE BILLY BOILS: Australian Stories.</b></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="right"><b>Second Series.</b></td><td align="right"><i>By HENRY LAWSON</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left" colspan="2"><b>MY CHINEE COOK AND OTHER HUMOROUS VERSES.</b></td><td align="right"><i>By BRUNTON STEPHENS</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left" colspan="2"><b>HISTORY OF AUSTRALASIA:</b> From the Earliest Times to the Inauguration of the Commonwealth.</td><td align="right"><i>By A. W. JOSE</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left" colspan="2"><b>HISTORY OF AUSTRALIAN BUSHRANGING.</b></td><td align="right"><i>By CHARLES WHITE</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="left">Part&nbsp; I.&mdash;<span class="smcap">The Early Days</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="left">Part&nbsp; II.&mdash;1850 to 1862.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="left">Part III.&mdash;1863 to 1869.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="left">Part&nbsp; IV.&mdash;1869 to 1878.</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>*<sub>*</sub>* For press notices of these books see the cloth-bound editions
+on pages 4, 5, 6, 9 and 13 of this catalogue.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 3]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">JOE WILSON AND HIS MATES.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>By HENRY LAWSON, Author of &#8220;While the Billy
+Boils;&#8221; &#8220;When the World was Wide and Other
+Verses;&#8221; &#8220;Verses, Popular and Humorous;&#8221; &#8220;On
+the Track and Over the Sliprails.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p class="center">Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. (<i>post free 4s.</i>)
+in paper covers, 2s. 6d. (<i>post free 3s.</i>)</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><b>The Athenæum</b> (London): &#8220;This is a long way
+the best work Mr. Lawson has yet given us. These
+stories are so good that (from the literary point
+of view, of course) one hopes they are not autobiographical.
+As autobiography they would be good;
+as pure fiction they are more of an attainment.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>Pall Mall Gazette:</b> &#8220;We can see in these rough
+diamonds the men who have of late so distinguished
+themselves at Eland&#8217;s River and elsewhere.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>The Argus:</b> &#8220;More tales of the Joe Wilson series
+are promised, and this will be gratifying to Mr.
+Lawson&#8217;s admirers, for on the whole the sketches are
+the best work the writer has so far accomplished.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>The Academy:</b>&mdash;&#8220;I have never read anything in
+modern English literature that is so absolutely democratic
+in tone, so much the real thing, as <i>Joe Wilson&#8217;s
+Courtship</i>. And so with all Lawson&#8217;s tales and sketches.
+Tolstoy and Howells, and Whitman and Kipling, and
+Zola and Hauptmann and Gorky have all written
+descriptions of &#8216;democratic&#8217; life; but none of these
+celebrated authors, not even Maupassant himself, has
+so absolutely taken us inside the life as do the tales
+<i>Joe Wilson&#8217;s Courtship</i> and <i>A Double Buggy at Lahey&#8217;s
+Creek</i>, and it is this rare convincing tone of this Australian
+writer that gives him a great value. The
+most casual &#8216;newspapery&#8217; and apparently artless art
+of this Australian writer carries with it a truer, finer,
+more delicate commentary on life than all the idealistic
+works of any of our genteel school of writers.&#8221;</p><p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 4]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">VERSES: POPULAR AND
+HUMOROUS.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>By HENRY LAWSON, Author of &#8220;When the
+World was Wide, and Other Verses,&#8221; &#8220;Joe Wilson
+and His Mates,&#8221; &#8220;On the Track and Over the Sliprails,&#8221;
+and &#8220;While the Billy Boils.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p class="center">Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. (<i>post free 4s.</i>).</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>For Cheaper Edition see Commonwealth Series, page 2.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Francis Thompson</span>, in <b>The Daily Chronicle</b>: &#8220;He
+is a writer of strong and ringing ballad verse, who
+gets his blows straight in, and at his best makes them
+all tell. He can vignette the life he knows in a few
+touches, and in this book shows an increased power of
+selection.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>Academy</b>: &#8220;Mr. Lawson&#8217;s work should be well
+known to our readers; for we have urged them often
+enough to make acquaintance with it. He has the
+gift of movement, and he rarely offers a loose rhyme.
+Technically, short of anxious lapidary work, these
+verses are excellent. He varies sentiment and humour
+very agreeably.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>New York Evening Journal:</b> &#8220;Such pride as a
+man feels when he has true greatness as his guest,
+this newspaper feels in introducing to a million
+readers a man of ability hitherto unknown to them.
+Henry Lawson is his name.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>The Book Lover:</b> &#8220;Any book of Lawson&#8217;s should
+be bought and treasured by all who care for the real
+beginnings of Australian literature. As a matter of
+fact, he is the one Australian literary product, in any
+distinctive sense.&#8221;</p><p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 5]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">ON THE TRACK AND OVER
+THE SLIPRAILS.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Stories by HENRY LAWSON, Author of &#8220;While
+the Billy Boils,&#8221; &#8220;Joe Wilson and his Mates,&#8221;
+&#8220;When the World Was Wide and Other Verses,&#8221;
+and &#8220;Verses, Popular and Humorous.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p class="center">Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. (<i>post free 4s.</i>).</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>For Cheaper Edition see Commonwealth Series, page 2.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<p><b>Daily Chronicle:</b> &#8220;Will well sustain the reputation
+its author has already won as the best writer of
+Australian short stories and sketches the literary
+world knows. Henry Lawson has the art, possessed
+in such eminent degree by Mr. J. M. Barrie, of
+sketching in a character and suggesting a whole
+life-story in a single sentence.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>Pall Mall Gazette:</b> &#8220;The volume now received will
+do much to enhance the author&#8217;s reputation. There
+is all the quiet irresistible humour of Dickens in the
+description of &#8216;The Darling River,&#8217; and the creator
+of &#8216;Truthful James&#8217; never did anything better in
+the way of character sketches than Steelman and
+Mitchell. Mr. Lawson has a master&#8217;s sense of what
+is dramatic, and he can bring out strong effects in a
+few touches. Humour and pathos, comedy and
+tragedy, are equally at his command.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>Glasgow Herald:</b> &#8220;Mr. Lawson must now be
+regarded as facile princeps in the production of the
+short tale. Some of these brief and even slight
+sketches are veritable gems that would be spoiled by
+an added word, and without a word that can be looked
+upon as superfluous.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>Melbourne Punch:</b> &#8220;Often the little stories are
+wedges cut clean out of life, and presented with
+artistic truth and vivid colour.&#8221;</p><p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 6]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">WHILE THE BILLY BOILS.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Stories by HENRY LAWSON, Author of &#8220;When
+the World Was Wide and Other Verses,&#8221; &#8220;Joe
+Wilson and his Mates,&#8221; &#8220;On the Track and Over
+the Sliprails,&#8221; and &#8220;Verses, Popular and Humorous.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Twenty-third Thousand. With eight plates
+and vignette title, by F. P. Mahony. Crown
+8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. (<i>post free 4s.</i>).</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>For Cheaper Edition see Commonwealth Series, page 2.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<p><b>The Academy:</b> &#8220;A book of honest, direct, sympathetic,
+humorous writing about Australia from within
+is worth a library of travellers&#8217; tales.... The
+result is a real book&mdash;a book in a hundred. His
+language is terse, supple, and richly idiomatic. He
+can tell a yarn with the best.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>Literature:</b> &#8220;A book which Mrs. Campbell Praed
+assured me made her feel that all she had written of
+bush life was pale and ineffective.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>The Spectator:</b> &#8220;It is strange that one we would
+venture to call the greatest Australian writer should
+be practically unknown in England. Mr. Lawson
+is a less experienced writer than Mr. Kipling, and
+more unequal, but there are two or three sketches in
+this volume which for vigour and truth can hold their
+own with even so great a rival.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>The Times:</b> &#8220;A collection of short and vigorous
+studies and stories of Australian life and character.
+A little in Bret Harte&#8217;s manner, crossed, perhaps, with
+that of Guy de Maupassant.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>The Scotsman:</b> &#8220;There is no lack of dramatic
+imagination in the construction of the tales; and the
+best of them contrive to construct a strong sensational
+situation in a couple of pages.&#8221;</p><p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 7]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">WHEN THE WORLD WAS WIDE
+AND OTHER VERSES.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>By HENRY LAWSON, Author of &#8220;While the Billy
+Boils;&#8221; &#8220;Joe Wilson and his Mates,&#8221; &#8220;On the
+Track and Over the Sliprails,&#8221; and &#8220;Verses, Popular
+and Humorous.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Eleventh Thousand. With photogravure
+portrait and vignette title. Crown 8vo,
+cloth gilt, gilt top, 5s. (<i>post free 5s. 5d.</i>).</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Presentation edition, French Morocco, gilt edges, 9s.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<p><b>The Speaker</b> (<span class="smcap">London</span>): &#8220;There are poems in &#8216;In
+the Days when the World was Wide&#8217; which are of a
+higher mood than any yet heard in distinctively Australian
+poetry.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>The Academy:</b> &#8220;These ballads (for such they mostly
+are) abound in spirit and manhood, in the colour and
+smell of Australian soil. They deserve the popularity
+which they have won in Australia, and which, we
+trust, this edition will now give them in England.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>Newcastle Weekly Chronicle:</b> &#8220;Swinging, rhythmic
+verse.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>Sydney Morning Herald:</b> &#8220;The verses have
+natural vigour, the writer has a rough, true faculty
+of characterisation, and the book is racy of the soil
+from cover to cover.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>Bulletin:</b> &#8220;How graphic he is, how natural, how
+true, how strong.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>Otago Witness:</b> &#8220;It were well to have such books
+upon our shelves.... They are true history.&#8221;</p><p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 8]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">THE MAN FROM SNOWY RIVER
+AND OTHER VERSES.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p class="center">By A. B. PATERSON.</p>
+
+<p>Twenty-Seventh Thousand. With photogravure
+portrait and vignette title. Crown
+8vo, cloth gilt, gilt top, 5s. (<i>post free
+5s. 5d.</i>).</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>Presentation edition, French Morocco, gilt edges, 9s.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<p><b>The Literary Year Book:</b> &#8220;The immediate
+success of this book of bush ballads is without parallel
+in Colonial literary annals, nor can any living English
+or American poet boast so wide a public, always
+excepting Mr. Rudyard Kipling.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>The Times:</b> &#8220;At his best he compares not unfavourably
+with the author of &#8216;Barrack Room Ballads.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>Spectator:</b> &#8220;These lines have the true lyrical cry
+in them. Eloquent and ardent verses.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>Athenæum:</b> &#8220;Swinging, rattling ballads of ready
+humour, ready pathos, and crowding adventure....
+Stirring and entertaining ballads about great
+rides, in which the lines gallop like the very hoofs of
+the horses.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. <span class="smcap">A. Patchett Martin</span>, in <b>Literature</b> (London):
+&#8220;In my opinion it is the absolutely un-English,
+thoroughly Australian style and character of these
+new bush bards which has given them such immediate
+popularity, such wide vogue, among all classes of the
+rising native generation.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>London: Macmillan &amp; Co., Limited.</i><br />
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 9]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">THE POETICAL WORKS OF
+BRUNTON STEPHENS.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>New edition, with photogravure portrait.
+Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, gilt top, 5s.</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>See also Commonwealth Series, page 2.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<p><b>Sydney Morning Herald (N.S.W.):</b> &#8220;&#8216;The Poetical
+Works of Brunton Stephens&#8217; is a book which every
+Australian should have on his bookshelves, whether
+these bookshelves cover walls or are merely the small
+collection which the man of taste, however shrunken
+his purse, is bound to make. Brunton Stephens
+deserves his place in even the smallest of collections.
+The chief of Australian poets he has contributed to
+English literature work of distinguished merit. He is
+many-sided, embracing all sorts and conditions of men
+and things.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>The Melbourne Argus:</b> &#8220;Mr. Brunton Stephens
+has for some years enjoyed an established reputation
+as one of the best among the small and select
+cluster of Australian poets.... Mr.
+Stephens is specially favoured, in that he not only has
+at command a vein of true pathos, but he has moments
+of real humour. In more than one poem, too, he has
+made good his right to be regarded as the poet of
+brotherhood and the prophet of federation.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>The Melbourne Age:</b> &#8220;It is certainly one of the
+happiest of his efforts, and exhibits alike his copious
+vocabulary and his mastery of a most attractive form of
+metre.... A poet, both in thought and feeling.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>Newcastle (N.S.W.) Morning Herald:</b> &#8220;Of the
+rapidly lengthening roll of Australian writers, none
+deserves a higher place than Brunton Stephens. For
+more than a generation he has charmed his countrymen
+with his exquisite verse.&#8221;</p><p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 10]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">RHYMES FROM THE MINES
+AND OTHER LINES.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p class="center">By EDWARD DYSON, Author of &#8220;A Golden Shanty.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Second Thousand. With photogravure
+portrait and vignette title. Crown 8vo,
+cloth gilt, gilt top, 5s. (<i>post free, 5s. 5d.</i>).</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Presentation edition, French Morocco, gilt edges, 9s.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="title">FOR THE TERM OF HIS
+NATURAL LIFE.</p>
+
+<p class="center">By MARCUS CLARKE.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>With a Memoir of the Author, by A. B.
+<span class="smcap">Paterson</span>, Portrait of the Author, Map of
+Eagle Hawk Neck and the vicinity, and
+14 full-page views of places mentioned in
+the book. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, gilt top,
+3s. 6d. (<i>post free, 4s.</i>)</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="title">RIO GRANDE&#8217;S LAST RACE AND
+OTHER VERSES.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p class="center">By A. B. PATERSON.</p>
+
+<p>This is issued uniform with the Snowy River Series
+at 5s. The contents are quite up to the standard of
+&#8220;The Man from Snowy River,&#8221; and as the demand
+is certain to be very large we would ask the Trade
+to place their orders at once.</p></blockquote><p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 11]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">FLOOD-TIDE.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>By SARAH P. McL. GREENE, Author of &#8220;Vesty
+of the Basins,&#8221; &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p class="center">Cloth, 3s. 6d.; paper, 2s. 6d.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><b>The Argus</b> (<span class="smcap">Albany, N.Y.</span>): &#8220;&#8216;Flood-Tide&#8217; is
+a strong dramatic story of primitive life in a hamlet
+coast town in Maine. It is a study of human nature
+set in primitive surroundings, and is full of the
+pathos and humour of life&#8217;s little comedies. &#8216;Flood-Tide&#8217;
+is full of &#8216;characters.&#8217; There is Johnny
+Dinsmore, whose wayward humours and mischievous
+pranks keep his mother and the whole neighbourhood
+on thorns, and who is one of the most delightful
+young imps ever turned loose in fiction, not even
+excepting Sentimental Tommy. Captain Shale, with
+his scraps of rustic philosophy, is a quaint original,
+worthy of David Harum&#8217;s companionship. His
+reflections on the subject of clothes are of a piece
+with those of Teufelsdrochk: &#8216;The world&#8217;s a-dyin&#8217;
+of clo&#8217;s. So fur as I can see, the sons o&#8217; men is pretty
+much all a-strugglin&#8217; for one kind and another o&#8217;
+clo&#8217;s; that&#8217;s what it amounts to....&#8221;</p>
+
+<p class="title">THE SPIRIT OF THE BUSH FIRE
+AND OTHER AUSTRALIAN FAIRY
+TALES. <span class="smcap">By</span> J. M. WHITFELD.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Second Thousand. With 32 illustrations
+by G. W. Lambert. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt,
+2s. 6d. (<i>post free, 3s.</i>).</p></blockquote><p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 12]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">TEENS. A Story of Australian Schoolgirls.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p class="center"><span class="smcap">By</span> LOUISE MACK.</p>
+
+<p>Fourth Thousand. With 14 full-page illustrations
+by F. P. Mahony. Crown 8vo, cloth
+gilt, 2s. 6d.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><b>Sydney Morning Herald:</b> &#8220;Ought to be welcome
+to all who feel the responsibility of choosing the reading
+books of the young ... its gaiety, impulsiveness,
+and youthfulness will charm them.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>Sydney Daily Telegraph:</b> &#8220;Nothing could be
+more natural, more sympathetic.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>The Australasian:</b> &#8220;&#8216;Teens&#8217; is a pleasantly-written
+story, very suitable for a present or a school prize.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>Bulletin:</b> &#8220;It is written so well that it could not be
+written better.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p class="title">GIRLS TOGETHER.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>A Sequel to &#8220;Teens.&#8221; <span class="smcap">By</span> LOUISE MACK.</p>
+
+<p>Third Thousand. Illustrated by G. W.
+Lambert. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 2s. 6d.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><b>Sydney Morning Herald:</b> &#8220;&#8216;Girls Together&#8217; should
+be in the library of every girl who likes a pleasant
+story of real life.... Older people will read it for
+its bright touches of human nature.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>Queenslander:</b> &#8220;A story told in a dainty style that
+makes it attractive to all. It is fresh, bright, and
+cheery, and well worth a place on any Australian
+bookshelf.&#8221;</p><p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 13]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">THE ANNOTATED CONSTITUTION
+OF THE AUSTRALIAN
+COMMONWEALTH.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>By Sir JOHN QUICK <span class="smcap">and</span> R. R. GARRAN, C.M.G.
+Royal 8vo, cloth gilt, 21s.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><b>The Times:</b> &#8220;The Annotated Constitution of the
+Australian Commonwealth is a monument of industry....
+Dr. Quick and Mr. Garran have collected,
+with patience and enthusiasm, every sort of information,
+legal and historical, which can throw light on
+the new measure. The book has evidently been a
+labour of love.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p class="title">HISTORY OF AUSTRALIAN
+BUSHRANGING. <span class="smcap">by</span> CHARLES WHITE.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>To be completed in two vols. Crown 8vo,
+cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. each.</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+[<i>Vol. I. now ready. Vol. II. now ready</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>For Cheaper Edition see Commonwealth Series, page 2.</i><br />
+<br />
+Press Notices of Volume I.<br />
+</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><b>Year Book of Australia:</b> &#8220;There is &#8216;romance&#8217;
+enough about it to make it of permanent interest as a
+peculiar and most remarkable stage in our social
+history.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>Queenslander:</b> &#8220;Mr. White has supplied material
+enough for twenty such novels as &#8216;Robbery Under
+Arms.&#8217;&#8221;</p><p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 14]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>A Handbook to the History of Greater Britain.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">By</span> ARTHUR W. JOSE, Author of &#8220;A Short History
+of Australasia.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Second Edition. With 14 Maps. Crown
+8vo, cloth gilt, 5s. (<i>post free, 5s. 6d.</i>).</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><b>Morning Post:</b> &#8220;This book is published in Sydney,
+but it deserves to be circulated throughout the United
+Kingdom. The picture of the fashion in which British
+enterprise made its way from settlement to settlement
+has never been drawn more vividly than in these pages.
+Mr. Jose&#8217;s style is crisp and pleasant, now and then
+even rising to eloquence on his grand theme. His
+book deserves wide popularity, and it has the rare
+merit of being so written as to be attractive alike to
+the young student and to the mature man of letters.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>Literature:</b> &#8220;He has studied thoroughly, and
+writes vigorously.... Admirably done....
+We commend it to Britons the world over.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>Saturday Review:</b> &#8220;He writes Imperially; he also
+often writes sympathetically.... We cannot
+close Mr. Jose&#8217;s creditable account of our misdoings
+without a glow of national pride.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>Yorkshire Post:</b> &#8220;A brighter short history we do
+not know, and this book deserves for the matter and
+the manner of it to be as well known as Mr.
+McCarthy&#8217;s &#8216;History of Our Own Times.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>The Scotsman:</b> &#8220;This admirable work is a solid
+octavo of more than 400 pages. It is a thoughtful,
+well written, and well-arranged history. There are
+fourteen excellent maps to illustrate the text.&#8221;</p><p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 15]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">HISTORY OF AUSTRALASIA.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>From the Earliest Times to the Inauguration of the
+Commonwealth.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">By</span> ARTHUR W. JOSE, Author of &#8220;The Growth of
+the Empire.&#8221; The chapter on Federation revised by
+R. R. Garran, C.M.G.</p>
+
+<p>With 6 maps and 64 portraits and illustrations.
+Crown 8vo, cloth, 1s. 6d. (<i>post free
+1s. 10d.</i>). <i>For Cheaper Edition see Commonwealth Series, page 2.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<p><b>The Book Lover:</b> &#8220;The ignorance of the average
+Australian youth about the brief history of his native
+land is often deplorable.... &#8216;A Short History
+of Australasia,&#8217; by Arthur W. Jose, just provides the
+thing wanted. Mr. Jose&#8217;s previous historical work
+was most favourably received in England, and this
+story of our land is capitally done. It is not too long,
+and it is brightly written. Its value is considerably
+enhanced by the useful maps and interesting illustrations.
+A very good book to give to a boy.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>Victorian Education Gazette:</b> &#8220;The language is
+graphic and simple, and there is much evidence of
+careful work and acquaintance with original documents,
+which give the reader confidence in the
+accuracy of the details. The low price of the book
+leaves young Australia no excuse for remaining in
+ignorance of the history of their native land.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>Town and Country Journal:</b> &#8220;His language is
+graphic and simple, and he has maintained the unity
+and continuity of the story of events despite the
+necessity of following the subject along the seven
+branches corresponding with the seven separate
+colonies.&#8221;</p><p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 16]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">THE GEOLOGY OF SYDNEY AND
+THE BLUE MOUNTAINS.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>A Popular Introduction to the Study of Australian
+Geology.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">By Rev.</span> J. MILNE CURRAN, Lecturer in
+Chemistry and Geology, Technical College, Sydney.</p>
+
+<p>Second Edition. With a Glossary of Scientific
+terms, a Reference List of commonly-occurring
+Fossils, 2 coloured maps, and 83
+illustrations. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 6s.
+(<i>post free, 6s. 6d.</i>)</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><b>Nature:</b> &#8220;This is, strictly speaking, an elementary
+manual of geology. The general plan of the work is
+good; the book is well printed and illustrated with
+maps, photographic pictures of rock structure and
+scenery, and figures of fossils and rock sections.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>Saturday Review:</b> &#8220;His style is animated and
+inspiring, or clear and precise, as occasion demands.
+The people of Sydney are to be congratulated on the
+existence of such a guide to their beautiful country.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>Literary World:</b> &#8220;We can heartily recommend the
+book as a very interesting one, written in a much
+more readable style than is usual in works of this
+kind.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>South Australian Register:</b> &#8220;Mr. Curran has extracted
+a charming narrative of the earth&#8217;s history out
+of the prosaic stone. Though he has selected Sydney
+rocks for his text, his discourse is interestingly Australian.&#8221;</p><p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 17]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">SIMPLE TESTS FOR MINERALS;
+Or, Every Man his Own Analyst.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">By</span> JOSEPH CAMPBELL, M.A., F.G.S., M.I.M.E.</p>
+
+<p>Fourth Edition, revised and enlarged (completing
+the ninth thousand). With illustrations.
+Cloth, round corners, 3s. 6d.
+(<i>post free 3s. 9d.</i>).</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="title">THE KINGSWOOD COOKERY
+BOOK.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">By Mrs.</span> WICKEN, M.C.A., Late Teacher of Cookery,
+Technical College, Sydney.</p>
+
+<p>Fifth edition, revised, completing the Nineteenth
+Thousand. 382 pages, crown 8vo,
+paper cover, 1s; cloth, 1s. 6d. (<i>postage 4d.</i>).</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="title">ANSWERS TO TAYLOR&#8217;S
+METRIC SYSTEM. 6d. (<i>post free 7d.</i>).</p>
+
+<p class="title">PRESBYTERIAN WOMEN&#8217;S
+MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION
+COOKERY BOOK.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Seventh Edition, enlarged, completing the
+45th Thousand. Crown 8vo, cloth, 1s.
+(<i>post free 1s. 2d.</i>).</p></blockquote><p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 18]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">THE METRIC SYSTEM OF
+WEIGHTS AND MEASURES, AND
+DECIMAL COINAGE.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p class="center"><span class="smcap">By</span> J. M. TAYLOR, M.A., LL.B.</p>
+
+<p>With Introductory Notes on the nature of
+Decimals, and contracted methods for the
+Multiplication and Division of Decimals.
+Crown 8vo, 6d. (<i>post free 7d.</i>).</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><b>N.S.W. Educational Gazette:</b> &#8220;A masterly and
+elaborate treatise for the use of schools on a subject
+of world-wide interest and importance.... In
+commercial life a knowledge of the metric system has
+been for some years essential, and it is, therefore,
+fitting that its underlying principles should be taught
+in our schools concurrently with reduction, and practised
+systematically in the more advanced grades.
+For this purpose the book is unquestionably the best
+we have seen.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p class="title">A NEW BOOK OF SONGS FOR
+SCHOOLS AND SINGING
+CLASSES.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">By</span> HUGO ALPEN, Superintendent of Music
+Department of Public Instruction, New South Wales.</p>
+
+<p>8vo, paper cover. 1s. (<i>post free 1s. 2d.</i>).</p></blockquote><p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 19]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">THE ELEMENTS OF EUCLID.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>With Historical Introduction, Notes, Appendices
+and Miscellaneous Examples.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">By</span> J. D. ST. CLAIR MACLARDY, M.A., Lecturer
+at the Training Colleges and Examiner for the New
+South Wales Department of Public Instruction.</p>
+
+<p>Books I.-IV. Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. (<i>post
+free 3s. 10d.</i>). Book I., separately, cloth,
+1s. 6d. (<i>post free 1s. 9d.</i>).</p>
+
+<p>Books V.-VI. Cloth, 1s. 6d. (<i>post free
+1s. 9d.</i>).</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><b>N.S.W. Educational Gazette:</b> &#8220;The most complete
+and logical discussion of this part of the works of the
+great geometer that we have seen. An unusual
+amount of care has been bestowed on the initiatory
+stages, the definitions, axioms, and postulates being
+treated with commendable fulness.... The
+brevity, simplicity, and perspicuity of his methods will
+appeal forcibly to students.... Mr. Maclardy
+adheres to the plan of simplifying the proofs and
+reducing the verbiage to a minimum, and has added a
+contribution to mathematical literature which we
+regard as indispensable.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>Victorian Educational Gazette:</b> &#8220;Among the
+legion of editions of Euclid, Mr. Maclardy&#8217;s takes an
+honourable place. There are many features that are
+the result of the author&#8217;s long experience as a lecturer
+and examiner in mathematics. He has evidently
+taken a pride in making his work as perfect as
+possible.&#8221;</p><p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 20]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">ENGLISH GRAMMAR, COMPOSITION,
+AND PRÉCIS WRITING.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>For Use by Candidates for University and Public
+Service Exams.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">By</span> JAMES CONWAY, Headmaster at Cleveland-street
+Superior Public School, Sydney.</p>
+
+<p>Prescribed by the Department of Public
+Instruction, N.S.W., for First and Second
+Class Teachers&#8217; Certificate Examinations.
+New edition, revised and enlarged.
+Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. (<i>post free
+3s. 10d.</i>).</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><b>Sydney Morning Herald:</b> &#8220;To its concise and
+admirable arrangement of rules and definitions, which
+holds good wherever the English language is spoken
+or written, is added special treatment of special
+difficulties. Mr. Conway adopts the excellent plan of
+taking certain papers, and of answering the questions
+in detail.... Should be in the hands of every
+teacher.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>Victorian Educational News:</b> &#8220;A book which we
+can heartily recommend as the most suitable we have
+yet met with to place in the hands of students for our
+intermediate examinations, and also for matriculation,
+pupil teachers&#8217; and certificate of competency examinations.
+We should be glad to see the work set down
+in the syllabus of the Department so that it would
+reach the hands of all the students and teachers
+engaged in studying the subject in our State
+schools.&#8221;</p><p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 21]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">A SMALLER ENGLISH
+GRAMMAR, COMPOSITION,
+AND PRÉCIS WRITING.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p class="center"><span class="smcap">By</span> JAMES CONWAY.</p>
+
+<p>Prescribed by the Department of Public
+Instruction, N.S.W., for Third Class and
+Pupil Teachers&#8217; Examinations. New
+edition, revised and enlarged. Crown 8vo,
+cloth, 1s. 6d. (<i>post free 1s. 9d.</i>).</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><b>N.S.W. Educational Gazette:</b> &#8220;The abridgment
+is very well done. One recognises the hand of a man
+who has had long experience of the difficulties of
+this subject.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p class="title">GEOGRAPHY OF NEW SOUTH
+WALES. <span class="smcap">By</span> J. M. TAYLOR, M.A., LL.B.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>New Edition, revised. With 37 illustrations
+and 6 folding maps. Crown 8vo, cloth
+gilt, 3s. 6d. (<i>post free 3s. 10d.</i>).</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><b>Sydney Morning Herald:</b> &#8220;Something more than
+a school book; it is an approach to an ideal geography.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>Review of Reviews:</b> &#8220;It makes a very attractive
+handbook. Its geography is up to date; it is not
+overburdened with details, and it is richly illustrated
+with geological diagrams and photographs of scenery
+reproduced with happy skill.&#8221;</p><p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 22]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">CAUSERIES FAMILIÈRES; OR,
+FRIENDLY CHATS. A Simple and
+Deductive French Course. <span class="smcap">By Mrs. S. C. Boyd</span>.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Prescribed for use in schools by the Department of
+Public Instruction, New South Wales. Pupils&#8217; Edition,
+containing all that need be in the hands of the learner.
+Crown 8vo, cloth, limp, 1s. 6d. (<i>post free 1s. 8d.</i>).
+Teachers&#8217; Edition, containing grammatical summaries,
+exercises, a full treatise on pronunciation, French-English
+and English-French Vocabulary, and other
+matter for the use of the teacher or of a student
+without a master. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d.
+(<i>post free, 3s. 10d.</i>).</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><b>The London Spectator:</b> &#8220;A most excellent and
+practical little volume, evidently the work of a trained
+teacher. It combines admirably and in an entertaining
+form the advantages of the conversational with those
+of the grammatical method of learning a language.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p class="title">THE AUSTRALIAN OBJECT
+LESSON BOOK.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Part I.&mdash;For Infant and Junior Classes.
+With 43 illustrations. Crown 8vo, cloth
+gilt, 3s. 6d.; paper cover, 2s. 6d. (<i>postage,
+4d.</i>).</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><b>N.S.W. Educational Gazette:</b> &#8220;Mr. Wiley has
+wisely adopted the plan of utilising the services of
+specialists. The series is remarkably complete, and
+includes almost everything with which the little
+learners ought to be made familiar. Throughout
+the whole series the lessons have been selected
+with judgment and with a due appreciation of the
+capacity of the pupils for whose use they are intended.&#8221;</p><p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 23]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">AUSTRALIAN SONGS FOR
+AUSTRALIAN CHILDREN.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p class="center"><span class="smcap">By Mrs. MAYBANKE ANDERSON.</span></p>
+
+<p>All the songs are set to music, while to
+some of them appropriate calisthenic exercises
+are given. Demy 4to, picture cover, 1s.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><b>Sydney Morning Herald:</b> &#8220;This is a prettily got
+up little book, in which the music of old songs or
+old melodies has been set to verses having reference
+to this country. The verses are in every case simple
+and good, suited to children and to the illustration by
+action for which directions are given in a foot note.
+&#8216;Australia Fair,&#8217; to a melody by Gluck, is the tune
+which the late Carl Formes and Signor Foli made
+popular as &#8216;The Mill Wheel.&#8217; &#8216;The Gum Tree,&#8217; to the
+tune of &#8216;Banker&#8217;s Wallet,&#8217; is a capital song for little
+children, and &#8216;The Bonnie Orange Tree,&#8217; to the tune
+of &#8216;Come, Landlord, Fill your Flowing Bowl,&#8217; has
+really charming verses. &#8216;The Little Grey Bandicoot,&#8217;
+again, has first-rate verse. The publication as a
+whole should prove popular.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p class="title">THE AUSTRALIAN LETTERING
+BOOK.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Containing the Alphabets most useful in
+Mapping, Exercise Headings, &amp;c., with
+practical applications, Easy Scrolls, Flourishes,
+Borders, Corners, Rulings, &amp;c.
+Second Edition. New Edition, revised and
+enlarged, cloth limp, 6d. (<i>post free 7d.</i>).</p></blockquote><p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 24]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">THE AUSTRALIAN OBJECT
+LESSON BOOK.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Part II.&mdash;For advanced classes. With 113
+illustrations. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d.;
+paper cover, 2s. 6d. (<i>postage 4d.</i>).</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><b>Victorian Education Gazette:</b> &#8220;Mr. Wiley and his
+colleagues have provided a storehouse of useful information
+on a great number of topics that can be taken
+up in any Australian school.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><b>N.S.W. Educational Gazette:</b> &#8220;The Australian
+Object Lesson Book is evidently the result of infinite
+patience and deep research on the part of its compiler,
+who is also to be commended for the admirable
+arrangement of his matter.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p class="title">THE AUSTRALIAN
+PROGRESSIVE SONGSTER.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>By <span class="smcap">S. McBurney</span>, Mus. Doc., Fellow T.S.F. College.</p>
+
+<p>Containing graded Songs, Rounds and Exercises
+in Staff Notation, Tonic Sol-fa and
+Numerals, with Musical Theory. Price, 6d.
+each part; combined, 1s. (<i>postage 1d. each
+part</i>).</p>
+
+<p>
+<b>No. 1.</b>&mdash;For Junior Classes.<br />
+<br />
+<b>No. 2.</b>&mdash;For Senior Classes.<br /></p></blockquote>
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 25]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">GEOGRAPHY OF AUSTRALIA
+AND NEW ZEALAND.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>With Definitions of Geographical Terms.</p>
+
+<p>Second Edition, with 8 maps and 19 illustrations.
+64 pages. 6d. (<i>post free 7d.</i>).</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="title">GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE,
+ASIA AND AMERICA.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Second Edition, with 14 relief and other
+maps, and 18 illustrations of transcontinental
+views, distribution of animals, &amp;c.
+84 pages. 6d. (<i>post free 7d.</i>).</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="title">GEOGRAPHY OF NEW SOUTH
+WALES.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>With five folding maps. 48 pages. 6d.
+(<i>post free 7d.</i>).</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="title">GEOGRAPHY OF AFRICA.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>With five maps in relief, &amp;c. 64 pages.
+6d. (<i>post free 7d.</i>).</p></blockquote><p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 26]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">AUSTRALIAN SCHOOL SERIES.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p><b>Grammar and Derivation Book.</b> 64 pages. 2d.</p>
+
+<p><b>Test Exercises in Grammar for 3rd Class, 1st Year.</b>
+64 pages. 2d.</p>
+
+<p><b>Test Exercises in Grammar for 3rd Class, 2nd Year.</b>
+64 pages. 2d.</p>
+
+<p><b>Table Book and Mental Arithmetic.</b> 48 pages.
+1d.</p>
+
+<p><b>Chief Events and Dates in English History.</b> Part
+I. From 55 B.C. to 1485 A.D. 50 pages. 2d.</p>
+
+<p><b>Chief Events and Dates in English History.</b> Part
+II. From Henry VII. (1486) to Victoria (1900). 64
+pages. 2d.</p>
+
+<p><b>History of Australia.</b> 80 pages. 4d. Illustrated.</p>
+
+<p><b>Geography.</b> Part I. Australasia and Polynesia. 64
+pages. 2d.</p>
+
+<p><b>Geography.</b> Part II. Europe, Asia, America, and Africa.
+66 pages. 2d.</p>
+
+<p><b>Euclid.</b> Book I. With Definitions, Postulates, Axioms,
+&amp;c. 64 pages. 2d.</p>
+
+<p><b>Euclid.</b> Book II. With Definitions and Exercises on
+Books I. and II. 32 pages. 2d.</p>
+
+<p><b>Euclid.</b> Book III. With University &#8220;Junior&#8221; Papers
+1891-1897. 60 pages. 2d.</p>
+
+<p><b>Arithmetic&mdash;Exercises for Class II.</b> 49 pages. 2d.
+Answers, 2d.</p>
+
+<p><b>Arithmetic&mdash;Exercises for Class III.</b> 66 pages. 2d.
+Answers, 2d.</p>
+
+<p><b>Arithmetic&mdash;Exercises for Class IV.</b> 65 pages. 2d.
+Answers, 2d.</p>
+
+<p><b>Arithmetic and Mensuration&mdash;Exercises for Class
+V.</b> With the Arithmetic Papers set at the Sydney
+University Junior, the Public Service, the Sydney
+Chamber of Commerce, and the Bankers&#8217; Institute
+Examinations to 1900, &amp;c. 112 pages. 4d.
+Answers, 4d.</p>
+
+<p><b>Algebra.</b> Part I. 49 pages. 2d.
+Answers, 2d.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 27]</span></p>
+
+<p><b>Algebra.</b> Part II. To Quadratic Equations. Contains
+over twelve hundred Exercises, including the University
+Junior, the Public Service, the Sydney Chamber
+of Commerce, and the Bankers&#8217; Institute Examination
+Papers to 1900, &amp;c. 112 pages. 4d. Answers, 4d.</p>
+
+<p><b>Full Solutions of all Algebra Papers</b> set at 1st and
+2nd Class Teachers&#8217; Examinations from 1894 to 1901
+(inclusive), by W. L. Atkins, B.A. (<i>Post free 5s.</i>).</p>
+
+<p><b>Full Solution of all Arithmetic Papers</b> set at 1st,
+2nd and 3rd Class Teachers&#8217; Examinations from 1894
+to 1901 (inclusive), by J. M. Taylor, M.A., LL.B.
+(<i>Post free 2s. 6d.</i>)</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><b>N.S.W. Educational Gazette:</b> &#8220;Messrs. Angus and
+Robertson forward us &#8216;Solutions of the First, Second
+and Third Class Teachers&#8217; Arithmetic Papers,&#8217; and
+&#8216;Solutions of the First and Second Class Teachers&#8217;
+Algebra Papers.&#8217; Both may be at once pronounced
+indispensable to teachers preparing for any of these
+grades. The solutions throughout are neat, clear,
+and concise, and will show intending candidates not
+only how to obtain the desired results, but how to do
+so in a manner calculated to secure full marks from
+the examiners.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p class="title">THE AUSTRALASIAN
+CATHOLIC SCHOOL SERIES.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p><b>History of Australia and New Zealand for Catholic
+Schools</b>, 128 pages. 4d.</p>
+
+<p><b>Pupil&#8217;s Companion to the Australian Catholic
+First Reader</b>, 32 pages. 1d.</p>
+
+<p><b>Pupil&#8217;s Companion to the Australian Catholic
+Second Reader</b>, 64 pages. 2d.</p>
+
+<p><b>Pupil&#8217;s Companion to the Australian Catholic
+Third Reader</b>, 112 pages. 3d.</p>
+
+<p><b>Pupil&#8217;s Companion to the Australian Catholic
+Fourth Reader</b>, 160 pages. 4d.</p></blockquote><p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 28]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">THE AUSTRALIAN DRAWING
+BOOK.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>By F. W. WOODHOUSE, Superintendent of Drawing,
+Department of Public Instruction, New South Wales.</p>
+
+<p>Approved by the Department of Public
+Instruction for use in the Public Schools of
+New South Wales. Price, 3d. each.</p>
+
+<p>No. 1A&mdash;Elementary, Straight Lines, Curves and Simple
+Figures.</p>
+
+<p>Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4&mdash;Graduated Elementary Freehand,
+Regular Forms, Simple Designs, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>Nos. 5 and 6&mdash;Foliage, Flowers, Ornaments, Vase
+Forms, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>No. 7&mdash;Book of Blank Pages.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><b>N.S.W. Educational Gazette:</b> &#8220;This series of
+drawing books has been arranged by the Superintendent
+of Drawing for the purpose of enabling
+teachers and pupils to meet fully the requirements of
+the Public School Syllabus of 1899. It consists of
+seven numbers, designed for the third, fourth and fifth
+classes respectively, and there is also a book of blank
+pages (No. 7). Nos. 1 to 4 treat of elementary
+freehand, simple designs, pattern drawing, &amp;c.; Nos.
+5 and 6 of foliage, flowers and ornaments. The copies
+are excellently designed and executed, and carefully
+graduated, and the books are printed on superior
+drawing paper. &#8216;The Australian Drawing Books&#8217;
+should be used in every public school in the colony,
+first on account of their intrinsic merit, and secondly
+because they are the only books that accurately fit our
+standard.&#8221;</p><p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 29]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">THE AUSTRALIAN COPY BOOK.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Approved by the Departments of Public
+Instruction in New South Wales, Queensland
+and Tasmania, by the Public Service Board
+of New South Wales, and by the Chief
+Inspector of Catholic Schools. Price, 2d.
+each.</p>
+
+<p>No. 1, Initiatory, Short Letters, Short Words; 2, Initiatory,
+Long Letters, Words; 3, Text, Capitals, Longer
+Words; 4, Half-Text, Short Sentences; 5, Intermediate,
+Australian and Geographical Sentences; 6,
+Small Hand, Double Ruling, Australian and Geographical
+Sentences, Prefixes and Examples; 6A, Text.
+Half-Text, Intermediate, Small Hand; 7, Small Hand,
+Single Ruling, Maxims, Quotations, Proverbs; 8,
+Advanced Small Hand, Abbreviations and Contractions
+commonly met with; 9, Commercial Terms and Forms,
+Addresses; 10, Commercial Forms, Correspondence,
+Addresses; 11, Plain and Ornamental Lettering,
+Mapping, Flourishes, &amp;c.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>Numerals are given in each number.</i></p>
+
+<p class="title">THE AUSTRALIAN PUPIL
+TEACHERS&#8217; COPY BOOK.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>A selection of pages from the Australian
+Copy Book, arranged for use of Pupil
+Teachers. 48 pages. Price, 6d.</p></blockquote><p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 30]</span></p>
+
+<p class="title">ANGUS AND ROBERTSON&#8217;S
+PENCIL COPY BOOK.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Approved by the N.S.W. Department of
+Public Instruction. In nine numbers. 1d.
+each.</p>
+
+<p>No. 1, Initiatory lines, curves, letters, figures; 2 and 3,
+Short letters, easy combinations, figures; 4, Long letters,
+short words, figures; 5, Long letters, words, figures;
+6, 7, and 8, Capitals, words, figures; 9, Short sentences,
+figures.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="title">GUIDES TO THE NEW SOUTH
+WALES PUBLIC SERVICE
+EXAMINATIONS.</p>
+
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+
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+
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+(<i>postage 8d.</i>)</p></blockquote><p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 32]</span></p>
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+
+<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">By Rev. J. MILNE CURRAN</span>, Lecturer in Chemistry
+and Geology, Technical College, Sydney, Author of
+&#8220;The Geology of Sydney and the Blue Mountains.&#8221;</p>
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+gilt, 7s. 6d. (<i>post free, 8s.</i>).</p></blockquote>
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+
+<p>Alternate and/or archaic spellings have been retained.</p>
+
+<p>Page 72: &#8220;horse&#8217;s&#8221; changed to &#8220;horses&#8217;&#8221; (so hard on the horses&#8217; feet).</p>
+
+<p>Page 175: &#8220;resouces&#8221; changed to &#8220;resources&#8221; (for its mineral resources.)</p>
+
+<p>Page 177: &#8220;supples&#8221; changed to &#8220;supplies&#8221; (enabled the early settlers to obtain supplies).</p>
+
+<p>Page 193: &#8220;suppresssion&#8221; changed to &#8220;suppression&#8221; (wanton impertinence that would require suppression.)</p>
+
+<p>Page 195: &#8220;swagsmen&#8221; changed to &#8220;swagmen&#8221; (to ration the swagmen as they pass along).</p>
+
+<p>Page 241: &#8220;dessicated&#8221; changed to &#8220;desiccated&#8221; (the land became desiccated, the lakes lost their freshness.)</p>
+
+<p>Page 254: &#8220;crystaline&#8221; changed to &#8220;crystalline&#8221; (the auriferous area is confined to veins traversing a crystalline diorite).</p>
+
+<p>Page 257: duplicate &#8220;the&#8221; removed (would include all the palæozoic, metamorphic).</p>
+
+<p>Advertisement Section:</p>
+
+<p>Page 14: &#8220;setlement&#8221; changed to &#8220;settlement&#8221; (made its way from settlement to settlement).</p></blockquote>
+
+
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+
+
+
+
+<pre>
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+Project Gutenberg's Early Days in North Queensland, by Edward Palmer
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Early Days in North Queensland
+
+Author: Edward Palmer
+
+Release Date: January 23, 2012 [EBook #38649]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EARLY DAYS IN NORTH QUEENSLAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Pat McCoy, Nick Wall and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  EARLY DAYS
+  IN
+  NORTH QUEENSLAND
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: (Signature: Edw^d. Palmer.)
+
+_From photo, by "Tosca," Brisbane._]
+
+
+
+
+  EARLY DAYS
+  IN
+  NORTH QUEENSLAND
+
+
+  BY
+  THE LATE
+  EDWARD PALMER
+
+
+
+
+  SYDNEY
+  ANGUS & ROBERTSON
+  MELBOURNE: ANGUS, ROBERTSON & SHENSTONE
+  1903
+
+
+
+
+TO THE NORTH-WEST.
+
+  _I know the land of the far, far away,
+  Where the salt bush glistens in silver-grey;
+  Where the emu stalks with her striped brood,
+  Searching the plains for her daily food.
+
+  I know the land of the far, far west,
+  Where the bower-bird builds her playhouse nest;
+  Where the dusky savage from day to day,
+  Hunts with his tribe in their old wild way.
+
+  'Tis a land of vastness and solitude deep,
+  Where the dry hot winds their revels keep;
+  The land of mirage that cheats the eye,
+  The land of cloudless and burning sky.
+
+  'Tis a land of drought and pastures grey,
+  Where flock-pigeons rise in vast array;
+  Where the "nardoo" spreads its silvery sheen
+  Over the plains where the floods have been.
+
+  'Tis a land of gidya and dark boree,
+  Extended o'er plains like an inland sea,
+  Boundless and vast, where the wild winds pass,
+  O'er the long rollers and billows of grass.
+
+  I made my home in that thirsty land,
+  Where rivers for water are filled with sand;
+  Where glare and heat and storms sweep by,
+  Where the prairie rolls to the western sky._
+
+_Cloncurry, 1897._        --"_Loranthus_."
+
+
+  _W. C. Penfold & Co., Printers, Sydney._
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The writer came to Queensland two years before separation, and shortly
+afterwards took part in the work of outside settlement, or pioneering,
+looking for new country to settle on with stock. Going from Bowen out
+west towards the head of the Flinders River in 1864, he continued his
+connection with this outside life until his death in 1899. Many of the
+original explorers and pioneers were known to him personally; of these
+but few remain. This little work is merely a statement of facts and
+incidents connected with the work of frontier life, and the progress of
+pastoral occupation in the early days. It lays no claim to any literary
+style. Whatever faults are found in it, the indulgence usually accorded
+to a novice is requested. It has been a pleasant task collecting the
+information from many of the early settlers in order to place on record
+a few of the names and incidents connected with the foundation of the
+pastoral industry in the far north, an industry which was the forerunner
+of all other settlement there, and still is the main source of the
+State's export trade.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE BY MR. G. PHILLIPS, C.E.
+
+
+The author of this book, the late Edward Palmer, was himself one of that
+brave band of pioneer squatters who in the early sixties swept across
+North Queensland with their flocks and herds, settling, as if by magic,
+great tracts of hitherto unoccupied country, and thereby opening several
+new ports on the east coast and on the shores of the Gulf of
+Carpentaria, to the commerce of the world. In writing of these stirring
+times in the history of Queensland, Mr. Palmer has dealt with a subject
+for which he was peculiarly qualified as an active participant therein.
+
+Very few of those energetic and indomitable men are now left--veritable
+giants they were--great because they attempted great things, and though
+few of them achieved financial success for themselves individually, they
+added by their self-denying labours a rich province to Queensland, which
+has become the home of thousands, and will yet furnish homes for ten of
+thousands under conditions of settlement and occupation adapted to the
+physical and climatic characteristics of North Queensland.
+
+Mr. Palmer was a native of Wollongong, in New South Wales, and came to
+Queensland in 1857. He took up and formed his well-known station,
+Conobie, on the western bank of the Cloncurry River, situated about
+midway between Normanton and Cloncurry, in 1864, first with sheep, but
+subsequently, like most of the Gulf squatters, he substituted cattle
+therefor, which by the year 1893 had grown into a magnificent herd.
+
+Mr. Palmer also took part in the political life of Queensland,
+representing his district, then known as the Burke, but afterwards as
+Carpentaria, until the general election of 1893, when he retired in
+favour of Mr. G. Phillips, C.E., who held the seat for three years.
+
+In the financial crisis of 1893 and subsequent years when the value of
+cattle stations in North Queensland owing to the ravages of ticks and
+the want of extraneous markets, gradually dwindled almost to the
+vanishing point, Mr. Palmer was a great sufferer, and he was compelled
+to leave his old home at Conobie, which was bound to him by every tie
+dear to the human breast, and most dear to the man who had carved that
+home out of the wilderness by sheer courage and indomitable endurance.
+
+Mr. Palmer's constitution, originally a very good one, was undermined
+partly by a long life of exposure and hardship under a tropical sun, but
+chiefly owing to the misfortunes which latterly overtook him, and after
+a few years of service under the State in connection with the tick
+plague, he died in harness at Rockhampton on the 4th day of May, 1899.
+
+Edward Palmer was essentially a lovable man, kind-hearted and genial, a
+great lover of Nature, as his poems prove, a true comrade, and a right
+loyal citizen of Queensland, which he loved so well, and which, in the
+truest sense of the word, he helped to found.
+
+  GEO. PHILLIPS.
+
+  Brisbane, February 12, 1903.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                        PAGE
+
+  CHAPTER     I--INTRODUCTORY                              1
+
+     "       II--THE NAVIGATORS                           21
+
+     "      III--INLAND EXPLORATION                       32
+
+     "       IV--EXPLORERS IN NORTH QUEENSLAND            61
+
+     "        V--PIONEERING WORK IN QUEENSLAND            85
+
+     "       VI--THE SPREAD OF PASTORAL OCCUPATION       110
+
+     "      VII--THE RISE OF THE NORTHERN TOWNS          144
+
+     "     VIII--THE MINERAL WEALTH                      168
+
+     "       IX--INCIDENTS OF THE EARLY DAYS             177
+
+     "        X--THE MEN OF THE NORTH                    185
+
+     "       XI--ABORIGINALS OF NORTH QUEENSLAND         208
+
+     "      XII--PHYSICAL FEATURES                       226
+
+     "     XIII--SOME LITERARY REMAINS                   260
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.--INTRODUCTORY.
+
+
+The pioneers of Australian civilisation in the territory known as North
+Queensland have mostly passed away; they were too busy with other
+activities and interests and more absorbing local topics to make notes
+of the days that are gone. A record of the work they did, and their
+march of progress through the unknown land, was a matter that no one
+recognised as of any importance to themselves or others. "The daily
+round and common task" took up most of their time, and sufficient for
+the day was the work thereof. If one (however unqualified) should record
+a few of those early steps of settlement, and thus help to preserve the
+remembrance of events connected with the occupation of a prosperous
+country, the facts would remain, and be available for those more
+competent to utilise them in other ways and for other purposes. It is
+well that some one should do it, and one who has experienced the
+vicissitudes of Northern pioneer life, with its calls on active
+endurance and its ceaseless worries would not be altogether unfit to
+note the progress of a great movement, or to place on record some of
+those events that helped to make up the early life of Queensland,
+however unqualified the writer might be, in a literary sense. A
+pioneer is one who prepares the path for others to follow, one who first
+leads the way. The life of the pioneer in the early days of Northern
+settlement, from want of ready communication with seaports, and the lack
+of means of obtaining supplies, was one that called out all the energy,
+resource, and bushmanship of those who had been trained to this life,
+and who had pushed far in the van of civilisation to make a living for
+themselves, and open the way for others who might follow. Though the
+whole country is fitted for settlement and occupation by European races,
+such fitness had to be demonstrated by the residence and work of the
+pioneers, some of whom did good service in the way of exploration and
+discovery. By living their lives in the far outside districts and making
+their homes therein, they proved the adaptability of the soil and
+climate to the wants and civilisation of the European.
+
+That there were more shadows than lights in those early days was not so
+much the fault of the settlers as of their surroundings, but the best
+was made of all circumstances, and the result is satisfactory. Very few
+of the pioneers made wealth for themselves, though they helped to
+convert the wilderness into prospective homes for millions of their own
+race.
+
+The story of North Queensland's childhood is simply one of gradual
+discovery and advancing settlement from the Southern districts, where
+the same severe course of wresting the land from uselessness and
+sterility had been gone through. The source of this movement may be
+traced chiefly to a desire for pastoral extension by squatters, always
+on the move for new pastures, and to the ever roving prospector in
+search of fresh mineral discoveries.
+
+First the navigator outlines the coast with its bays and islands and
+openings for ports; such were Cook, Flinders, Stokes, and others. Then
+the explorer appears on the scene, and discovers its rivers and
+facilities for establishing the occupation of the country, and maps out
+its capabilities. Such were Leichhardt, Mitchell, Gregory, Landsborough,
+and many others. Thus the way is opened up for the pioneer squatter with
+his flocks and herds and the attendant business of forming roads and
+opening ports for his requirements, holding his own against many odds,
+droughts, floods, outrages by blacks, fevers that follow the opening up
+of all new countries, and losses peculiar to life in the wilderness.
+
+Following the pioneer (or Crown lessee, as he is called) in course of
+time comes a closer settlement, when the large runs become divided, and
+the selector or farmer holds the country under a more permanent tenure.
+Cultivation follows, whilst families reside where the pioneer squatter
+strove with nature in a long struggle many years before.
+
+The development of North Queensland has taken place since separation
+from New South Wales; the period of a single generation covers the time
+that it has taken to settle this large extent of country. The
+continuous discovery of natural wealth, the progress of settlement, the
+healthy growth of the great industries, the establishment of a system of
+oversea, coastal, and inland communications, the creation of great
+cities, the founding of social and educational institutions, in fact all
+that makes the colony of to-day, with its potentialities of industrial
+wealth and expansive settlement, have been covered by the span of a
+single life.
+
+In 1824, Lieutenant Oxley discovered and explored the Brisbane River.
+Redcliffe, so named a quarter of a century before by Flinders, but now
+generally known as "Humpy Bong," was the original site selected for the
+first settlement on the shores of Moreton Bay. Some convicts had been
+forwarded there from Sydney to form the settlement, but owing to attacks
+by blacks and the unsuitability of site, it was removed to the present
+one of Brisbane. Up to 1839, the dismal cloud of convictism was over
+this fair land before it was thrown open to free settlers.
+
+Over 12 degrees of latitude, and as many of longitude, through a country
+previously unknown and untested as to climate and soil, the course of
+advancing occupation went on unchecked, until the land was filled with
+the outposts of civilisation, and the potentialities of the colony were
+ascertained. Great indeed are the conquests of peace; much greater than
+those of war; more beneficial and more permanent.
+
+The first sale of Brisbane lands took place in Sydney in 1841, and next
+year a sale was held in Brisbane; the third took place in 1843, and
+there was not enough land surveyed to meet the demand, so small was
+Brisbane in those early days. The upset price was L100 per acre,
+although much more was realised for some lots. Even at those prices,
+many buyers suffered a loss, for a commercial crisis occurred shortly
+afterwards, and much of the property was forfeited, or resold at much
+lower prices.
+
+For the year 1843, the exports consisted of 150 tierces of beef, 450
+hides, 1,998 bales of wool, 3,458 sheepskins, and 3,418 feet of pine
+timber.
+
+The foundations of trade, so modest at the start, have developed in one
+lifetime to a nation's wealth. In 1844, in the territory then forming
+the colony, there were 650 horses, 13,000 cattle, 184,000 sheep, and
+scarcely more than 1,500 of a population, one half of whom were
+domiciled in North and South Brisbane. At the present day, the products
+of the live stock of the State furnishes employment for thousands, and
+forms a volume of trade that employs the finest lines of steamers
+sailing in the Southern Seas.
+
+It is needless to dwell on the history of the dark days of bondage and
+weakly infancy, which has little to do with the early days of settlement
+in North Queensland, except to show the starting point. The North is
+free from the stain and drag of convictism. The real life of the colony
+began with the first days of free settlers, then immigrants poured in
+rapidly, and the occupation of the interior advanced. With this strong
+growth of material progress, came also the desire for self-government,
+and separation from New South Wales. This, however, was not obtained
+without much exertion, self-sacrifice, and display of patriotic energy.
+The history of the separation movement is long, extending over many
+years, but it was finally consummated on 10th December, 1859, when Sir
+George Ferguson Bowen was sworn in as the first Governor of Queensland.
+The boundary line of the new colony commenced at Point Danger, near the
+28th parallel of south latitude and ran westward, leaving the rich
+districts watered by the Clarence and Richmond rivers, although much
+nearer to Brisbane than to Sydney, still belonging to New South Wales.
+After separation and self-government, came the commencement, in 1865, of
+the railway from Ipswich towards the interior. The discovery of gold at
+Gympie, near Maryborough, in 1867, and the rapid extension of the
+ever-spreading pastoral industry, laid the foundation of national life
+in Queensland. From this solid basis, the settlement of North Queensland
+commenced in earnest, with a more rapid extension than had been seen in
+any other part of Australia.
+
+Telegraphic communication was established between Brisbane and Sydney on
+November 9th, 1861, and its inauguration had a marked effect on local
+affairs. The immigration induced by Mr. Henry Jordan was an important
+factor in the settling of people on the land in the early days of
+Queensland.
+
+In 1869, Townsville was connected by wire with Brisbane, and in 1872 the
+line was extended to the mouth of the Norman River at Kimberly, now
+known as "Karumba," the intention being that the first cable to connect
+Australia with Europe should be landed at the mouth of the Norman River,
+but, for reasons which have never been made public, South Australia was
+allowed to step in and reap the advantages which should have belonged to
+Queensland, although we carried out our share of the work by
+constructing, at great expense, a special land line across the base of
+the Cape York Peninsula, from Cardwell, across the Sea View Range, to
+Normanton and Kimberly at the mouth of the river.
+
+The last service rendered by Walker, the explorer, was in connection
+with the selection of the route of the telegraph line from Cardwell to
+the Gulf of Carpentaria. Mr. Walker's second in command was a fine young
+man of the name of Herbert Edward Young, who was subsequently telegraph
+master in Townsville in the year 1871. Mr. Young received an injury in
+the service which eventually resulted in his untimely death very shortly
+after his marriage.
+
+Australia was connected with Europe by cable in 1872. Queensland thus
+starting on its career so hopefully was nevertheless subject to periods
+of depression, booms, and crises, prosperity and hard times
+alternated. And then came the "salvation by gold." The discovery of gold
+came as a hope and help to all, as it came to the North a few years
+later. It helped to find markets for stock of all kinds and employment
+for thousands, and also to extend the settlement of the land and open up
+commerce with other countries, introducing immigrants or diggers, many
+of whom remained and settled in the country. But the young country had
+to be opened up and some degree of settlement established before mining
+for gold could be carried on.
+
+In all parts of Queensland, pastoral settlement has preceded all others,
+including mining. Though the squatter is now, in the more settled
+districts, becoming a thing of the past, his work being finished and his
+day gone by, at the first enterprise, bush knowledge and a practical
+life were the most potent factors in making known the possibilities of
+the land of Queensland.
+
+The name "squatter" was given in the early days to the pastoral tenants
+of the Crown, who rented pasture lands in their natural state. The first
+pastoral occupation took place about 1840, and this may be said to have
+commenced the life history of the movement that made Queensland known to
+the world. Large areas were occupied on the banks of rivers and creeks
+where the splendid and nutritive indigenous grasses required no further
+cultivation. All that the squatters did was to turn their stock loose on
+them and exercise some care to prevent them from straying, or being
+killed and scattered by the blacks. No country was ever endowed by
+Nature with a more permanent, healthy, and beneficial pasturage than
+Australia, though heavy stocking and hot dry seasons have somewhat
+diminished the value of this natural wealth in some of the earlier
+settled districts. The chief source of employment in the Colony of
+Queensland, and the leading export, is still derived from the stock
+depastured on the native grasses that were found when the State was
+first explored.
+
+A company or syndicate was formed in February, 1859, for the purpose of
+establishing a new pastoral settlement in North Australia. The project
+was conceived in consequence of the reports of explorers who had passed
+through much of the country to be operated on. These reports were from
+the journals of Sir Thomas Mitchell, Dr. Leichhardt, A. C. Gregory, the
+Rev. W. B. Clarke, and others. The prospectus was of a most ambitious
+and comprehensive nature, and it showed an intention to overcome, or
+make light of, all obstacles, and to march straight on to glory and
+wealth, as well as to start a young nation on its prosperous career. The
+area of the proposed new settlement was comprised within the 22nd
+parallel of S. latitude, the 137th degree of east longitude on the west,
+and on the north and east by the ocean, practically including what is
+now known as North Queensland.
+
+The report of the Rev. W. B. Clarke, which was favourable to the
+probability of auriferous country being discovered, and of rich deposits
+of gold being met with on the northern rivers, was a great factor in
+promoting the project of founding a settlement which was to establish a
+thriving and industrious European and Oriental mercantile and planting
+community. The immediate design was to commence a detailed exploration
+of the country reported on by Dr. Leichhardt. The prospectus dwelt on
+the advantages of thoroughly exploring the rivers and country and making
+known the capabilities of the soil and climate to the capitalists of
+Australia as a field for investment. The programme mapped out was:--To
+proceed from Rockhampton direct to Leichhardt's camp in the bed of the
+Burdekin River at Mount McConnel. To trace the Burdekin down to the sea
+in canoes, taking soundings to establish its navigable capabilities; to
+fix its mouth and its qualifications as a seaport. To fix the probable
+head of navigation, and a favourable site for a goods depot there. To
+return to Mount McConnel; thence to explore the lower Suttor, lower
+Cape, and Burdekin Valley as far as the Valley of Lagoons, ascending the
+river by its western, and returning by its eastern bank; to fix the most
+favourable position as near as possible to water carriage for the first
+establishment of pastoral stations, and to trace the most accessible
+route from the latter to the former. To return to the settled districts
+by a different route, viz.: to trace up the Cape or Belyando River to
+its head in latitude 24 degrees, to cross the great watershed, and to
+drop down upon the Maranoa, which was to be followed to about latitude
+26 degrees, where the course was to be left and a route made down the
+River Culgoa, arriving in the settled districts by the lower Condamine.
+
+By adopting this route, the whole frontier, from the Valley of Lagoons
+to Gregory's last track down the Victoria (or Barcoo) would be explored;
+thus, without additional outlay, deciding whether Leichhardt pushed
+westward by the Victoria according to Gregory, or what is more probable,
+from some point upon the Belyando or Burdekin, according to the Rev. W.
+B. Clarke. The person in charge of the party was to prepare a full
+report upon the country traversed, while the surveyor of the party was
+to draw out a chart of the region explored, copies of the report and
+chart to be furnished to each of the subscribers, who would then be in a
+position individually or collectively to take measures for tendering for
+and occupying the country, by sending their stock overland, and their
+stores, etc., by water to the depot at the head of navigation.
+
+The cost of the exploration was estimated at about L1,000, to meet which
+it was proposed to raise that sum by subscription; unless that amount
+were subscribed, the expedition to be abandoned. The leader proposed was
+George Elphinstone Dalrymple. The names of the subscribers of L50 each
+were:--Captain J. C. Wickham, R.N., Messrs. J. C. White, John Douglas,
+Gilbert Davidson, P. N. Selheim, A. D. Broughton, George Perry, W. A.
+Simpson, Ernest Henry, A. H. Palmer, Garland and Bingham, J. B. Rundle,
+Joseph Sharp, D. McDougal, Raymond and Co., R. Towns and Co., Griffith,
+Fanning and Co., How, Walker and Co., Dennison and Rolleston, F.
+Bundock, Edwd. Ogilvie, R. G. Watt, and J. R. Radfort.
+
+It was intended that a committee of these subscribers should be at once
+formed in Sydney. The reasons given for the projection of a party with
+such a comprehensive and magnificent scheme before it were: 1st--Because
+the supply of butchers' meat was even then unequal to the demand, and
+the latter increased more rapidly than the former. 2nd--Because the
+demand for sheep stations as an investment for capital was far beyond
+the capabilities of the settled districts; and the capital available for
+speculation in Melbourne in particular, was seeking new fields for
+employment. 3rd--Because the number of small or moderate capitalists who
+annually immigrate with a view to pastoral pursuits could find no field
+of operations within the settled districts, had to push northwards, and
+in a short time would occupy all available country within practicable
+distance of the most remote existing, or contemplated ports of
+shipment--Port Curtis and Broad Sound.
+
+It was anticipated that other ports equal to Moreton Bay, with its
+highly-favoured back-ground, Darling Downs, would be opened up by
+exploration. The character of the country reported on by Dr. Leichhardt,
+intersected as it was by some very interesting rivers, such as the
+Suttor, Burdekin, Mitchell, and Lynd, warranted such a favourable
+conclusion.
+
+The tablelands were high, and possessed of a cool and healthy climate;
+the soil on the banks of the rivers was of a rich nature, suitable for
+agriculture; the pasturage was unequalled for stock of all kinds; and
+the mineral prospects were favourable towards the settlement of a mining
+community. All this undeveloped natural wealth lay at the disposal of
+any who might enter and bring it under the magic influence of capital
+and enterprise.
+
+In their wildest moments of enthusiasm, none of those enterprising
+colonists could have foreseen what a few years would bring forth. None
+could have expected to see in the short space of less than thirty years
+that, where the mangrove then fringed the shore, jetties and harbours
+would be built, and that great ocean-going steamers and vessels from all
+parts of the world would be found discharging valuable cargoes collected
+from many lands; that great cities would arise adjacent to these
+harbours, that land would be sold by the foot at high prices; that these
+thriving towns would be the termini of many railways reaching far away
+into that unknown interior which they were so anxious to explore,
+bringing in the natural products of the soil valued at many millions of
+pounds annually for shipment to the markets of the world, or that the
+mining prospects so modestly alluded to in their prospectus would be
+developed to such an extent as to produce hundreds of tons weight of
+gold. These men were the pioneers of a new colony; they looked out over
+the wilderness extending northwards to the Indian Ocean, and laid their
+plans to conquer and subdue it to the wants of civilised man. The
+promoters of this pioneering enterprise anticipated the probability of
+the deep indentation of the Gulf of Carpentaria enabling direct oceanic
+communication with the Western world, as well as with India and China,
+to be established, and that the projected telegraphic connection with
+Europe by way of Timor and Java might be extended by way of the level
+bed of the Gulf, and along the valley of the Lynd and Burdekin Rivers
+into the territory of Moreton Bay, thus bringing North Queensland and
+Brisbane nearer to the marts of the world than any of the sister
+colonies. The progress of civilisation has brought all this to pass
+within the memory of those now living.
+
+Our Queensland land policy is a legacy of the old days of New South
+Wales, where the first attempt to confer a right to property in land was
+by way of grant. It dates from the time of Governor Phillip, the first
+Governor of New South Wales; these grants were made to any free
+immigrants on certain conditions.
+
+The system of tenure by occupation began about 1825, and was the origin
+of the squatting system; the production of fine merino wool gave a great
+impetus to the occupation of the waste lands. The licenses were annual,
+the rate of charge rested with the Governor, and they were renewable and
+transferable. But much dissatisfaction arose with the administration by
+the Crown Lands Commissioners who had the disposal of all disputes
+connected with the new system. Hence an agitation was set up for a
+redress of grievances, and this led to the passing of the 9th and 10th
+Victoria c. 104--28th August, 1846. In this act power was granted to the
+Crown to lease for any term of years not exceeding fourteen, to any
+person, any waste lands, etc., or license to occupy; such lease or
+license to be subject to the regulations thereafter mentioned. On the
+9th of March, 1847, the celebrated orders in Council, framed under the
+authority of this act, were issued. The lands in the Colony of New South
+Wales were divided into three classes, "settled," "intermediate," and
+"unsettled." As respects Queensland, the settled districts were confined
+to very limited areas within ten miles of the town of Ipswich, and
+within three miles of any part of the sea coast. All the rest of the
+territory now comprised in the boundaries of the State was left in the
+unsettled districts; but power was given to the Governor to proclaim any
+portion as within the intermediate districts when necessary. The lease
+gave the right to purchase part of the land within the lease to the
+lessee and to him only; other acts dealing with the sale of land had
+been passed, and land had been alienated under them; but the leases and
+regulations under the orders in Council forbade the sale of any waste
+land to anyone except the lessee. When a run was forfeited, tenders
+might be given, stating the term of years for which the tenderer was
+willing to take it, the rent he would give in addition to the minimum
+fixed by the act, and the amount of premium he would pay. In the event
+of competition, the run was to be knocked down to the highest bidder.
+
+Where new runs were tendered for, the tenderer was to set forth in his
+tender a clear description of the run and its boundaries, and also
+whether he was willing to give any premium beyond the rent. The rent was
+to be proportioned to the number of sheep or equivalent number of cattle
+which the run was estimated to be capable of carrying according to a
+scale to be established by the Governor; but no run was to be capable of
+carrying less than 4,000 sheep, or to be let for less than L10 per
+annum, to which L2 10s. was added for every additional 1,000 sheep. The
+estimated number of sheep or cattle was decided by a valuator named by
+the intended lessee and approved by the Commissioner of Crown Lands,
+who, with an umpire chosen by the two, acted as a small court of
+arbitration. The scheme was fitted in its simplicity to encourage
+exploration on the largest possible scale.
+
+Proclamations issued by the Government of New South Wales to give
+further effect to the "orders," authorised an assessment on stock
+pastured beyond the settled districts, which was levied at the rate of a
+halfpenny for each sheep, three halfpence for every head of cattle, and
+threepence for every horse; and returns were directed to be made by
+every pastoral lessee under severe penalties. Under these several acts
+and orders, the Executive and the squatters came into collision, and
+disputes arose as to the meaning of many clauses in the various Land
+Acts; but no material alteration had been made at the time when
+Queensland was separated from New South Wales, although the Constitution
+Act of New South Wales, July, 1855, vested in the local legislature the
+entire management and control of the waste lands of the colony. In 1859,
+when the Colony of Queensland was separated from New South Wales, the
+pastoral interest was in the ascendant, and this is considered to have
+been made evident by the first land legislation of the new colony. The
+first consideration of the new Government was legislation for leasing
+and selling the land. A very large number of tenders for Crown Lands had
+been accepted by the New South Wales Government, or had been applied for
+and were in abeyance, and until a decision was given on these
+applications, the land was lying idle and waste. One-fourth of the
+entire unoccupied territory had been applied for, the result of the
+energy of pioneering pastoralists, and the prospects opening up for new
+pastoral settlements. The first bill presented to the new Parliament on
+11th July, 1860, was introduced by the Colonial Treasurer, an old
+squatter, Mr.--afterwards Sir R. R.--Mackenzie. Some of the provisions
+of the old orders in Council were followed; they accepted the unsettled
+districts as declared in them. The intermediate were abolished.
+Applications for licenses for a year were to be accompanied by a clear
+description of runs, to be not less than 25 nor more than 100 square
+miles, with a fee of 10s. per square mile. These entitled the lessee to
+a lease of 14 years. The land to be stocked at the time of application
+to be one-fourth of its grazing capabilities.
+
+This was fixed by the act at 100 sheep or 20 head of cattle to the
+square mile; the rent to be appraised after four years for the second
+and third remaining periods of five years each, at the commencement of
+each period. As to the runs tendered for and still unstocked, the
+provisions were extended, but lessees were compelled to stock their land
+to one-fourth of the extent fixed by the act. The tide of speculation in
+unoccupied land was stayed, there arose a great demand for stock of all
+kinds, and those pastoralists in the south, who had flocks and herds to
+dispose of, realised great prices. Afterwards the colony passed through
+some troublesome years, and a Relief Act was required; and as a vast
+area of the young colony had still to be occupied, encouragement was
+held out to settlers to take up runs. The Pastoral Leases Act of 1869,
+gave another impetus to the settlement of outside districts, and acted
+as a relief to many who had taken up runs under the previous acts. The
+new leases were to be for a term of 21 years, and the new Act also dealt
+with leases under existing acts. Where new country was applied for, a
+license had to be taken out, and a declaration made that the country was
+stocked to one-fourth of its grazing capabilities, the rent being 5s.
+per square mile for the first 7 years; 10s. for the second term, and
+15s. for the third term. Every succeeding Government tried a new Land
+Bill, some dealing with selection, land orders to new arrivals being
+part of the system; but the tendency of all succeeding land legislation
+down to the present day has been to allow more liberal terms to the
+prospective selector. The conditions were made so restrictive in the
+first days as to lead one to conclude that land selection was almost a
+crime; whereas the genuine selector in remote districts has enough to
+contend with in opening his land for some kind of cultivation and facing
+the seasons, etc., without being forced to make improvements he will not
+require. The grazing selector is a coming power in the land; a grade
+between the old squatter and the small selector. The discovery of
+artesian water will be a factor of the utmost importance to him as
+tending to assure his position from loss by drought. The grazing
+selector is spreading over the interior rapidly; and before the
+expiration of the leases now in existence, more land legislation is
+sure to be introduced to liberalise the terms and initiate a system for
+obtaining the freehold of parts of these large grazing farms. The
+history of our land laws shows them to have been simply experimental at
+every stage, hence the need for repeated alterations.
+
+It would have been a good thing for Queensland, I might say for
+Australia, if a similar policy to that of the United States of America
+had been followed, namely the throwing open of the public estate on the
+most liberal terms and the encouragement of private enterprise in
+railways.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE NAVIGATORS.
+
+
+According to historical record, the first part of Australia discovered
+by Europeans, was the northern part of Queensland, and it also bears the
+mournful distinction of being the first scene of their death at the
+hands of the natives. Nearly three hundred years ago, in the Gulf of
+Carpentaria, a boat's crew belonging to the "Duyfken," one of the early
+Dutch vessels exploring there, was cut off and killed. The knowledge of
+the country obtained in those days produced no results as regards
+settlement, and very little addition was made to geographical knowledge
+until Captain Cook discovered and made known the eastern seaboard of
+North Queensland. The occupation and settlement of this large territory
+was initiated by the enterprise of pastoralists from the southern
+districts in search of new runs for their stock. Thus the first record
+of Queensland is of the North; her growth and settlement comes from the
+South.
+
+The Dutch yacht "Duyfken," despatched from Bantam in November, 1605, to
+explore the island of New Guinea, sailed along what was thought to be
+the west side of that country, as far as 14 deg. South latitude. The
+furthest point reached was marked on their maps Cape Keer Weer, or
+Turnagain, and the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria were supposed to be
+a part of New Guinea. Torres was the first to sail between New Guinea
+and the mainland of Australia; he commanded the second vessel of an
+expedition fitted out by the Spaniards for the purpose of discovery in
+1606. He sailed through from the eastern side, and he describes the
+numerous islands lying between New Guinea and Cape York. It is probable
+he passed in view of the mainland, and his name is perpetuated in that
+of the Straits. The Gulf of Carpentaria is supposed to have been named
+by Tasman after the Governor of the East India Company; and so little by
+little the coast was explored, and the outline of Australia mapped out,
+until Captain Cook's memorable discoveries of the east coast completed
+the chart of Australia and its history commenced. The west coast had
+been visited frequently by many Dutch ships, as it lay in their line of
+route in sailing to Batavia. Dampier, in 1688, was the first Englishman
+to land there, and his description of the country and the natives was
+far from encouraging. He spoke of them as the worst people he had ever
+met, and the country as the meanest. It was not until 1770, when Captain
+Cook ran the east coast up from Cape Everard to Cape York, and took
+possession of the whole territory in the name of King George the Third,
+that the veil began to lift from this land of silence and profound
+mystery. His voyage furnished the most reliable and scientific
+information about the coast line of Australia hitherto published.
+Captain Cook had been commissioned by the English Government to make a
+scientific expedition to the island of Otaheite, as it was then called,
+to witness the transit of Venus, on June 3rd, 1769. He was accompanied
+by Dr. Solander as a botanist, and Mr. Banks (afterwards Sir Joseph
+Banks), as a naturalist. After carrying out his commission, he sailed in
+search of the southern continent. He circumnavigated New Zealand, and
+thence steered westward till he sighted the shores of Australia on April
+19th, 1770. After landing at Botany Bay on the 28th of the same month,
+he sailed north along the east coast to Torres Straits. He passed and
+named Moreton Bay and Wide Bay, and rounded Breaksea Spit on the north
+of Great Sandy Island, named Cape Capricorn, and Keppel Bay, Whitsunday
+Passage, Cleveland Bay, and Endeavour River, where he stayed some time
+to repair his vessel, the "Endeavour." The spot where he beached his
+ship is now Cooktown, and a monument stands where his vessel was
+careened under Grassy Hill. Many of the principal headlands, bays, and
+islands, along the coast were named by him. Finally, he passed through
+Torres Straits, naming Prince of Wales Island, and Booby Island, and
+then sailed homeward by Timor and Sumatra.
+
+Captain Matthew Flinders, navigator and discoverer, gave up his whole
+life to the cause of discovery, having as a young man in company with
+Bass, made trips along the southern coast of Australia in an open boat,
+soon after the settlement of Sydney. In 1799, he sailed from Sydney to
+explore Moreton and Hervey Bays in the "Norfolk," and went as far as
+Port Curtis, landing at several places and examining the country. He was
+appointed to the command of the "Investigator" in 1801, and arrived in
+Sydney in May, 1802; thence he proceeded up what is now the Queensland
+coast, which he examined from Sandy Cape northwards. He named Mount
+Larcombe, near Gladstone; surveyed Keppel Bay and other places,
+correcting and adding to Cook's charts; he sailed into the open ocean
+through the Great Barrier Reef in latitude 19 degs. 9 mins., longitude
+148 degs., after many narrow escapes among the shoals and reefs. His
+destination was the Gulf of Carpentaria, and on his way he sighted
+Murray Island, where he saw large numbers of natives using
+well-constructed canoes with sails; from thence he steered west,
+anchoring close to one of the Prince of Wales Islands, where he and his
+crew mistook the large anthills for native habitations; then steering
+southwards, he found himself in the Gulf of Carpentaria, of which very
+little was then known. Flinders was the first English navigator to sail
+along its coasts, where such shallow waters prevail that they were at
+times afraid to go within three miles of the low shores, and had to be
+content with merely viewing the tops of the distant mangroves showing
+above the water.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is only one tide in the twenty-four hours; it takes twelve hours
+for the tide to flow in, and twelve hours for it to flow out again; and
+very uninteresting is the aspect of the coast line sailing down the
+Gulf. Flinders anchored near Sweer's Island, which he named, and
+examined Bentinck, Mornington, and Bountiful Islands adjacent thereto,
+the whole group being called Wellesley's Islands. An inspection made
+here of the "Investigator" showed that there was scarcely a sound timber
+left in her, and the wonder was that she had kept afloat so long;
+however, Flinders determined to go on with his explorations. One island
+was called Bountiful Island from the immense number of turtles and
+turtles' eggs which were there procured, and when leaving on the
+continuation of their course, they took forty-six turtles with them
+averaging 300 lbs. each.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is at the present day on Sweer's Island, a well containing pure
+fresh water called Flinders' well, supposed to have been sunk by him,
+and near to it was a tree marked by him. This tree was standing in
+1866-8, but as it showed signs of decay, it was removed in 1888 by Pilot
+Jones, and sent to the Brisbane Museum, where it now is. This tree
+(which is generally known as the "Investigator" tree) has a number of
+dates and names carved thereon, as follows:--
+
+     1.--1781, "Lowy," name of early Dutch exploring vessel,
+         commanded by Captain Tasman, after whom the Island
+         of Tasmania is named.
+
+     2.--1798, and some Chinese characters.
+
+     3.--1802, "Investigator." "Robert Devine." (Devine
+         was the first lieutenant of Flinders' ship
+         "Investigator.")
+
+     4.--1841, "Stokes." (Captain Stokes commanded the
+         "Beagle," surveying ship, which visited the Gulf
+         in 1841.)
+
+     5.--1856, "Chimmo." (Lieutenant Chimmo commanded the
+         "Sandfly," surveying vessel.)
+
+     6.--"Norman." (Captain Norman of the "Victoria," visited
+         the Gulf in 1861 with Landsborough's party in search
+         of Burke and Wills. The Norman River is named after
+         Captain Norman.)
+
+In skirting the western shores of the Gulf, Flinders identified many
+leading features which were marked in Tasman's chart, and which were
+found quite correct. On the last day of 1802, the "Investigator" was in
+sight of Cape Maria, which was found to be on an island. To the west was
+a large bay or bight, called by the Dutch Limmen's Bight; and the whole
+coastal line seemed to be thickly inhabited by natives. Flinders
+mentions seeing many traces of Malay occupation along the shores of the
+islands of the Gulf--temporary occupation for the purpose of collecting
+_beche de mer_. Blue Mud Bay was so named by him on account of the
+nature of the bottom. This bay was surveyed. The country beyond was
+found to be higher and more interesting than the almost uniformly low
+shores of the Gulf they had been skirting for so many hundreds of miles.
+Melville Bay completed the examination of the Gulf of Carpentaria, which
+had taken one hundred and five days; the circuit being twelve hundred
+miles. Shortly afterwards they fell in with six Malay proas, held
+intercourse with the crews, and learned that the object of their
+expedition was to find trepang, or _beche de mer_; and as they had been
+trading for many years on the northern coasts of Australia, it is
+evident that they must have been well acquainted with the seas and
+shores of the Gulf. Flinders sailed for Timor, and thence to Sydney, as
+his vessel was now utterly unseaworthy, and reached the harbour in June,
+1803.
+
+His vessel after arrival was condemned, and Flinders determined to go to
+England to procure another ship to continue his surveys of the coast. On
+his way home, he was wrecked on a reef, and, returning to Sydney,
+obtained a small craft, in which he made another start, but, touching at
+Mauritius, was detained a prisoner for six years by the French,
+notwithstanding his passport as an explorer. After his release, he set
+about editing his journals and preparing an account of his researches.
+He completed this work, but died on the very day his book was published.
+No navigator or explorer has done more than Flinders in the matter of
+accurate surveys, or in the boldness of his undertakings, and his great
+work for Australia was entirely unrewarded. He spent his life in
+voyaging and discovery, and suffered many hardships, besides
+imprisonment.
+
+One of the largest and most important rivers flowing into the Gulf of
+Carpentaria has been named after him "The Flinders."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In 1823, an expedition was sent out from Sydney under the command of
+Lieutenant Oxley to survey Port Curtis, Moreton Bay, and Port Bowen, and
+to report upon a site for a penal establishment. The party went up the
+Tweed River some miles, and then went northward to Port Curtis harbour.
+After landing in several places, a river was discovered which was named
+the Boyne. The vessel employed on this service was the "Mermaid," and
+finding nothing about Port Curtis suitable for a settlement, Oxley
+returned south, and anchored at the mouth of the Bribie Island passage,
+which had not been visited by Europeans since Flinders landed there in
+1799, and called it Pumicestone River. Here they were joined by two
+white men, Pamphlet and Finnegan by name, who had, with one other, been
+cast away on Moreton Island a short time previously, and had since been
+living with the blacks. These men piloted Oxley into the Brisbane
+River, which was named by him after Sir Thomas Brisbane, Governor of New
+South Wales. They pulled up the river a long way above the present site
+of the city, and admired the beautiful scenery along its banks. This
+discovery led to the occupation of Moreton Bay as a penal settlement,
+and the foundation of the town of Brisbane.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Captain Wickham and Lieutenant Stokes of the "Beagle" were surveying the
+coast in that vessel, from 1838 to 1843, and Lieutenant Stokes
+afterwards wrote an account of their journeying. They named the Adelaide
+and Victoria Rivers on the north-west coast, both of which they located
+and explored. In 1841, the "Beagle" was on the east coast. She passed
+Magnetic Island, and sailed through Torres Straits into the Gulf of
+Carpentaria on an exploring cruise. In latitude 17 deg. 36 min., they
+entered a large river, which was followed up a long way in the boats,
+and was called the Flinders; it is one of the principal rivers entering
+the Gulf. Further west, in 1840, they had discovered and pulled the
+boats up the Albert River. Stokes was astonished at the open country
+found on the Albert. As far as the eye could reach, nothing was to be
+seen but open extensive plains, which he named "The Plains of Promise."
+The fine stream of the Albert was followed until the boats were checked
+by dead timber about fifty miles from the entrance. The geography of
+northern tropical Australia owes a great deal to Stokes, who wrote most
+interesting accounts of his journeys.
+
+Stokes surveyed and charted the estuaries of the Albert and Flinders
+Rivers, and he named Disaster Inlet, Morning Inlet, Bynoe Inlet,
+Accident Inlet, and the Van Diemen River, the latter he also examined
+and charted for some miles up from its mouth.
+
+Mr. G. Phillips, in 1866-8, made the first examinations and surveys of
+Morning Inlet, Bynoe Inlet, (which he found to be a delta of the
+Flinders), Norman River, Accident Inlet, and the Gilbert River. Mr.
+Phillips was accompanied by the late Mr. W. Landsborough, the work being
+done in an open boat belonging to the Customs Department.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+H.M.S. "Rattlesnake" left Portsmouth in 1846, under Captain Stanley, on
+a surveying and scientific cruise. She reached Queensland waters in
+1847, and visited the Molle Passage, inside of Whitsunday Passage, where
+some of the most striking and charming scenery on the north coast of
+Queensland is to be found. They went as far as Cape Upstart, and failing
+to find water ashore, returned to Sydney. In 1848, they returned to the
+northern coasts, bringing the "Tam o' Shanter," barque, on board of
+which were all the members and outfit of Kennedy's exploring party.
+Captain Stanley assisted Kennedy to land at Rockingham Bay and make a
+start on his ill-fated trip to Cape York.
+
+They found cocoanut trees growing on the Frankland Islands, the only
+instance known of their indigenous growth on the coast of Australia.
+
+They rescued from Prince of Wales Island a white woman who had been four
+and a half years among the blacks. She was the sole survivor of the crew
+of a whaling cutter, the "American," wrecked on Brampton Shoal; she had
+been adopted by the tribe, and spoke the language fluently; she returned
+to her parents in Sydney when the "Rattlesnake" reached port. Professor
+Huxley, the scientist, was one of the party of the "Rattlesnake."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+INLAND EXPLORATION.
+
+
+The cause of exploration and discovery in Australia has never lacked
+enthusiastic volunteers, whether on sea or land. Like the North Pole,
+the hidden secrets of the continent have always attracted men of
+enterprise and energy anxious to penetrate the veil of mystery and
+silence that has hung over this vast territory since Creation's dawn.
+Little by little has the land been explored and opened up for
+occupation; and those geographical secrets so long sought after have
+been unfolded as an open page for all to study and make use of. The
+records of some of the early pioneers, the motives which promoted their
+search, their hardships, and their journeyings, their failures and their
+endurance, will always remain an interesting portion of colonial
+history.
+
+The explorers were types of the men of a generation now gone by; they
+were men who endured a thousand perils and hardships to solve the
+mystery of Australian geography. By their enterprise and discoveries,
+they became the forerunners of the early pastoral pioneers who opened up
+the vast plains of the interior to occupation, and settled the towns
+and ports of the coast. The navigators were the first to make known the
+outlines of the country, then the explorers followed, starting from
+various points to trace its geographical features, follow the courses of
+its rivers, and investigate the suitability of the soil and herbage for
+the sustenance of stock. In this manner was the path opened for the
+pioneer squatter or pastoralist with his flocks and herds to settle on
+and portion out the land, and turn the wilderness to profit and
+occupation. The skeleton map of the country being traced out, the
+details were worked in gradually by the spirit of enterprise and
+adventure that has always been ready in these lands for such work.
+
+The first land explorer of the territory now called Queensland, was, in
+point of time, Allan Cunningham, botanist, explorer, and collector for
+the Royal Gardens at Kew, who arrived in New South Wales in 1816. After
+many journeyings on sea along the coasts of Australia, and inland to the
+Liverpool Plains through the Blue Mountains, he left the Hunter River in
+1827 with a party of six men and eleven horses, discovering the Darling
+Downs, and thus opening the way to settlement in Queensland. He named
+Canning Downs on this trip, and returned the same year. In the following
+year, 1828, he went by sea to Brisbane, and connected that port with the
+Darling Downs by discovering a gap in the coast range, still known as
+Cunningham's Gap. He spent most of his life collecting and exploring,
+and died at the early age of 48 in Sydney. His brother, Richard
+Cunningham, also botanist and collector, accompanied Sir Thomas Mitchell
+in one of his early trips; while camped on the Bogan, he wandered away,
+lost himself, and was killed by the blacks.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of all the explorers who have taken a prominent part in discovering the
+inland territory of Australia in general, and Queensland in particular,
+Dr. Leichhardt occupies the most conspicuous position, and his
+discoveries have been followed by the most extensive and advantageous
+results. He explored all the country on the east coast inland as far as
+the Mitchell River, and on the northern coast as far as Port Essington.
+He was a man of considerable scientific attainments, and his travels had
+a marked effect in inducing settlement along his line of march. His
+memorable trip from Brisbane to Port Essington reflects great honour on
+his memory, and his name will last as long as colonial history.
+
+Leichhardt left Sydney in 1844 in the steamer "Sovereign" for Brisbane;
+he had with him Calvert, Roper, Murphy, Phillips, and Harry Broome, an
+aboriginal. The party later on was joined by Gilbert, a naturalist, and
+one coloured man, a native. They left Jimbour on the Darling Downs, on
+October 1st, 1844, crossed the Dawson on November 6th, and on the 27th
+Leichhardt named the Expedition Range. Two days after that they came to
+the Comet River, so named because a comet was seen there. On December
+31st, the party came across the remains of a camp evidently made by a
+white man, consisting of a ridge pole and forks cut with a sharp iron
+instrument, probably the halting place of some adventurous pioneers who
+travelled on the outside fringe of all settlement, and who frequently
+made long journeys into the unknown land.
+
+On January 10th, they reached the Mackenzie River, and on February 13th
+were on the Isaacs River, coming from the north-west, which they named
+after F. Isaacs of Darling Downs. Leichhardt's account of his journey is
+very interesting. It gives a description of the geological formations,
+of the mountains and peaks, and also a botanical description of the
+flora of the country through which he passed. He describes the game,
+some of which they turned to account to supplement their already scanty
+fare. The expedition passed on March 7th from the heads of the Isaacs to
+another creek, which they called Suttor Creek, after Mr. Suttor of New
+South Wales, who had contributed four bullocks to the expedition. The
+stream enlarging with the additions of other creeks, eventually merged
+into the Suttor River, which they continued to follow down, passing a
+great number of native encampments on the way, and observing large
+numbers of water fowl and other game. The junction of the Cape River was
+passed, and they camped close to a mount which they called Mount
+McConnel, after Fred McConnel, who had contributed to the expedition.
+Near here they discovered the junction of the Suttor with a large river
+coming from the north, called the Burdekin, after Mr. Burdekin of
+Sydney, who had also liberally contributed to the expedition. The river
+is described by Leichhardt as being here about a mile wide, with traces
+of very high floods coming down its channel; the junction of the two
+rivers is in latitude 20 deg. 37 min. 13 sec. On April 22nd, after
+following up the Burdekin through fine open country well grassed, they
+discovered the Clarke River coming in from the south-west, called after
+the Rev. W. B. Clarke, of Sydney.
+
+The course of the Burdekin River, which was closely traced, served the
+little party through more than two degrees of latitude and the same of
+longitude, with a never failing supply of pure water and good grass, and
+then passing over some large fields of basalt towards the north-west,
+they arrived on another watershed, the first river of which they called
+the Lynd, after Mr. R. Lynd, a gentleman to whom the explorer was much
+indebted. The first camp on the Lynd was in latitude 17 deg. 58 min.;
+the country throughout its course was very rough, consisting mostly of
+large granite boulders; its course was generally north-west, and the
+adventurous party were now on waters flowing into the Gulf of
+Carpentaria. The Lynd was followed to its junction with the Mitchell in
+latitude 16 deg. 30 sec., and a marked tree of Leichhardt's is still
+visible at the junction of the two streams. Although they were so far
+from the termination of their journey, their flour had already been
+exhausted for several weeks, their sugar bags were empty as well, they
+were also without salt, and had scarcely any clothes. However, the
+explorer speaks in great praise of the congenial climate they were
+experiencing, the weather being almost perfect (this in June). Having
+followed the course of the Mitchell River till it took them past the
+latitude of the head of the Gulf, it was decided to leave it, and their
+first camp thereafter was in latitude 15 deg. 52 min. 38 sec. Three days
+after leaving the Mitchell, the party was attacked by the natives early
+in the night; Gilbert was killed at once, Calvert and Roper were badly
+wounded, and the whole party had a narrow escape from total destruction.
+After burying their companion, they continued their journey towards the
+Gulf, where the finding of salt water in the rivers gave them great
+encouragement.
+
+One river they named the Gilbert after their late companion, and after
+crossing all the rivers flowing into the Gulf within tidal influence,
+the party steered north-west, naming Beame's Brook and the Nicholson
+River after two of Leichhardt's benefactors. They had now crossed
+Captain Stokes' Plains of Promise, and were making their way along the
+coast to Port Essington. They travelled through poor, scrubby, rough
+country, crossing many rivers and creeks, and enduring a thousand
+hardships, till on September 21st they reached the largest salt water
+river they had seen, with islands in it; this they called the Macarthur,
+after the Macarthurs of Camden, who had given liberal support to
+Leichhardt. Continuing north-west through poor, scrubby country, on
+October 9th they encamped on what was named the Limmen Bight River on
+account of its debouching into Limmen Bight, and about the 19th, the
+Roper was discovered and named after a member of the expedition. Here
+they had the misfortune to have three of their horses drowned, and
+Leichhardt was compelled to leave behind much of his valuable collection
+of plants and stones; a matter that grieved him sorely. A great quantity
+of game was obtained here, ducks, geese, and emus were killed every day,
+and made a welcome addition to their fare of dried or jerked bullock
+meat. They thickened their soup with green hide, which was considered a
+treat; they made coffee from a bean found growing along the river banks,
+which Leichhardt called the "River Bean" of the Mackenzie; and they were
+constantly making experiments, sometimes rather dangerous, as to the
+value as food of the seeds and fruits they found on their line of march.
+
+The South Alligator River was reached, and the same north-west course,
+continued through rocky country, which lamed their two remaining
+bullocks, and when they reached what Leichhardt considered the East
+Alligator River over some extensive plain country in which large numbers
+of geese and ducks were seen, they were full of hope on meeting some
+friendly natives, who could speak a few words of English, evidently
+visitors to the settlement towards which our way-worn explorers were
+trying to find their road. Many tracks of buffaloes were seen, and one
+was shot, and made a welcome change from their usual fare. Eventually
+they reached Port Essington, where Captain Macarthur gave them a kindly
+welcome, and after a month's rest they left in the "Heroine," arriving
+in Sydney March 29th, 1846. Their arrival created great astonishment and
+delight, as they had been mourned as dead for a long time. The
+Legislative Council granted L1,000, and the public subscribed L1,578 to
+the party, which was presented to them by the Speaker of the Legislative
+Council at a large public gathering in the School of Arts in Sydney.
+
+Leichhardt's journey from Moreton Bay to Port Essington furnished the
+first knowledge we had of the capabilities of North Queensland. It was
+the turning of its first leaf of history, for his journey was for the
+greater part through the territory now comprised within its boundaries.
+The record of his trials, hardships, and endurance, will stand
+unequalled among all histories of explorations in any part of Australia.
+
+Mr. John Roper, who was badly speared in the night attack by blacks and
+lost the use of one eye afterwards, died a few years ago at Merriwa,
+New South Wales, and was the last survivor of Leichhardt's first trip to
+Port Essington.
+
+On a subsequent exploring trip, in which he intended to cross Australia
+from east to west, Leichhardt and his party disappeared, and no definite
+information has ever been forthcoming as to the fate that overtook them.
+On this occasion he started from the Darling Downs, and his companions
+were Hentig, Classan, Donald Stuart, Kelly, and two natives, Womai and
+Billy. His last letter is dated April 4th, 1848, from Macpherson's
+station--Coogoon, beyond Mount Abundance, situated about six miles west
+of the present town of Roma.
+
+Traces have been discovered of their journey through a part of the
+Flinders River country. Two horses found by Duncan Macintyre on the
+Dugald, a branch of the Cloncurry, about 1860, were identified as having
+belonged to Leichhardt's expedition, and some traces were discovered by
+A. C. Gregory in latitude 24 deg. south, consisting of a marked tree at
+one of his old camps. These form the only records we possess of the
+ill-fated travellers. Drought may have split his party up in the desert
+interior, and, disorganised and scattered, they would fall an easy prey
+to thirst and delirium, for so soon does extreme thirst in a hot and dry
+climate demoralise the strongest men, that hope is lost even in a few
+hours, and delirium sets in. People thus distracted, lie down under the
+nearest bush to die, after having wandered to every point of the
+compass in search of water until their strength fails. On the other
+hand, the party may have been destroyed by flood, by hunger, or by the
+attacks of hostile natives, a mutiny may have broken out and the party,
+split up into fragments, may have wandered by devious paths and perished
+in detail.
+
+Many expeditions were sent out in search of the lost explorers, and
+although not able to find any definite traces of his route, or to
+account for his disappearance, they were instrumental in opening up vast
+tracts of hitherto unknown territory, and adding largely to the
+knowledge of the geography of the interior.
+
+The following beautiful verses were written by Lynd, a friend of
+Leichhardt's, and have been set to music:--
+
+  "Ye who prepare with pilgrim feet
+    Your long and doubtful path to wend.
+  If whitening on the waste ye meet
+    The relics of my martyred friend.
+
+  "His bones with reverence ye shall bear.
+    To where some crystal streamlet flows:
+  There by its mossy banks prepare
+    The pillow of his long repose.
+
+  "It shall be by a stream whose tides
+    Are drank by birds of every wing,
+  Where Nature resting but abides
+    The earliest awakening touch of spring.
+
+  "But raise no stone to mark the place.
+    For faithful to the hopes of man.
+  The Being he so loved to trace,
+    Shall breathe upon his bones again.
+
+  "Oh meet that he who so carest,
+    All bounteous Nature's varied charms,
+  That he her martyred son should rest
+    Within his mother's fondest arms.
+
+  "And there upon the path he trod,
+    And bravely led his desert band,
+  Shall science like the smile of God
+    Come brightening o'er the promised land.
+
+  "How will her pilgrims hail the power,
+    Beneath the drooping Myall's gloom.
+  To sit at eve and muse an hour,
+    And pluck a leaf from Leichhardt's tomb."
+
+  --Lynd.
+
+The following descriptions are taken from a journal of an expedition
+into the interior of tropical Australia in search of a route from Sydney
+to the Gulf of Carpentaria by Lieut.-Colonel Sir T. L. Mitchell,
+Surveyor-General of New South Wales, in 1845.
+
+The money for this attempt was found by the Legislative Council of New
+South Wales. The Secretary for the Colonies sanctioned the expedition,
+which had been suggested by the leader himself, during a slack time in
+his department. This trip, though it never approached the Gulf, or even
+its watershed--which was its main object at starting--nevertheless
+discovered such an extent of available country as to make it one of the
+most valuable and interesting expeditions that were ever carried out in
+North Queensland. This was Mitchell's third exploring trip, and it is
+referred to now, as it relates to the discovery and opening up of a
+large part of western, as well as a part of North Queensland. There is
+no doubt that Mitchell would have reached the Gulf waters if his
+equipment had not been so cumbersome and altogether dependent on good
+seasons. An account of his outfit will be interesting reading in these
+times when people think little of moving from the South to the North of
+Australia with any kind of a party, and his departure must have looked
+like the start of a small army on the move to conquer a new country. Sir
+Thomas Mitchell took with him eight drays drawn by eighty bullocks, two
+iron boats, seventeen horses (four being private property), and three
+light carts; these were the modes of conveyance. There were 250 sheep to
+travel with the party as a meat supply. Other stores consisted of
+gelatine and a small quantity of pork. The party consisted of thirty
+persons, most of whom were prisoners of the Crown in different stages of
+probation, whose only incentive to obedience and fidelity was the
+prospect of liberty at the end of the journey. According to the
+testimony of their leader, they performed their work throughout
+creditably; they were volunteers from among the convicts of Cockatoo
+Island, and were eager to be employed on the expedition. Some of those
+engaged on a previous trip were included in this expedition.
+
+The whole party left Parramatta on November 17th, 1845, and crossed the
+Bogan on December 23rd, that country being then settled with stations,
+the result of discoveries made in previous years by the same intrepid
+explorer. Their journey led them by St. George's Bridge, the present
+site of the town of St. George, on to the Maranoa River, then entirely
+unsettled, and this river was followed up towards its source. Touching
+on the Warrego, discovering Lake Salvator, and passing the present site
+of Mantuan Downs, they reached the head of Belyando. This was thought at
+first to be a river likely to lead to the Gulf country, but after
+following it down nearly to the latitude where a river was described by
+Leichhardt as joining the Suttor from the westward, Mitchell decided it
+was a coast river, and so the party returned on their tracks to a depot
+camp which had been established on the Maranoa, coming to the conclusion
+that the rivers of Carpentaria must be sought for much further to the
+westward. Therefore, continuing their travels in this direction, the
+Nive River was discovered, and this was thought for a time to be a water
+leading to the Gulf, but after following it towards the south-east, the
+party turned northwards, and thus discovered the far-famed Barcoo River,
+which they thought was the Victoria of Wickham and Stokes. Again high
+hopes were entertained that at last a river was found that would lead
+them to the desired end, and that this was a Gulf River. They followed
+the course through all the splendid downs country, below where the Alice
+joins it, and found it was going much too far to the south to be a Gulf
+river, being thus again disappointed in their expectations. Mitchell
+speaks in glowing terms of the country through which they passed, and
+named Mount Northampton and Mount Enniskillen, two prominent landmarks.
+Returning to his party, he took the route home by the Barwon and Namoi,
+and so back to Sydney, which all reached in safety after an absence of
+over twelve months. Mitchell's discovery of the Barcoo River was due to
+a division of his party, and a light equipment, by which he could
+advance as much as twenty or twenty-five miles a day, and still keep a
+record of his latitude and progress.
+
+This trip of Mitchell's led to the appointment of his second in command,
+Mr. E. Kennedy, to return and discover where the Victoria or Barcoo
+really went to, and to obtain further information of the mysterious
+interior of the great Australian continent, and its peculiar river
+system. Mitchell was famous for his exploring trips in the southern part
+of Australia, and his two volumes of explorations remain a classic in
+literature. His account of Australia Felix and the Werribee are most
+interesting. Mitchell invariably traversed his route with compass and
+chain, so that his positions can always be verified.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Edward Kennedy, who was second in command under Sir T. L. Mitchell when
+the Barcoo was discovered, was appointed to lead a party to the same
+districts in 1847. He followed down the Barcoo to where a large river
+came in from the north, which he named the Thomson, after Sir E. Deas
+Thomson, of Sydney. The Barcoo he identified with Mitchell's Victoria,
+which at a lower stage is called Cooper's Creek. Kennedy intended to go
+to the Gulf of Carpentaria, but the blacks removed his stock of rations
+left at the Barcoo, and so he decided to return to Sydney by way of the
+Warrego, Maranoa, Culgoa, and Barwon Rivers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Gregory brothers had successfully conducted several exploring
+expeditions in West Australia before entering on those journeys in North
+Queensland that have helped to make known its north-eastern parts. A
+letter from the Secretary of State for the Colonies, the Duke of
+Newcastle, to the Governors in Australia, was received, in which it was
+recommended that an expedition should be organised for the exploration
+of the unknown interior of Australia, stating that a sum of L5,000 had
+been voted by the Imperial Government for the purpose, and suggesting
+that Mr. A. C. Gregory should be appointed to the command, and Brisbane
+be the point of departure. The expedition was to be conveyed by sea to
+the mouth of the Victoria River, on the northern coast of Australia. It
+was to be an Imperial expedition, paid for by the Imperial Government,
+for the purpose of developing the vast and unknown resources of the
+continent. It was called the North Australian Exploring Expedition. The
+preliminary arrangements having been completed, the stores, equipment,
+and a portion of the party were embarked at Sydney on the barque
+"Monarch," and the schooner "Tom Tough," and sailed for Moreton Bay on
+July 18th, 1855, arriving at the bar of the Brisbane River on the 22nd.
+The horses and sheep were collected at Eagle Farm by Mr. H. C. Gregory,
+and shipped on board the "Monarch" on July 31st. After some difficulties
+in getting over the bar and obtaining the necessary supply of water at
+Moreton Island, the expedition may be said to have started on its
+responsible task on August 12th, 1855.
+
+The party consisted of eighteen persons, the principal members
+being:--Commander, A. C. Gregory; Assistant Commander, H. C. Gregory;
+Geologist, J. S. Wilson; Artist and Storekeeper, J. Baines; Surveyor and
+Naturalist, J. R. Elsey; Botanist, F. von Muller; Collector and
+Preserver, J. Flood. The stock consisted of fifty horses and two hundred
+sheep; and eighteen months' supply of rations were taken.
+
+They sighted Port Essington on September 1st, but the next day the
+"Monarch" grounded at high water on a reef, and was not worked off for
+eight days, during which time the vessel lay on her side, and the horses
+suffered very much in consequence, indeed, the subsequent loss of
+numbers of them is attributed to the hardships endured during the
+period. The horses were landed at Treachery Bay under great
+difficulties, having to swim two miles before reaching the shore. Three
+were drowned, one lost in mud, and one went mad and rushed away into
+the bush and was lost. The "Monarch" sailed for Singapore, while the
+"Tom Tough" proceeded up the Victoria River, where Mr. Gregory and some
+of the party took the horses by easy stages to meet them, as they were
+so weak from the knocking about on the voyage that they had frequently
+to be lifted up. This little trip occupied three weeks before they
+joined the party on the schooner. When they met, it was to learn that
+mishaps had again occurred, the vessel had grounded on the rocks, and
+much of the provisions had been damaged by salt water; the vessel had
+also suffered injury; some of the sheep had died from want of water, and
+the rest were too poor to kill. The record is one continuous struggle
+with misfortune, but owing to good general-ship and patience, progress
+was made, and the main objects of the expedition being constantly kept
+in view, each step taken was one in advance.
+
+After the horses had recovered a little from their journey, Mr. Gregory
+and a small party made an exploring trip towards the interior, and to
+the south to latitude 20 deg. 16 min. 22 sec., passing through some
+inferior country, and touching the Great Sandy Desert seen by Sturt, red
+ridges of sand running east and west, covered with the inhospitable
+Triodia or Spinifex grass. As his object was to visit the Gulf country,
+he retraced his steps to the camp on the Victoria River; and after
+adjusting matters there, dividing his party and sending the vessel to
+Coepang for supplies, with directions to come to the Albert River, he
+started on his journey to the Gulf of Carpentaria on June 21st, 1856.
+His party comprised the two Gregorys, Dr. Mueller, Elsey, Bowman, Dean,
+and Melville, seven saddle and twenty-seven pack-horses, with five
+months' provisions.
+
+They followed down the Elsey River to the Roper, so called by
+Leichhardt, and passed a camp of some explorers some six or seven years
+old, where trees had been cut with sharp axes. They reached the
+Macarthur River on August 4th, after passing through much poor country
+covered with inferior grasses. Their track skirted the tableland, and as
+the journal states, the country was barren and inhospitable in the
+extreme. The Albert River was reached on August 30th, 1856, and not
+finding any traces of the "Tom Tough" having been there, the explorer
+started from that point to Moreton Bay. Coming to a large river, which
+Leichhardt thought to be the Albert, Mr. Gregory named it after the
+great explorer, and it is now known as the Leichhardt. This river they
+crossed, and travelled east-south-east. After crossing the Flinders
+River, where the country consisted of open plains, the party travelled
+east-north-east through a flat ti-tree country, north of what is now the
+Croydon goldfield, a barren, flat, and dismal prospect. Gregory says in
+his journal, that had the season been earlier, he would have preferred
+travelling up the Flinders, and turning to the Clarke from its upper
+branches. However, they moved on to the Gilbert River, and followed it
+up through rocky defiles and rough granite country till they reached the
+Burdekin River on October 16th; the next day they passed one of
+Leichhardt's stopping places, where he camped on April 26th, 1845, in
+latitude 19 deg. 37 min. S. They were living on horseflesh at this time,
+and mention is made of a horse that had not carried a pack since leaving
+the Gilbert, being killed for food, and its flesh dried in the sun,
+forming what is called jerked meat, an article well known to early
+pioneers when salt was absent. They frequently saw the blacks, who
+mostly ran away at the sight of the horses, probably the first they had
+ever seen; but no casualty happened during the whole trip, owing to the
+good management of the leader, and the caution always shown where danger
+was likely. On October 30th they camped near the Suttor River, with
+Mount McConnell in view. After the junction of the Suttor and Burdekin
+Rivers had been passed, the Suttor was followed up past the latitude of
+Sir Thomas Mitchell's camp on the Belyando, and thus his route connected
+up with Dr. Leichhardt's. They left the Belyando, and on November 8th,
+killed the eleven months' old filly, born on the Victoria River after
+landing, the flesh was cured by drying, and the hair scraped off the
+hide, which was made into soup. They passed the Mackenzie River, went on
+to the Comet, below the junction, and found a camp of Leichhardt's party
+on their second journey. They reached the Dawson River, and following a
+dray track, they came again in contact with civilisation at Connor and
+Fitz's station, where they were hospitably received. They then travelled
+past Rannes (Hay's station), Rawbelle, Boondooma, Tabinga, Nanango,
+Kilcoy, Durundur, reaching Brisbane on December 16th, 1856.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. A. C. Gregory's expedition in search of Leichhardt was equipped by
+the New South Wales Government. The objects of this expedition were
+primarily to search for traces of Leichhardt and his party, and secondly
+the examination of the country in the intervening spaces between the
+tracks of previous explorers. The expedition was organised in Sydney,
+and made a start from Juandah, on the Dawson River, on March 24th, 1857.
+They crossed the dense scrubs and basaltic ridge dividing the Dawson
+waters from those trending to the west, flowing into the basin of the
+Maranoa River. The Maranoa was reached in latitude 25 deg. 45 min., and
+they followed it up to Mount Owen, advanced to the Warrego River,
+westward from there to the Nive, and pursued a north-north-west course
+to the Barcoo River, then called the Victoria. As the captain of the
+"Beagle" had discovered and named the Victoria River on the north-west
+coast first, the name of Sir T. Mitchell's river was changed to the
+Barcoo, a native name. When Mr. Gregory traversed this fine country, one
+of those devastating periodical droughts that visit this inland
+territory now and again, must have been prevailing for many months, and
+had left the land a wilderness. That land Mitchell had described in 1846
+in glowing language as the fairest that the sun shone on, with pastures
+and herbage equal to all the wants of man, and water in abundance
+covered with wild fowl. When Gregory passed through it in 1857, it was
+bare of all vegetation, there was scarcely any water in the bed of the
+river, and that only at long intervals, nothing but the bare brown earth
+visible.
+
+In latitude 24 deg. 35 min. S., longitude 136 deg. 6 min., a Moreton Bay
+ash tree was discovered with the letter [Symbol: L] cut in, and the
+stumps of some small trees cut with an axe, evidently one of
+Leichhardt's camps, but no further traces could be discovered, though
+both sides of the river were followed down. The Thomson River was
+reached and followed up to latitude 23 deg. 47 sec., and here they were
+compelled to retrace their steps owing to the terrible state of the
+country through drought; it being impossible to travel either north or
+west, although at that time the country was not stocked. The
+far-reaching plains were devoid of all vegetation except for
+drought-resisting herbage. The principal object of their journey had to
+be abandoned and a southerly course taken, as it was considered madness
+to travel into the sandy desert bordering on the river during such a
+season. So, with horses weakened by hard living, they followed down the
+Thomson, over dry mud plains that wearied both man and beast, and across
+stony desert ridges to Cooper's Creek and to Lake Torrens. Before
+reaching the branch of Cooper's Creek called Strezlecki Creek by Captain
+Sturt, they saw the tracks of two horses lost by that explorer in this
+locality years before. Their course was continued south-south-west
+towards Mount Hopeless at the northern extremity of the high ranges of
+South Australia, which had been visible across the level country at a
+distance of sixty miles. Eight miles beyond Mount Hopeless, they came to
+a cattle station, recently established by Mr. Baker. After that they
+proceeded by easy stages to Adelaide.
+
+It is, perhaps, with reference to the physical geography of Australia
+that the results of the expedition are most important, as by connecting
+the explorations of Sir T. Mitchell, Kennedy, Captain Sturt, and Eyre,
+the waters of the tropical interior of the eastern portion of the
+continent were proved to flow towards Spencer's Gulf, if not actually
+into it, the barometrical observations showing that Lake Torrens, the
+lowest part of the interior, is decidedly below sea level.[A]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As the people of Victoria were desirous of taking part in the
+explorations of Northern Australia, a most elaborate and expensive
+expedition was organised to travel across Australia from Melbourne to
+the Gulf of Carpentaria. Great credit is due to the enterprise of the
+people and the Government of Victoria for this display of public spirit,
+for, apparently, Victoria had less to gain than any of the other
+colonies by geographical discoveries in the interior. Robert O'Hara
+Burke was appointed leader, G. J. Landells second, and W. J. Wills third
+in command. Burke and Wills and two others reached the Gulf, and named
+the Cloncurry River; but the notes of the trip do not give much
+information as to the journey or the country travelled through. The
+expedition left Melbourne on August 20th, 1860, fifteen men in all,
+provided with twelve months' provisions, making twenty-one tons of
+goods. The party was too large and cumbersome, and the time of year was
+badly chosen for a start; there were no bushmen with them, and the
+leader was a man unfamiliar with bush life, though full of devotion to
+the cause he had taken in hand. The record of the trip is one full of
+disaster, arising from mistakes that could have been avoided had men
+competent for the task been chosen. They started from Cooper's Creek,
+where Brahe was left with a depot store, while Burke, Wills, King, and
+Grey with three months' provisions set out for the Gulf on December
+16th, 1860. The party that had been so well equipped in every way on
+leaving Melbourne, was reduced to too small a compass when the critical
+time for action arrived. They followed the edge of the stony desert to
+the point reached by Sturt on October 21st, 1845, and then steered for
+the Gulf of Carpentaria, at the mouth of the Flinders. After passing
+through the Cloncurry Ranges, the little party followed one of the
+tributaries of that river, one that had numerous palm trees on its
+banks, which must have been either the Corella or Dugald, to the west of
+the Cloncurry River, and on February 11th, 1861, in the middle of the
+wet season, Burke and Wills reached tidal water in the Gulf, on the
+right bank of the Bynoe River, which is a delta of the Flinders River.
+Thus the object of the expedition was attained. On the return journey,
+Grey died through exhaustion and weakness. The ground was very heavy for
+walking owing to the rains, and the only horse had to be abandoned,
+while the camel was almost too weak to travel, even without any load.
+Burke, Wills, and King arrived at Cooper's Creek on April 21st, having
+been absent four and a half months on their trip. They found the depot
+had been deserted that morning by Brahe; he, however, had remained
+several weeks beyond the time he was instructed to stay. Instead of
+following on his tracks, Burke decided on starting via Mount Hopeless to
+Adelaide, but not finding water, they returned to Cooper's Creek,
+growing weaker every day. Their last camel died, and they were forced to
+live on the seeds of the Nardoo (Marsilea quadrifida), which, however,
+gave them no strength. The blacks treated them kindly, but they left
+the creek, and then came the mournful end. Burke and Wills died, and
+Howitt's search party found King, the only survivor of the little band,
+wasted to a shadow in a camp of the blacks. As no proper record of the
+journey, or description of the country was made, and in the diary many
+gaps occur of several days together, the expedition was barren of
+scientific results. There is merely the fact of visiting the shores of
+the Gulf, and returning to Cooper's Creek, under the most distressing
+circumstances and hardships. Although successful in the main, it is a
+record of sorrow, despondency, and a sacrifice of life. On this
+expedition camels were used for the first time in Australia. Until the
+fate of Burke became known, many efforts were made to discover what had
+become of him, and to this end, there were five exploring parties sent
+out in search of him. They were Howitt's, Walker's, Landsborough's,
+Norman's, and McKinlay's, and their discoveries led to an important
+increase in the knowledge of Australia.
+
+[Footnote A: There is reason to believe from later and more detailed
+surveys that Lake Torrens is not below the level of the sea.]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. A. W. Howitt's party proceeded to the spot where Brahe had kept the
+depot, and seeing no traces there of the missing party (although they
+had dug up the stores left), he searched down the river, and they came
+on King sitting in a hut which the blacks had made for him. He presented
+a melancholy appearance, wasted to a shadow, and hardly to be recognised
+as a civilised being except by the remnants of clothes on him; this was
+on September 15th, 1861. As soon as King was a little restored, they
+looked for Wills' remains, and having found them, gave them burial,
+marking a tree close by; a few days afterwards Burke's bones were found
+and interred. They called all the blacks around, and presented them with
+articles such as tomahawks, knives, necklaces, looking glasses, combs,
+etc., and made them very happy indeed. When the sad story was revealed
+there was much sorrow and grief throughout Victoria; and it was agreed
+that Mr. Howitt should go back and bring down the bodies for a public
+funeral in Melbourne. A large sum of money was voted to the nearest
+relatives of Burke and Wills, and a grant made to King sufficient to
+keep him in comfort for life. A searching inquiry was made into the
+circumstances relative to the conduct of some of the officers of the
+expedition, and a few of them were severely censured for neglect of duty
+in not properly supporting the leader.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One of the expeditions in search of Burke and Wills was led by John
+McKinlay, who travelled through a great part of North Queensland, and
+reported favourably on its capacity for settlement. He started from
+Adelaide in August, 1861, and arrived at the Albert River in May, 1862,
+thus crossing the continent a second time. He was a bushman well fitted
+for such an enterprise by experience, endurance, and decision. The
+second in command was W. O. Hodgkinson, subsequently Minister for Mines
+in Queensland. McKinlay found a grave near Cooper's Creek which he
+examined, and found a European buried there, which he understood from
+the natives to be a white man killed by them, but afterwards it was
+known to have been Gray's burial place. The party made an excursion into
+the melancholy desert country described by Sturt many years before,
+consisting of dry lakes, red sand hills, and stones. They travelled
+through to the Cloncurry district, and onwards to the Gulf, passing
+through country now under occupation, Fort Constantine, Clonagh, and
+Conobie being the principal stations there, and thence over the
+Leichhardt River to the Albert, which was reached on May 13th. McKinlay
+expected to receive supplies from the "Victoria," but she had sailed
+three months before, and thus short of provisions and generally hard up,
+he had to tackle a long overland journey to the settlements on the
+eastern side of North Queensland, a most trying and harassing
+undertaking, which, however, he accomplished successfully. He had first
+to eat the cattle, then the horses, then the camels. They killed their
+last camel for food--it was called "Siva"--and it proved a saviour, as
+they arrived at Harvey and Somer's station, on the Bowen, with their
+last piece of camel meat, and one horse each left. They had a hard rough
+trip from the Gulf, travelling in by the Burdekin, and McKinlay proved
+himself a daring and most persevering and experienced explorer. The
+McKinlay River--a branch of the Cloncurry--and the township of McKinlay
+are named after him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Though not pertaining to any exploration or discovery connected with
+North Queensland, it will be interesting to refer shortly to the Horn
+Exploring Expedition which was carried out on a scientific basis to make
+known the country in the more central part of the Australian continent.
+The scientific exploration of central Australia, or that part known as
+the Macdonnell Ranges, had long been desired by the leading scientific
+men of Australia. The party consisted of sixteen in all, with twenty-six
+camels, and two horses, and made a final start from Oodnadatta (which is
+the northern terminal point of the railway from Adelaide), on May 6th,
+1894.
+
+In the very centre of the continent there exists an elevated tract of
+country known as the Macdonnell Ranges. These mountains, barren and
+rugged in the extreme, rise to an altitude of nearly 5,000 feet above
+sea level, while the country surrounding them has an elevation of about
+2,000 feet above the sea level, and slopes away towards the coast on
+every side, which at no point is nearer than 1,000 miles. The mountains
+are at the head of the Finke River; the region is called Larapintine
+from the native name of the river. The existence of these ranges saves
+that portion of the continent from being an absolute desert, as they
+catch the tropical showers, which flow down the sides of the mountains,
+and cause inundations in the low country, and a spring of grass, which,
+however, is not permanent, the rainfall being from five to twelve inches
+annually. These ranges measure, from east to west, about 400 miles, with
+a width of from twenty to fifty miles, the entire area covering more
+than 10,000 square miles of country. Apart from these ranges, there are
+several remarkable isolated masses, about 32 miles S.S.W. from Lake
+Amadeus. Rising like an enormous water-worn boulder, half buried in the
+surrounding sea of sand hills, is that remarkable monolith known as
+"Ayers' Rock." Its summit can be seen more than forty miles away, as it
+rises about 1,100 feet above the surrounding plain. The circumference at
+its base is nearly five miles, and its sides are so steep as to be
+practically inaccessible, although Mr. W. C. Gosse, the explorer,
+succeeded with great difficulty in ascending it. It is quite bare of
+vegetation, except a few fig trees growing in the crevices. Fifteen
+miles west of Ayers' Rock is another remarkable mountain mass called
+Mount Olga, rising to 1,500 feet from the plain. The Finke River flows
+south from these Macdonnell Ranges towards Lake Eyre, and water is only
+found after floods. Both alluvial gold and quartz reefs are found in the
+ranges. Professor Ralph Tate, of the University of Adelaide, and Mr. J.
+A. Watt, of the Sydney University, assisted in drawing up the report.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+EXPLORERS IN NORTH QUEENSLAND.
+
+
+The second journey of Edmund Kennedy, in 1848, was confined to the east
+coast of North Queensland, and is one of the most mournful narratives of
+disaster and death; only three of the party returning out of the
+thirteen that started.
+
+The party was hampered with an unsuitable outfit of drays, as well as
+some undesirable men, unused to the bush and out of accord with the
+objects of an exploring expedition.
+
+The members of a party going into an unknown country have to depend on
+the fidelity of each to all, and according to the devotion displayed by
+each, so will success or failure attend the expedition. Kennedy had men
+in his party he had better have left behind.
+
+His troubles and trials commenced after landing at Rockingham Bay, near
+the site of the present town of Cardwell, in trying to pass over swamps,
+and then cutting his way through tangled, dark, vine-scrubs to the
+summit of the steepest ranges in North Queensland. They were obliged to
+leave their carts and harness behind, and wasted much time in looking
+for a place to ascend the ranges. They quarrelled with the blacks soon
+after starting, and some of the men took fever. They reached the
+Herbert, and went into the heads of the Mitchell and Palmer Rivers,
+passing over the site of the Palmer goldfield. Here the strength of the
+party began to fail, and horse flesh was their main dependence for food.
+At Weymouth Bay, Carron and seven men were left, all sick with
+disappointment and hardship, and in a low state of health. Kennedy and
+Jacky, with three men, pushed on along the coast northwards to Cape
+York. One man was wounded by a gun accident, and he and the other two
+were left at Pudding Pan Hill, and were never heard of again. The leader
+and Jacky went on, intending to return to the scattered party. They were
+followed by hostile blacks, who speared the horses, and afterwards
+mortally wounded Kennedy himself, who died in Jacky's arms. Jacky
+himself was also speared, but he buried his leader in a grave dug with a
+tomahawk, and after many hairbreadth escapes and much privation, he
+reached the northern shore, where the "Ariel" was waiting for the
+arrival of the party. Only one man, and he an aboriginal, endured to the
+end, and but for his keen bush knowledge, courage, and splendid
+devotion, neither of the two other survivors would have been rescued,
+nor any tidings of the mournful fate of the party have been made known
+to the world. The "Ariel" sailed to Weymouth Bay, and found the two
+men, Carron and Goddard, barely alive, the only survivors of the eight
+left there by Kennedy.
+
+Kennedy's papers planted in a tree by Jacky, were afterwards recovered
+by him. When the nature of the country through which Kennedy travelled
+is understood and its difficulties known, it is no wonder that mishaps
+occurred to him. Stony mountainous country, thick dark scrubs, long
+dense grass, with tribes of fierce blacks ready to throw a spear on
+every occasion, were enough to tax the capacity of any leader, without
+the accompaniment of sickness, want of rations and disorganisation.
+
+
+  E. KENNEDY.
+
+  His task is ended, his journeying o'er.
+  He rests in the scrub, by that far northern shore;
+  By the long wash of the Coral Sea,
+  Brave Kennedy sleeps now quietly.
+
+  Not lonely he lies in his last bed,
+  For loving memories o'erbrood his head;
+  Kindly to him, the tall ferns lean,
+  In love, their fellowship of green.
+
+  Sweetly for him, the bird's deep song,
+  Is sung when summer days are long;
+  Soft drips the dew in the morning sun,
+  Rest harassed one, thy task is done.
+
+  His native friend, faithful to death,
+  Stayed by him to his latest breath;
+  Nor thought he had himself to save,
+  Till he had made his leader's grave.
+
+Mr. W. Landsborough left Brisbane in the brig "Firefly" on August 24th,
+1861, in company with the colonial warship "Victoria," taking the outer
+passage. Rough weather on the voyage caused distress and a loss of seven
+horses out of thirty, and they were compelled to seek refuge inside the
+Barrier Reef at Hardy's Island. The brig grounded broadside on the reef;
+the masts had to be cut away to save the vessel; and the horses were
+landed through a large hole cut in the side of the ship. After some
+delay, the "Victoria" appeared in sight, towed the crippled craft off,
+and proceeded with her in tow in order to carry out the objects of the
+expedition. Passing through Torres Straits, they called at Bountiful
+Island and obtained a good supply of turtles, anchoring in Investigator
+Roads, situated between Bentinck and Sweer's Islands. Landing on Sweer's
+Island, they found the wells left by Flinders in 1802, also the
+"Investigator" tree. After clearing the sand out of the wells, the water
+was found fresh and good. Mr. Landsborough made a preliminary survey of
+the Albert River to find a site for landing his horses and for starting
+on his overland journey.
+
+The Albert had not been surveyed since Captain Stokes had ascended it as
+far as Beame's Brook in 1842, but being known, it was appointed a
+rendezvous for exploring parties. They found no traces of Burke having
+visited this spot. The hulk of the "Firefly" was towed up the Albert,
+and used as a depot for the expedition, and this was her last voyage.
+The writer saw her early in 1865; she was then in an upright position,
+close to the left bank of the river, with the tide flowing in and out
+where the side had been cut open for the horses to land on the reef. The
+horses soon recruited after landing, the grass round the depot being
+excellent. They now got ready for a start to Central Mount Stuart,
+leaving the "Victoria" to wait ninety days for their return. The party
+consisted of Mr. Landsborough, Messrs. Campbell and Allison, and two
+blackboys, Jimmy and Fisherman. Their horses had improved so much that
+they gave a lot of trouble at first, throwing their packs and scattering
+the gear over the plains, but they soon quietened down to work. The
+little expedition followed mainly the Gregory River towards its source,
+and were much surprised to find a beautiful river with a strongly
+flowing stream and long reaches of deep water, overhung by pandanus,
+cabbage-palm, and much tropical foliage. They soon discovered the use of
+the heart of the palm as a vegetable, though it can only be obtained by
+the destruction of the tree. Blacks were frequently seen, observing
+their movements, looking on at a distance, as they usually do at the
+first sight of a white man; but they did not attempt to interfere with
+them. The Gregory River is distinct from most of the Gulf rivers. The
+luxuriant foliage along its banks, cabbage-palms, Leichhardt trees,
+cedar and pandanus, denote the permanency of the running water, while
+level plains, covered with fine pasture grasses, extend on either side
+for scores of miles. They named the Macdam, an anabranch of the Gregory,
+and observing a river joining on the right side of the Gregory, called
+it the O'Shannassey; the source of the flowing stream that made the
+river so useful and picturesque was shortly afterwards found, where a
+large body of clear water fell over some basaltic rocks, showing that
+springs caused the flow, and not summer rains in the interior as was
+thought at first. This is not the only instance in North Queensland
+where running streams flow from springs bursting forth from the basaltic
+table lands. Above the source of the water, the Gregory partook of the
+character of other Gulf rivers, dry sandy channels, dependent for their
+supply of water on tropical rains. They followed up the now dry river,
+and reached a fine tableland over 1,000 feet above sea level, which was
+called Barkly's Tableland, after Sir Henry Barkly, late Governor of
+Victoria. Open basaltic plains, covered with the very finest pastures
+now met them everywhere, though water was scarce. After journeying
+across the open country southwards, a river was found, which was called
+the Herbert; it flowed in the opposite direction to the tributaries of
+the Gregory. Following down the Herbert, they spent Christmas Day on a
+sheet of water called Many's Lake, and lower down Francis Lake was seen;
+still lower down grass and water both became so scarce as to induce the
+leader, much against his will, to abandon the project of reaching
+Central Mount Stuart. In latitude 20 deg. 17 min., and longitude 138
+deg. 20 min., he was compelled to retrace his steps. It was a season of
+drought, no water having come down the Herbert, and being limited to
+time to meet Captain Norman at the Gulf in ninety days, forty-three of
+which had already passed, no resource was left but to return by the
+route they had come. They followed the right bank of the Gregory River,
+and met a large number of natives, who threatened them on several
+occasions, but the little party of five passed through without any
+mishap, owing in a great measure to the care taken by the leader, who
+was well aware of the good old bush maxim of always being prepared and
+never giving a chance away. In following the Gregory, they ran Beame's
+Brook, which forms the head of the Albert, down on the right bank. This
+is an effluent from the Gregory, and is one of the most remarkable
+streams in Queensland. It is very little below the level of the
+adjoining plains, and is a clear stream of pure water, overshadowed by
+cabbage-palms, pandanus, and ti-trees; it traverses the plains some
+fifty or sixty miles before it flows into the Albert. It is said the
+blacks can turn the water out of this channel by blocking up the exit
+from the main stream with stiff mud, and thus catch fish that may be
+left in the holes. The little channel is boggy in its course, and the
+country is subject to great floods in the wet season. The party came to
+the depot, and found all well, and there learnt that Mr. F. Walker,
+another explorer, had been there and reported finding Burke's tracks on
+the Flinders, about seventy miles distant; and having restocked himself
+with some provisions, had left to follow up the traces. After three
+weeks' detention, and arranging matters with Captain Norman,
+Landsborough took his departure with his party, intending to go right
+through to Melbourne. Their supply of rations was of the most miserable
+kind, not even as good as prison fare. The stores provided for the
+expedition were ample for all requirements, but they were refused tea,
+sugar, and rum. Starting on a long hazardous overland journey of unknown
+duration, the inadequate outfit accorded to these enterprising men from
+a steam vessel within a fortnight's sail of a commercial port, was
+unjustifiable, and must be condemned.
+
+The expedition left the Albert on February 8th, 1862, a party of six,
+Mr. Landsborough, Mr. Bourne, and Mr. Gleeson, with three blackboys,
+Jimmy, Fisherman, and Jacky, and twenty-one horses, whilst there was a
+continent to cross before they could reach their destination. The tracks
+of Walker's party were just discernible, as they followed a course that
+took them to the Leichhardt River, over level plains covered with
+flooded box and excaecaria, commonly called "gutta percha," one of the
+Euphorbia family; these plains are subject to floods, and are very much
+water-logged during the rainy seasons on account of their being so
+level. The grass grows in great tussocks, showing only the tops above
+the water for many miles, and these were the "Plains of Promise" of
+which so much was expected from the reports of the early explorers! They
+crossed at the bar of rocks at what is now Floraville, and directed
+their course to the Flinders River, eastward through Newmayer Valley,
+and on past Donor's Hills, so named in honor of an anonymous
+contributor, a Melbourne gentleman, who gave L1,000 to the exploration
+fund. In following the right bank of the Flinders, they passed Fort
+Bowen, a small mount rising abruptly from the plains near the right bank
+of the river, which was called after the first Governor of Queensland.
+Many springs were met with surrounding the base of the little mountain
+forming mounds on the top of which water may be found. The nature of the
+ground in places is very treacherous; the water has a strong taste of
+soda, and is quite undrinkable in some of the springs. About twenty
+miles south-east from Fort Bowen are two similar small mountains, Mount
+Browne, and Mount Little (now forming part of Taldora run), at which
+springs similar to those at Fort Bowen are also to be met with. These
+small mountains, the highest of which is only seventy-five feet above
+the surrounding plain, were named by Mr. Landsborough after a firm of
+solicitors in Brisbane, the Hon. E. I. C. Browne, and Robert Little. The
+latter subsequently became the first Crown Solicitor of Queensland, but
+both gentlemen are now dead. The ground in places is dangerous, for
+under the light crust, that shakes and bends beneath the weight of a
+horse, are depths of soft mud, sometimes of a bluish colour, that would
+engulf both horse and rider. One spring is hot, the water at the surface
+being 120 deg., evidently a natural artesian well. Heavy tall ti-trees
+surround all these mud springs, and also innumerable small mounds that
+are the result of the pressure of water from the great depths below. The
+whole extent of country travelled through consists of open treeless
+plains, covered with good pasture grass, and occasionally some small
+white wood trees (atalaya hemiglauca). As the river ran in the direction
+they were travelling, they followed it up, and about where Richmond now
+stands, they saw the fresh tracks of a steer or cow making south,
+supposed to have wandered from some of the newly-formed stations towards
+the Burdekin. After this, the river trending too much to the east, they
+crossed the divide, thus leaving the Gulf waters behind them. The change
+occurs in an open downs country without any ranges to cross. A
+watercourse called Cornish Creek took them to the Landsborough, and
+following it down to the Thomson River, they passed Tower Hill, where
+Mr. Landsborough had been exploring before, and had left his marked
+trees. Travelling southwards, they made for the Barcoo, and thence to
+the Warrego, and on May 21st they came to a station of the Messrs.
+Williams where they were received in a most cordial manner. They were
+now about eight hundred miles from Melbourne, and seven hundred from
+Brisbane, and it was decided to make for Melbourne by following the
+Darling.
+
+McKinlay and Landsborough on their return were the recipients of a
+public demonstration by three thousand people in the Melbourne
+Exhibition Building, and had a splendid reception.
+
+Landsborough died on March 16th, 1886, from an accident caused by his
+horse falling with him, and he is buried close to the north end of
+Bribie Passage at Caloundra, where he had resided with his family for
+some years previously. Landsborough was a very honorable and lovable
+man, of simple tastes, fond of reading and indefatigable in his love for
+travelling about the country.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+F. Walker led a party from Rockhampton in search of Burke and Wills in
+1861. He was a bushman of varied experience, and he has the credit of
+originating the system of native police in Queensland. He performed the
+task of exploration with which he was entrusted creditably and ably.
+Starting from C. B. Dutton's station, Bauhinia Downs, on the Dawson
+River, he and his small party went through the Nogoa country to the
+Barcoo, where he saw traces of Gregory and Leichhardt. They then went
+north-west to the Alice and on to the Thomson River, and from there on
+to the head of the Flinders, which was called the Barkly. A marked tree
+of Walker's exists near the town of Hughenden. Instead of following down
+the river, he struck across the basaltic ranges and tableland northwards
+till he came to the heads of a river which he called the Norman, but
+which is more likely the head of the Saxby River; however, he followed
+it down to its junction with the Flinders, where he saw the tracks of
+Burke and Wills going down with four camels and one horse; crossing the
+river he found the same traces returning. Walker now went to the Albert
+River, where he met Captain Norman of the colonial warship "Victoria" at
+the depot there, and obtaining fresh supplies, he returned to the
+Flinders. And now commenced a painful march through the ranges and
+tableland, so hard on the horses' feet that they could be traced along
+the stones by the tracks of blood from their hoofs. The men suffered
+from the seeds of the speargrass, which penetrated the skin and caused
+irritation. The Burdekin was reached, and some fresh supplies were
+obtained at Bowen; and then passing through the settled districts to the
+south of that town, Walker arrived at Rockhampton early in June, having
+been absent about nine months.
+
+He had several encounters with the blacks during his journey--attacks
+and reprisals. About 1865, Walker was sent out by the Queensland
+Government to report on the best route for an overland telegraph line
+to connect the Gulf with Brisbane. On his recommendation, the line was
+taken up the Carron Creek by way of the Etheridge to the east coast at
+Cardwell, through some very poor country. He selected this route on
+account of there being timber suitable for poles; but as the white ants
+soon destroyed them, the line had to be rebuilt with iron poles.
+
+Poor Walker died of Gulf fever in 1866 at a miserable shanty on the
+Leichhardt River, close to Floraville, and is buried there. His second
+in command on the telegraph expedition was a Mr. Young, who was
+subsequently telegraph master at Townsville in 1870. Young was a fine
+honorable man, but, unfortunately, he received an injury whilst in the
+execution of his duty repairing the telegraph line between Bowen and
+Townsville, from the effects of which he subsequently died, only a few
+days after his marriage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A small private expedition, under the charge of J. G. Macdonald, started
+from Bowen, on the east coast of North Queensland, in 1864, for the
+purpose of discovering a practicable route for several mobs of cattle
+then being sent towards the Flinders or westward for the occupation of
+new country. The party consisted of Mr. Macdonald, G. Robertson, Robert
+Bowman, and Charlie, a native of Brisbane, with seventeen horses, and
+two months rations. The starting point was from Carpentaria Downs, on
+the Einasleigh River, then the farthest out settlement, the latitude
+being 18 deg. 37 min. 10 sec. S., long. 144 deg. 3 min. 30 sec. E. The
+course generally was westward, following down the Gilbert River, and
+thence to the Flinders and Leichhardt Rivers. These they crossed, and
+then travelled on to the Gregory, which was followed down to the Albert.
+The object of the expedition having been achieved, and the country
+deemed suitable for stocking, the party commenced their return journey,
+crossing the Leichhardt River at a rocky ford, where the scenery was
+beautiful and the site admirably adapted for a head station. Eventually
+one was formed there, but was swept away in the disastrous flood of
+1870, when the waters covered all the surrounding country to a great
+depth. The journey home was uneventful, the only occurrence being the
+finding of the skeleton of a horse they had left on their outward
+journey at the Gilbert River, and which had been killed by the blacks
+and eaten. The stages made were somewhat astonishing for an exploring
+party. The time taken by the journey outwards and the return was
+fifty-three days to Carpentaria Downs, and to Bowen seventy-one days in
+all; this trip proves what can be done with a lightly-equipped party, in
+contrast to many of the unwieldy expeditions fitted out in the south.
+Mr. Macdonald's favourable report of the country was the direct means of
+a good deal of settlement on the Gulf. Mr. Macdonald, in conjunction
+with Mr., afterwards Sir, John Robertson, and Captain Towns, of Sydney,
+took up many stations on the Gulf waters and expended large sums of
+money in stocking them. They also despatched the first vessel with
+loading to the Albert, bringing consigned goods to settlers, as well as
+supplies for their own consumption. This vessel was the "Jacmel Packet,"
+which arrived in the Albert River from Sydney in 1865, thus leading to
+the establishment of Burketown. Sir John Robertson personally visited
+the Gulf in 1868, travelling overland from the east coast as far as
+Normanton and Burketown, and returning the same way.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Hann, one of the pioneers of the Burdekin country, was the leader of
+a small expedition sent out by the Queensland Government for exploring
+and prospecting purposes through the peninsula to Cape York. The party
+started from Fossilbrook station, in 1872; they named the Tate and Walsh
+Rivers, and then went on to the Palmer River, after crossing the
+Mitchell, which they found a strong running stream. On the Palmer gold
+was discovered, and the place was called Warner's Gully, after Frederick
+Warner, the surveyor to the party; this being the first discovery of
+gold in that country. Travelling still north, they reached the Coleman
+River, and visited Princess Charlotte Bay. They discovered the Kennedy
+and Normanby Rivers, taking a few sheep with them as far as this. They
+then travelled to the present site of Cooktown, and followed up the
+Endeavour River for thirty miles, striking south to the Bloomfield
+River, where the dense vine scrubs greatly impeded their progress. On
+their way back they passed through some very rough country. So
+successful an expedition, made in so short a time, reflects credit on
+the leader of the party, who was a thorough bushman, and well acquainted
+with the dangers from hostile blacks in such a country. This expedition
+resulted in the development of one of the richest goldfields in
+Australia; bands of prospectors soon followed on their tracks and opened
+up the great alluvial diggings of the famous Palmer Goldfields, from
+which nearly L5,000,000 worth of alluvial gold was won.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+W. O. Hodgkinson had been a member of the Burke and Wills expedition in
+1860, and crossed Australia as second in command of McKinlay's party in
+1862.
+
+In 1876, he led an expedition sent out by the Queensland Government to
+explore the north-west country from the Cloncurry to the South
+Australian boundary. The party was only a small one, but the work was
+well carried out, and the results were satisfactory and justified the
+expenditure incurred. They started from Cloncurry, which at that time,
+1876, was already a settled mining township, but the country west and
+south was not well mapped out. They crossed the rolling plains on the
+Diamantina River, and in their reports describe life in the far west in
+its natural aspect, the game of the country, the vegetation, the
+spinifex, the awful sand ridges, and all the details of a journey made
+at the cold time of the year. The country, according to the vicissitudes
+of the season, may be either a desert or a meadow, for the rainfall is
+very uncertain. They followed up the Mulligan River in well-watered
+country, reaching Mary Lake, on the Georgina, and then on to Lake Coongi
+in South Australia. Mr. Hodgkinson's expedition was described in a
+diction not much used by the old explorers, whose records were made in a
+matter-of-fact style, with little attention to effect. Nevertheless, his
+descriptions are eminently interesting and life-like, and have a charm
+for all who like to read a traveller's report of an unknown land.
+Hodgkinson's name is commemorated by the goldfield named after him, as
+well as the river upon which it is situated.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+G. E. Dalrymple led the north-east coast expedition fitted out by the
+Queensland Government in 1872. This was altogether a coasting trip by
+boats, and led to much information about the high values of the rich
+alluvial lands fringing the banks of the rivers which run into the sea
+on the east coast of the northern part of Queensland. The Johnstone, the
+Russell, and Mulgrave Rivers were named by him, as well as the Mossman
+and Daintree. Here was found most magnificent scenery, and on the
+Johnstone they discovered some fine cedar (one tree measuring ten feet
+in diameter), besides a vast extent of rich land fit for sugar growing.
+All these rivers have since been opened up for cultivation, and
+sugar-cane, with other tropical products, has taken the place of dense
+scrubs that then lined the banks of these comparatively unknown
+rivers--although the boats of the "Rattlesnake" had been into the
+Russell and Mulgrave Rivers in 1848. The country appeared to Dalrymple
+to be inhabited by very large numbers of blacks, and game was to be
+found in abundance. The name of Dalrymple is perpetuated in many places
+on the map of Queensland. A township on the Burdekin River, as well as
+several mountains and other remarkable features, have been named after
+George Elphinstone Dalrymple, who was a splendid type of man in every
+sense of the word. He was at one time treasurer of the Colony.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A search expedition for Leichhardt was promoted by the ladies of
+Melbourne, and although very little is recorded of its work, it has a
+melancholy interest from the fact that the leader, a man of great
+promise and energy, lost his life in endeavouring to carry out the task
+entrusted to him, and he now lies in an unmarked grave on the bank of a
+lonely billabong near the Cloncurry River, a few miles from his
+brother's station, Dalgonally.
+
+The expedition was entrusted to Duncan McIntyre, who had found on the
+Dugald River, during a private expedition in 1861, two horses that
+belonged to Leichhardt's last expedition. Mr. McIntyre went out with
+camels and horses, and formed a depot camp at Dalgonally station on
+Julia Creek in 1865. He went on to Burketown, then just opened, for the
+purpose of buying stores; at the time of his visit the Gulf fever was at
+its worst, and he took ill and died on his return to the camp. He is
+spoken of as a man of high attainments and of large experience in
+bushmanship, and his untimely death was fatal to the objects of the
+expedition, the leadership of which was assumed by Mr. W. F. Barnett. A
+short trip was undertaken by him, in company with J. McCalman as second
+in charge, Dr. White, a medical man, Colin MacIntyre, G. Widish, and
+Myola, a blackboy. They started with nine camels, six of which were
+young ones, ten horses, and stores for five months. They travelled
+westward over the Cloncurry to the Dugald to the camp, marked XLV. of
+Duncan McIntyre on his first expedition to the Gulf, the camp where he
+found the two horses that Leichhardt lost on his last trip. Near here is
+the grave of Davy, one of their blackboys, who died from fever. After
+travelling over the country in the neighbourhood for a few weeks, and
+not having any fixed plan or instructions, they returned to the depot
+camp. The expedition, which was well equipped, was eventually given up
+and the party dispersed. In consequence of the death of the leader, no
+notes of his journey were obtainable. The camels remained on Dalgonally,
+the property of Mr. Donald McIntyre, for years, and increased to quite a
+herd. The ladies of Melbourne sent a handsome gravestone suitably
+inscribed to be erected over the lonely grave of the explorer, but for
+many years it lay unnoticed on the beach at Thursday Island, and is
+probably still there.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The trip of Major-General Fielding to Point Parker is in no sense of the
+term an exploring trip through new country, but rather an exploratory
+survey for railway purposes through a fairly well settled tract.
+Nevertheless, some notes of the journey may be found of interest.
+
+In 1881, negotiations were entered into between the late Mr. (afterwards
+Sir) Thomas McIlwraith, then Premier of Queensland, and a syndicate
+called Henry Kimber and Co., to construct a railway on the land grant
+principle, between Roma and Point Parker, on the Gulf of Carpentaria.
+These negotiations resulted in the formation of a larger syndicate
+called the Australian Transcontinental Railway Syndicate, Limited, which
+initiated their scheme by making certain proposals to the Government of
+Queensland, and sending out General Fielding to traverse the proposed
+route in 1882.
+
+The party, under General Fielding's leadership, started from Roma, and
+went by way of Victoria Downs and Yo Yo to Biddenham, on the Nive,
+thence by Lansdowne and Barcaldine Downs to the Aramac, and on to Mount
+Cornish, delays occurring along the route for repairs to waggonettes and
+harness, and for the purpose of exchanging horses or buying new ones.
+Following down the Upper McKinlay, they reached the Cloncurry on October
+7th, and were joined there by the Government Geologist, Mr. R. L. Jack.
+More delays occurred here for the want of stores, and it was not until
+November 1st that all the members of the expedition reached Kamilaroi
+station, on the Leichhardt River; Gregory Downs was reached on the 7th,
+and Point Parker on November 15th; the expedition having camped
+sixty-seven times. On the night of their arrival at Point Parker, the
+natives surrounded the camp at midnight. There were about a hundred of
+them, but they left when three shots were fired over their heads; no one
+was hurt on either side, and this was the only demonstration made by the
+aboriginals.
+
+Point Parker is described as having a very limited area for settlement,
+only about 7,000 acres being available. The Government schooner "Pearl"
+was waiting here, and after a careful survey of Point Parker and Point
+Bayley, they visited Bentinck and Sweer's Islands and Kimberley (now
+called Karumba), at the mouth of the Norman River. Finally, on November
+13th, they sailed up the Batavia River in the "Pearl" for about forty
+miles, and explored it still further in the boats, thence on to Thursday
+Island on December 4th, 1882. In General Fielding's opinion, the
+country traversed on his route may be divided into sections; the first
+part between Mitchell and Malvern was neither fitted for pastoral
+purposes nor for agricultural settlement; thick scrub, bad soil, and
+poor timber prevailing. Between the Ward and the Nive, and thence to the
+Barcoo, Thomson, and Diamantina Rivers was first-class sheep country,
+requiring a good deal to be done in the way of providing water to enable
+the country to be fully stocked. The country between the McKinlay and
+Fullerton Rivers is subject to flood. Approaching the mining district of
+Cloncurry, the country is not so favourable for sheep, and is better
+adapted for raising cattle and horses. From the Cloncurry through the
+Gregory to the Nicholson River is all good cattle country, but the grass
+seed along the banks of the watercourses, and the flooded nature of
+parts of the country in the rainy seasons, render it unfit for
+profitable sheep-farming. From the Nicholson to the Gulf at Point
+Parker, the country is described as particularly useless. The formation
+is desert sandstone overlaid with nodular ironstone conglomerate; the
+vegetation dense, chiefly ti-tree scrubs growing upon spuey or rotten
+ground, together with spinifex, saltpans, and marshes. Such was General
+Fielding's estimate of the country through which the line was to pass.
+Captain Pennefather of the "Pearl" schooner had been surveying the
+waters between Allan Island and Point Parker. He was very reticent as to
+the qualifications of the place as a port; but looking at the
+soundings, and the open nature of the anchorage, coupled with the
+utterly valueless nature of the soil surrounding the place for over one
+hundred miles, the less said about it as a shipping port the better.
+
+The whole scheme was condemned by Parliament, and the general election
+of 1883 returned a majority against the principle of land grant
+railways. One of the first reform acts of the new Parliament was to
+repeal the Railway Companies' Preliminary Act. No doubt, had the scheme
+been favoured by the people of Queensland, a great impetus would have
+been given to settlement by the introduction of so much private capital
+into the colony, while the large annual payment of interest on borrowed
+money would have been avoided to a great extent. At all events, there is
+no transcontinental railway as yet, and when it does arrive, Point
+Parker will not be chosen as the terminus. Mr. Frank Hann, a brother of
+William Hann, the discoverer of the Palmer Goldfield, accompanied
+General Fielding as pilot. Hann is a first-class bushman, as hard as
+nails and full of energy. He was for many years the owner of Lawn Hill,
+situated on a western tributary of the Gregory River, but ticks ruined
+his herd. He is now in Western Australia.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first surveyor appointed by the Queensland Government in the Gulf
+was Mr. George Phillips, lately the member for Carpentaria. He surveyed
+and laid out Burketown, Carnarvon, on Sweer's Island, and Normanton, on
+the Norman River. In company with W. Landsborough, in 1866, he explored
+and named the Diamantina and other western rivers. The former was named
+after Lady Bowen, the Governor's wife, whose Christian name was
+Diamantina Roma. The party passed close by the spot where Winton now
+stands, and by Kynuna, and from the head waters of the Diamantina they
+struck across via the heads of Rupert's and Alick's Creeks to Minamere
+(then Sheaffe's), thence to the Flinders, and on to Burketown. There
+were no signs of settlement between the Thomson River at Mount Cornish,
+and where they struck the Flinders River. Mr. Phillips and Mr.
+Landsborough were the first to navigate the Norman River, and they chose
+the site for the township.
+
+The writer met this party coming down the Flinders on their way to
+Burketown, in which place he had been laid up for several weeks with the
+Gulf fever; he was then on his way back to Conobie, more dead than
+alive. This was in the early part of 1866.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+PIONEERING WORK IN QUEENSLAND.
+
+
+The narrative of the pastoral industry in Queensland is almost the
+history of North Queensland itself. The outward flow of that restless
+and progressive industry can be traced from its infancy, when Mr.
+Patrick Leslie, of Collaroi, in the district of Cassilis, New South
+Wales, moved his stock northwards, and after first exploring the country
+by himself and a man named Peter Murphy, placed his sheep in June, 1840,
+and formed the first station in Queensland on the Darling Downs
+(discovered by Allan Cunningham 13 years before). He called this first
+station Toolburra, and afterwards selected Canning Downs station also.
+The stock consisted of nearly 6,000 sheep, two teams of bullocks and
+drays, one team of horses and dray, ten saddle horses, and twenty-two
+men, all ticket-of-leave men, pronounced by Mr. Leslie to be the best
+men he ever had in his life. The town of Warwick is built near this
+classic spot, where first the pioneers of the squatting industry pitched
+their original camp. The next to reach the Darling Downs were Hodgson
+and Elliott, who occupied Etonvale in September, 1840. No white man had
+settled on Darling Downs previous to Patrick Leslie in 1840. After
+Hodgson, King and Sibley were next to hold Gowrie, and these were
+followed by others, until in 1844, there were thirty stations formed and
+occupied in that district, the stock mostly coming from the Hunter River
+district of New South Wales.
+
+In 1843, the first station on the Burnett River was formed by Russell
+and Glover who took up Burrandowan, and they were soon followed by other
+settlers, occupying all the beautiful country on the Upper Burnett and
+Mary Rivers. Here the soil is rich, the surface water abundant, the
+climate equal to any in Australia; and thus a rich territory was added
+to the young colony.
+
+The names of the early settlers and pioneers of this country are as well
+known as the stations they formed. The Healeys of Tabinga were settled
+not far from Burrandowan. Over the Brisbane Range, John Eales, from the
+Hunter, was the first settler with stock in the Wide Bay District. The
+Jones', of merchant fame in Sydney, were also among the first over the
+range at or near Nanango. The course they followed took them down
+Barambah Creek to Boonara station.
+
+All the centre of the Burnett district was occupied by squatters coming
+by this line, while the upper, or Auburn portion, from lower down by
+Burrandowan. Lawless Bros. took up Boobijan; Anderson and Leslie
+occupied Gigoomgan; whilst McTaggart, H. C. Corfield, Perrier, Forster,
+Herbert W. H. Walsh, Dr. Ramsay, E. B. Uhr, and others followed soon
+after.
+
+Following on this, came the occupation of the runs on the Dawson River,
+a tributary of the Fitzroy, and onwards to the north and far out to the
+great west, where the downs rolled towards the setting sun. The Fitzroy
+River, draining an enormous territory, equal to any river in Queensland,
+and surpassed by but few in Australia, was gradually and successfully
+occupied. Through the brigalow and mulga scrubs, dense and forbidding,
+over mountain ranges, stony and steep, across flooded rivers, and over
+or around all obstacles, the pioneers still moved on and took up and
+occupied runs. Westward to the Maranoa and Warrego, and northward by the
+Fitzroy to the Burdekin and Flinders River, and even over the South
+Australian borders to Port Darwin, their mission was carried on, to fill
+the land with the outposts of civilisation.
+
+Before 1853, the Archer family were squatting on the Burnett River, and
+in that year Charles and William Archer went northward on an exploring
+trip during which they discovered and named the Fitzroy River, and rode
+over the spot where now stands the city of Rockhampton, with all its
+wealth, civilisation, and promise of prosperity. They started from
+Eidsvold, on the Burnett, simply with pack horses and two men, passed
+from Dalgangal to Rawbelle, and at the foot of Mount Rannes found the
+establishment of the brothers Leith Hay, then the farthest out station.
+They had some very troublesome country to penetrate. Besides hilly
+mountainous ranges, brigalow and vine scrubs surrounded the base of
+Mount Spencer, whose thousand feet of height they climbed, and gave to
+it its name. They crossed the Dee, and passed close to the site of the
+famous Mount Morgan gold mine. And so on they journeyed to the top of a
+range, where the most astounding view lay beneath them.
+
+Through a large and apparently open valley, bounded by table-topped,
+pyramidal and dominant mountains, with here and there
+fantastically-shaped sandstone peaks, a large river wound its way
+towards the sea.
+
+They supposed this river to be the confluence of the Dawson and
+Mackenzie, and the sea before them to be Keppel Bay. They explored the
+valley of the Fitzroy, which they named after Sir Charles Fitzroy, they
+being the first to discover it, and then went on to Gracemere Lake, a
+magnificent sheet of fresh water, about two miles long and three
+quarters of a mile wide. They rode on till they came to tidal water in
+the Fitzroy, and found it a fine navigable stream, with the tide running
+strongly up it. Near here they came upon a large lagoon covered over
+with a beautiful pink water-lily (nymphoea), which they called the
+Pink Lily Lagoon. In the account of their journey, they described the
+cycas palm growing with clusters of round smooth nuts encircling the
+top as a crown, under the leaves. After inspecting the country from
+opposite Yaamba to what is now known as Archer's cattle station, and
+laying it out in blocks, they returned to the Burnett. These pioneers
+were looking for new country, and being perfectly satisfied with the
+Fitzroy and its promise of future prosperity, they returned with stock
+two years later, in 1855, and took legal possession. It was on August
+10th of that year that they brought the first stock on to Gracemere and
+occupied it as a run.
+
+In the same year, 1855, the site of the future town of Rockhampton was
+examined. The name of the town was chosen by Mr. Wiseman, Commissioner
+of Crown Lands for New South Wales, who had been sent up from Sydney to
+confirm the Messrs. Archer in the possession of their discovery. The
+rocks crossing the river situated above the present suspension bridge
+and forming the limit of navigation, helped to the choice of a name for
+the new northern town. Gracemere head station is on the south side of
+the Fitzroy River, and is distant seven miles from Rockhampton. Till
+then, Rannes had been the outer limit of occupation towards the north,
+in which direction settlement was extending. The Archers were a family
+of pioneer settlers, several brothers assisting in the enterprise of
+opening up country and forming new stations. They were extremely popular
+men of high character and attainments; and the name of Archer will be
+known as long as Rockhampton exists. Archibald Archer represented the
+town and district for many years in the Queensland Assembly, and acted
+as Colonial Treasurer in the first McIlwraith Ministry with credit to
+himself and much benefit to the young colony.[B] The Archers may justly
+be said to be the original discoverers and actual founders of
+Rockhampton, for although the town took its great start on the road to
+importance from the time of the Canoona rush in 1858, called in those
+days the Port Curtis rush, the site of the town had been made known five
+years previously by the Archer Brothers.
+
+Amongst the early settlers in the country about Gladstone were the
+Landsboroughs, at Raglan Station, James Landsborough, a brother of the
+explorer William, living there after taking it up. They held a run in
+the Wide Bay district, called Monduran, on the banks of the Kolan River,
+a beautiful and picturesque stream of clear flowing water, with varied
+patches of dark pine scrubs growing down to the water's edge.
+
+William Young, a sturdy self-reliant old pioneer, took up a run called
+Mount Larcombe, and held it with sheep. Mount Larcombe can be seen from
+the deck of passing steamers close to Gladstone. Mr. Young was foremost
+in opening the country between Gladstone and Rockhampton. He obtained a
+rough sketch from Mr. Charles Archer of country they had tendered for,
+and on going out came across a large branch of the Calliope which had
+not been so taken up. This he chose for his new run, and Mount Larcombe
+being at the head of the creek, he named the station after it. He took
+his sheep from the Burnett, and settled on his new country on May 29th,
+1855. The reason for those of the advance guard pushing out so far was
+on account of the tendering system for runs then in force. By this
+system, those who marked out country could hold it unstocked, and unless
+a few hundred pounds were paid by them for the right of actual
+occupation, the pioneers in search of land had to go out further.
+Prospecting thus for new country without any intention of stocking it,
+but merely of selling the information and the claim to the country to
+any one in search of a run for their stock, became a regular
+speculation.
+
+[Footnote B: Mr. Archibald Archer died early in 1902, in London, at the
+age of 82. Mr. Alexander Archer and his wife (a daughter of the late Sir
+R. R. Mackenzie) were both lost in the "Quetta," which foundered near
+Cape York.]
+
+The Wide Bay district only extended as far as Little's station at
+Baffle's Creek, and on to Blackman's. When separation took place, and a
+new district was declared, those who had tendered for new country for
+the purpose of reselling, had nine months allowed them to stock their
+country in. Otherwise they were called upon to forfeit it. Mr. Young had
+a great deal of trouble from the blacks; they made a raid on his
+shepherds, killing several, but afterwards he found them very useful for
+minding sheep, etc. At that time, two small trading vessels handled the
+trade to Sydney, and from this port Mr. Young had to get his rations, as
+well as shepherds. Many of the latter sent to him were found useless for
+bush life.[C]
+
+     [Sidenote: Rockhill, No. 3.]
+
+     [Sidenote: Bugulban, No. 1.]
+
+     [Sidenote: Gunyah, No. 2.]
+
+     [Sidenote: Borroran, No. 4.]
+
+                                                    No. 55117.
+
+               Crown Lands Office, Sydney, 29th January, 1855.
+
+     Nos. 2, 5, 11 and 12 of December.
+
+     Gentlemen,
+
+     I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your
+     tenders (opened on the 4th ultimo), for new runs of Crown
+     Lands in the district of Port Curtis, named in the
+     margin, and I beg to inform you, that the same now await
+     the report of the Commissioner of the district, in
+     accordance with the Regulations of the 1st January, 1848.
+
+     I have the honor to be, Gentlemen,
+
+     Your most obedient servant,
+     GEO. BARNEY.
+     Chief Commissioner of Crown Lands.
+
+     Messrs. R. & F. BLACKMAN,
+     Maryborough, Wide Bay.
+
+This copy of the letter from Colonel Barney to the Messrs. Blackman
+regarding the tenders of their runs shows that they were early in the
+Port Curtis district, and occupied a run called Warrah, still held by
+Mr. F. A. Blackman in 1897. The whole of the Wide Bay district had
+become settled with stations, and the necessity for an outlet for
+produce and receipt of supplies led to the port of Gladstone being
+opened. Among the first to establish a business there was Richard E.
+Palmer, who built a wharf and a large wool shed, so that the wool from
+Rannes and other stations lately formed could be shipped away. He then
+took up Targieni station, near Mount Larcombe, and lived there for many
+years. Among the early settlers in the district about Gladstone were the
+Bells of Stowe, father and sons, Mrs. Graham on the Calliope; and
+Charles Clarke, James Landsborough, John Forsyth. Edwin Bloomfield held
+Miriam Vale; Robinson and Wood had taken up Caliungal; William Elliott
+passed Gracemere with sheep, and took up Tilpal in 1857. Ramsay and
+Gaden held Canoona run when the gold rush took place in 1858. Mr. A. J.
+Callan, for some years member of the Legislative Assembly for Fitzroy,
+took up Columbra run. All the surrounding country became parcelled out
+among the early arrivals, and settlement began to spread itself into
+far-away districts to the north and north-west. Civilisation was
+pronounced enough when ladies followed their husbands on many of the new
+stations. Raglan was famous for its hospitality as early as 1860, when
+Mrs. James Landsborough presided, and her numerous family grew up there.
+
+[Footnote C: Mr. Young ended his days peacefully in Sandgate in 1899, at
+an advanced age.]
+
+From Marlborough, a small village on the outward stock route, the track
+led out west towards Peak Downs, a beautiful tableland discovered by
+Leichhardt. Mr. Stuart, known as Peak Downs Stuart, took up one of the
+first runs in 1861 with sheep brought from Victoria. These sheep were
+destroyed by order on account of scab breaking out among them. Mr. P. F.
+Macdonald and Sydney Davis were among the earliest settlers on Peak
+Downs. Mr. William Kilman, whose name is so well known in the central
+districts, was one of the enterprising pioneers of the north. In 1854,
+when he was twenty-five years old, he set out on an exploring trip along
+the Queensland coast. On that journey, he came to the river on which
+Rockhampton now stands, and, passing up the coast, went as far as
+Cleveland Bay, where Townsville was founded some years later. He
+returned to New South Wales from Cleveland Bay, and in 1856 took up a
+large tract of country on the upper waters of the Dawson. It would thus
+appear that Mr. Kilman visited the locality of Townsville ten years
+before Mr. Andrew Ball came down from Woodstock station to explore the
+country.
+
+Captain John Mackay, explorer and pioneer settler, as well as navigator,
+discovered Port Mackay in 1860. The history of the discovery and
+settlement of the district and town of Mackay is of interest, showing
+what individual effort in conjunction with large experience and great
+physical fortitude and endurance can accomplish. Captain Mackay left
+Armidale on January 16th, 1860, with a party of seven men and
+twenty-eight horses, to explore the north country for runs for stocking
+purposes; they travelled by Tenterfield, Darling Downs, Gayndah, and
+Rockhampton. After recruiting and refitting here, they started again on
+March 16th, passed Yaamba and Princhester, on to Marlborough, where Mr.
+Henning was forming a station. They left civilisation behind them when
+leaving this place, and bearing to the north-west over the range, which
+was very rugged and broken, followed the Isaacs and travelled on towards
+the Burdekin. Returning towards the coast, they found a river they
+called the Mackay, traced it to the coast, and having marked trees along
+its course, they decided to return south, having been successful in the
+object of their expedition.
+
+The party now fell sick of fever and ague, a most prostrating malady,
+and were reduced to the utmost extremity for want of provisions, for the
+sick men were for some time unable to travel. In suffering and pain,
+hungry and thirsty, and utterly weary, they started again for civilised
+parts. The blackboy, their faithful companion, died on the journey,
+while some of the others could scarcely manage to ride. On returning,
+they met Mr. Connor, who was forming Collaroy station; here they
+remained a few days recruiting, then crossing the Broadsound Range, they
+camped with Mr. John Allingham, who was travelling with stock looking
+for country, passed Mr. Macartney at Waverley, and arrived at
+Rockhampton after an absence of four months. They tendered for the
+country discovered in accordance with the Crown Lands Regulations, and
+the tenders were accepted by the Queensland Government, from which date
+they were allowed nine months for stocking, failing which, any person
+putting stock in, could legally claim the country. In order to obtain
+some compensation for the discovery they had made, Captain Mackay got
+cattle on terms, and started from Armidale on July 26th, 1861, with
+1,200 cattle, fifty horses and two teams of bullocks. The stock
+travelled by Dalby to the Burnett and Dawson, passing Banana and Rannes,
+and thence to Rockhampton on October 27th, where supplies were waiting
+for them from Sydney. They then passed northwards through the Broadsound
+country, where several stations were then forming, and arrived at the
+foot of the coast range, when by double-banking the teams, that is,
+putting two teams on to one dray with only a part of a load on, they
+managed, after several days' hard work, to get the loads and stock
+across the terrible barrier. After great trouble in forcing a way
+through ranges, scrubs, and other obstacles, the stock arrived at the
+spot selected for the head station on the Mackay River, now called the
+Pioneer, on January 11th, 1862. The station was named Green Mount, and
+having turned their weary stock loose on the well-grassed plains, the
+party set to work to form a station hut and yards. All their stores were
+exhausted, and after waiting long months for the vessel that was to have
+come from Rockhampton, they at last discovered that she was below Cape
+Palmerston at anchor; she was brought up the river four miles west of
+where the town now stands, and landed the stores on the south bank.
+Captain Mackay then chartered the vessel at the rate of L8 per day, and
+spent a few days in taking soundings, bearings, etc.; having made a
+rough chart of the river and adjacent coast line, it was sent with the
+correct latitude and longitude to the Crown Lands Office, Brisbane, on
+which report the Mackay River was declared a port of entry. The name of
+the river was changed to the Pioneer, as Commodore Burnett (afterwards
+lost in H.M.S. "Orpheus" on the Manakau Bar in New Zealand), had, in
+1863, named a stream flowing into Rockingham Bay, the Mackay, and
+recommended the new discovery should be called after H.M.S. "Pioneer,"
+which he commanded. The Queensland Government not wishing to detract
+from the merit of discovery, named the town Mackay. There can be no
+manner of doubt but that the honor of discovering the Pioneer River and
+the Port of Mackay, and making that discovery public information, so as
+to be of service in opening up the district, rests entirely with Captain
+John Mackay.[D]
+
+The discovery of the fine pastoral country in the Barcoo by the Mitchell
+expedition was soon followed by occupation. On October 12th, 1862, the
+first mob of cattle arrived on the Thomson River, for Mount Cornish and
+Bowen Downs. The Thomson River was at that time supposed to be the
+Barcoo, but Mr. N. Buchanan found out that it was the same river that
+had been named the Thomson by Kennedy in 1847. The first station was
+named Bowen Downs, and the first stock to arrive on these waters were
+the cattle started from Fort Cooper, where they had been depasturing for
+some time. The mob consisted of five thousand head, and the route
+followed was by Lake Elphinstone on to Suttor Creek, down that creek to
+the Belyando, following that river up a short distance, then across by
+Bully Creek, crossing the range at the Tanks by Lake Buchanan on to
+Cornish Creek, and down that creek to their destination.
+
+[Footnote D: Captain Mackay, in 1902, succeeded the late Captain Almond
+as Harbour Master at Brisbane.]
+
+Suttor Creek station then belonged to Kirk and Sutherland, and was the
+farthest out station in that direction. On arriving at Bully Creek, a
+dry stage ahead of forty-five miles, caused the leader to leave 1,500
+head behind him, the balance arriving at their destination on October
+12th, 1862. Mr. R. Kerr was in charge, with four white stockmen, one
+blackboy, three gins, and a white man named Maurice Donohue, who died
+before he had been there very long, and was doubtless the first white
+man buried in the district. In the following year, 1863, a drought
+occurred on the Thomson, the plains were left destitute of grass, and
+the waterhole, on the banks of which the station was formed, was reduced
+to two feet in depth. When full there would be about eighteen feet of
+water in it, and it was afterwards found that it took eighteen months
+without rain to bring it down to that level. In about March of this
+year, Messrs. Rule and Lacy, as also Mr. Raven, arrived on Aramac Creek
+with sheep, the former taking up and stocking the country now known as
+Aramac station. Mr. Raven first settling down higher up the creek,
+afterwards returned to Stainburne, taking up and stocking the present
+Stainburne Downs. At the same time that these sheep arrived at the
+Aramac, three thousand cows from the Narran (N.S.W.) arrived on Bowen
+Downs, Messrs. Hill and Bloxham in charge; all these stock went out by
+the Barcoo, and the cattle suffered severely from the effects of the
+drought, one thousand head being lost en route. Four of the party,
+Messrs. Hill, Bloxham, Burkett, and Best, who took out these cows to
+Bowen Downs, decided to go upon an exploring trip on their own account.
+They went up Landsborough Creek, and on to the Flinders River, intending
+to go to Bowen; after getting over the Range on the east side of the
+Flinders, it commenced to rain, and continued an incessant downpour for
+four days, making the country so boggy that they could not travel; some
+of their horses died, and some got crippled by getting bogged among the
+rocks; so they decided to return to Bowen Downs. They got down from the
+ranges into one of the gorges, and then Mr. Best was laid up with
+rheumatic fever, and was unable to travel. Their supplies ran short, and
+they had to kill some of their horses for food; by the time Mr. Best
+was able to move, they had only three horses left; so they decided to
+kill one of these, take a portion of the flesh with them, and walk to
+Bowen Downs for assistance, leaving Mr. Best behind, as he was still
+unfit to travel. They left the two horses with him, and the remainder of
+the horse they had killed, jerking the meat for him before they started.
+The three then began their tramp, Mr. Bloxham being leader and guide;
+they promised to be back in twenty-eight days, and urged Mr. Best to
+remain where they were leaving him, but if he did move to be sure to
+follow their tracks. They also gave him directions as to the route to
+follow to reach Bowen Downs. They got to Bowen Downs in due course,
+after surmounting innumerable difficulties. Mr. Bloxham, who was the
+oldest of the party, was very weak on arrival, and suffering severely
+from the consequences of subsisting on jerked horse flesh; they were all
+wearing horse hide sandals, their boots being worn out. After several
+days spell, Mr. Bloxham made up a party and went to the rescue of the
+man left behind. The other two left for civilisation. The rescue party
+met Mr. Best on the twenty-ninth day from leaving him, a few miles from
+his camp. He had stayed the twenty-eight days as agreed, and started in
+on the twenty-ninth. They, of course, were very glad to find him, and
+the meeting was mutually satisfactory. During his sojourn in the gorge,
+Mr. Best only saw the blacks once; and then he fired his gun off to
+attract their attention, but they took no notice of him. Another report
+said that as he had been using his gun as a crutch, the muzzle had got
+blocked up with mud, and when he fired it off to scare the blacks away
+the gun burst with such a terrible roar that they never ventured near
+him again.
+
+The first pioneer to stock country on the Flinders was James Gibson, who
+took up a run called the Prairie, in 1861. He also stocked several runs
+in the neighbourhood and on the Clarke River. He started two lots of
+cattle from the Barwon (N.S.W.), one in charge of Mr. E. R. Edkins, now
+of Mount Cornish, the other mob in charge of Mr. George Sautelle, now
+long settled at Byrimine station, near Cloncurry. These cattle passed by
+Goondiwindi, through the Downs country, by Yandilla, to the Dawson, by
+Rockhampton, and then by Fort Cooper and Bowen on to the Clarke River.
+These, according to the Land Office records, were the first runs taken
+up in the pastoral district of Burke. Their cattle were supplemented by
+other large mobs, all destined to form new stations in the far north, in
+connection with Mr. W. Glen Walker, of Sydney, an enterprising and
+speculative merchant. In 1864 the country first taken up by this firm
+was sold or transferred, and the cattle (as many as ten thousand head),
+were removed to the Lower Flinders then quite unoccupied. They travelled
+through Betts' Gorge, a creek forcing its way through the basalt to join
+the Flinders. A large stretch of well-watered country on the Saxby
+Creek, known as Taldora and Millungerra was taken up by James Gibson in
+1864.
+
+The first man to open the way to the Albert at Burketown was Mr. N.
+Buchanan, with cattle from Mount Cornish and Bowen Downs on the Thomson
+River; he selected Beame's Brook station on the Albert, eighteen miles
+above the present site of Burketown, and also occupied another run on
+the Landsborough River, a tributary of the Leichhardt, on a waterhole
+about twelve miles long. Following him in order of succession came Mr.
+J. G. Macdonald's cattle from the Burdekin. These travelled by a
+different route via the Einasleigh and Etheridge Rivers, the latter
+called after Mr. D. O. Etheridge, one of the overlanders, a man long
+resident there afterwards, and well known. They followed the route
+opened up by Mr. J. G. Macdonald when on his private exploring
+expedition to the Gulf country a year or two before. The country this
+stock occupied was on the Leichhardt River, at a place called
+Floraville, situated where a great bar of rocks crosses the river above
+all tidal waters, the falls being about twenty feet in height. Another
+run this firm took up at the same time was situated on the Gregory
+River, and called Gregory Downs; but this country was abandoned later
+on, and is now held by Watson Bros.; it is an excellent piece of
+well-grassed cattle country, watered by the finest perennial river in
+North Queensland, a clear, flowing stream of water, shaded by palms,
+pandanus, and ti-trees. The Gregory River, named by the late Mr. W.
+Landsborough in honor of the Honorable A. C. Gregory, M.L.C., C.M.G.,
+the well-known explorer and scientist, has never been known to go dry.
+In March, 1896, Mr. G. Phillips, C.E., estimated the flow of the
+river--which was then low--at 133 millions of gallons per day at Gregory
+Downs. There can be no doubt that the discharge is due to a leak from
+the great artesian beds underlying the Barkly Tableland, on which the
+town of Camooweal is situated, on the head waters of the Georgina River.
+
+The Barkly Tableland was also named by Mr. Landsborough in honor of Sir
+Henry Barkly, Governor of Victoria, 1856-1863.
+
+Donor's Hills station was settled by the Brodie Bros., who came from
+Murrurundi, in New South Wales early in 1865. They travelled by Bowen
+River and along the Cape River route, and took up the country about the
+junction of the Cloncurry and the Flinders Rivers, near some peculiar
+isolated ironstone hills, which were named Donor's Hills. It was
+considered a good run and well watered, and is now held by Mr.
+Chirnside, of Victoria, being still stocked with sheep. Among the last
+wave of pioneers was Mr. Atticus Tooth, who brought cattle from the
+Broken River, near Bowen, and took up a run on the lower Cloncurry,
+which he called Seaward Downs; the stock belonged to a business firm in
+Bowen called Seaward, Marsh and Co. It now forms part of Conobie run,
+taken up by Messrs. Palmer and Shewring, who brought sheep and cattle
+from Pelican Creek, in 1864. The cattle were driven from Eureka, in the
+Wide Bay district, by Edward Palmer, one of the firm who from that time
+resided on the station, and who is the author of these notes. The stock
+followed the route up the Cape River, and were detained in the desert at
+Billy Webb's Lake nearly two months waiting for rain to take them
+through. After the usual vicissitudes of travelling stock down the
+Flinders, and searching for country all round the Gulf it was decided to
+occupy Conobie, where the Dugald, Corella, and Cloncurry Rivers form a
+junction. The sheep were placed on the run in May, 1865, and then the
+trip back to Brisbane had to be undertaken in order to apply for the
+lease of the country.
+
+One of the partners, Mr. W. Shewring, died about a year afterwards from
+the effects of the Gulf fever, and also several of the men. They were
+all buried on the bank of the large lagoon, near which the head station
+was formed.
+
+Supplies to this place were carried from Port Denison by bullock dray,
+but the first wool was shipped for Sydney from the new port, Burketown.
+The price of everything was extremely high, flour and sugar often
+selling at one shilling per pound, while wages for ordinary hands ranged
+from thirty-five shillings to fifty shillings a week, and men were
+scarce even at that.
+
+Pioneers as well as explorers, the settlement of Cape York Peninsula
+will always be associated with the names of the Jardines. The account of
+their trip from Bowen with cattle and horses through the most
+troublesome country ever traversed by stock, will stand as a lasting
+monument to their superior bushmanship and hardihood. The narrative of
+the journey adds a most interesting page to the records of Australian
+exploration, as it was conducted throughout without any mishap, although
+surrounded with many dangers, through a country almost unknown and
+during a season when the risks were much increased by reason of the
+advent of the annual heavy rains. The uncommon task of taking a mob of
+cattle such a distance with success, reflects the highest credit on the
+Jardine Brothers.
+
+The origin of the trip was a report made by the first governor, Sir G.
+Bowen, in 1862, to the Imperial Government recommending Somerset, Cape
+York, as a harbour of refuge, coaling station and entrepot for the trade
+of Torres Straits and islands of the North Pacific. The task of
+establishing the new settlement was confided to Mr. Jardine, Police
+Magistrate at Rockhampton, who was qualified by experience and judgment
+to carry out the work. Mr. Jardine proposed to establish a cattle
+station there, by sending cattle in charge of his two sons through the
+Peninsula, in order to supply the requirements of trade with fresh
+beef. Frank and Alick Jardine, aged respectively 22 and 20, carried out
+the task of overlanding very creditably, being strong, active, and hardy
+young men, full of resource and inured to bush work and discomforts.
+
+Those who know by experience what a wet season means in the Peninsula,
+with flooded creeks and rivers, poison plants killing the horses and
+cattle, and hostile blacks always on the alert to damage anything in
+their way, will understand the full meaning of the successful issue of
+such a trip. The writer settled a cattle station on the Mitchell River
+in 1879, and can thus enter fully into all the troubles of these young
+overlanders, and appreciate the magnitude of their task.
+
+The party, consisting of ten persons and twenty-one horses, left
+Rockhampton in May, 1864; they travelled overland to Bowen, where they
+obtained cattle from Mr. William Stenhouse, of the Clarke River. The
+furthest out station then was Carpentaria Downs, to the north-west, held
+by J. G. Macdonald, supposed to be on the Lynd River, but afterwards
+proved to be on the Einasleigh, a branch of the Gilbert River. On
+October 10th they were ready for a final start with the cattle from
+Carpentaria Downs. The party were composed of the following:--F. L.
+Jardine, leader; A. Jardine; A. J. Richardson, surveyor; C. Scrutton; R.
+N. Binney; A. Cowderoy; and four blackboys, Eulah, Peter, Sambo, and
+Barney, natives of Wide Bay and Rockhampton; also forty-one horses, one
+mule, and 250 cattle, with provisions to last for four months. They
+started under the impression they were following down the Lynd of
+Leichhardt, that led to the Mitchell River, hence the troubles and
+doubts about their journey were much increased, and it was a
+considerable time before the mistake was discovered. Not long after
+getting into the wilderness, a fire burnt one half of their camp gear
+and rations, which was a loss they felt throughout their journey.
+
+Travelling through poor, flat ti-tree country, covered with spinifex and
+wire grass that no stock would look at, they encountered the further
+misfortunes of the loss of horses and cattle by poison and delay owing
+to their being hunted by blacks. In addition to the loss of cattle,
+travelling was excessively heavy in consequence of the rains. But the
+journey was prosecuted in spite of all troubles and risks. The blacks
+soon commenced to attack them, and had to be checked, although they
+never ceased all through the journey to harass them. The party struck
+salt water when following down the Staaten, and then knew that they were
+out of their course, and not near the Mitchell River of Leichhardt. They
+saw the marine plains extending along the coast, and finally, about
+December 18th, crossed the long-looked for Mitchell River, covered here
+with dense vine scrubs, and having numerous wide channels. They lost
+some horses that went mad through drinking salt water, and at the
+crossing had a severe contest with the blacks, who had been daring and
+mischievous all the time. After crossing the Mitchell, they followed a
+course along the coast line of the Gulf, meeting with disasters all the
+way, their cattle being poisoned, their horses failing, their rations
+exhausted, and hardships accumulating. They finally left the Mitchell
+and made straight running for Cape York on December 22nd; the wet season
+came on them then, and nothing but rain was recorded while going through
+a most dismal, miserable country, poor in grass, and full of obstacles,
+such as scrub, etc. Heavy storms of rain and wind passed over them
+frequently, from which they had no shelter, the tents being blown to
+pieces. They had no salt, and the weather was too muggy to dry or jerk
+the meat when a beast was killed. In this way they crept along the coast
+line, crossing all the rivers and creeks in full flood, and by the time
+they reached the Batavia River they had to do most of the travelling on
+foot, so many horses having died from the fatal effects of the poison
+plants common in this despicable country. As all the creeks were lined
+with vine scrubs, they were compelled to cut tracks through every one of
+them for the cattle and to swim creeks every day, while the prickles of
+the pandanus leaves gave them special discomfort.
+
+Several attempts were made to search for the settlement at Cape York by
+advance parties, but it was not until March 2nd that the brothers,
+having met some friendly natives, were piloted into the settlement, and
+thus this most wonderful trip was concluded, having taken over five
+months to get through about 1,600 miles, the last two or three hundred
+being done on foot, and without even boots to their feet. The country
+passed through was mostly of a forbidding and sterile character, except
+on the Einasleigh River banks, and in consequence of their report, no
+occupation of runs followed. As the Peninsula became more explored,
+better country was discovered near the heads of the rivers flowing into
+the Gulf; and in after years a few stations were stocked with cattle.
+
+Frank Jardine, the elder brother, has lived at Somerset ever since, and
+his house is seen when passing through the beautiful Albany Pass. Alick
+Jardine became a surveyor and engineer, and for many years was employed
+by the Government of Queensland. He attained the position of Engineer
+for Harbours and Rivers, but was among the officers retrenched in 1893.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE SPREAD OF PASTORAL OCCUPATION.
+
+
+After the Canoona rush in 1858 and 1859, the tide of pastoral run
+hunting set in; the route northwards followed by stock going out to
+occupy new country led by Princhester and through Marlborough. Here the
+route turned off westwards towards the Peak Downs, and extended still
+further to the interior where the Barcoo, Thomson, and Alice Rivers
+flowed into a mysterious land. The northern road led on to Broad Sound,
+where Connor's Range had to be passed; this spur of the main coast range
+comes close in to the coast. Overlanders could not avoid crossing it,
+and this was an undertaking. It was reckoned to be two miles from the
+first rise to the summit, and to get drays and stock across sometimes
+took several days, as they had to unload some of their goods at the
+steep pinches and return empty for the balance of the loading. The road
+was in a state of nature, and wound round gullies and sidings through
+the forest trees that grew on the steep sides of the mountain; many a
+curse was wasted on its stony, dusty inclines ere the long looked for
+summit was reached. After crossing the range, the first settlement in
+those early days, about 1860, was Lotus Creek station. From Lotus Creek
+the road led on to Fort Cooper station, considered one of the best coast
+stations then discovered. As early as 1863, Nebo Creek, west of Mackay,
+was made a recruiting centre, where stores could be obtained from a firm
+named Kemmis and Bovey. Passing along Funnel Creek, still going
+northwards, the head of the Bowen River was reached.
+
+The Bowen River country was soon occupied with runs and stock from the
+south, passing along the coast route that led by Rockhampton,
+Marlborough, and Nebo. The roads were lined with flocks and herds of
+those entering on the pioneering work of the North of Queensland, and
+business men were following in the wake of the early stock settlers to
+commence a trade wherever an opportunity offered. The settlement was
+bona fide and genuine; men with means, energy and experience were
+entering on it with great enthusiasm and high hopes of the future of the
+new country. The wave of occupation passed on to the Burdekin River,
+causing a great demand for sheep and cattle for the purpose of stocking
+new country in the north and west. The requirements of this great
+augmentation of the stock northwards led to the opening of Bowen or Port
+Denison as a port of shipment for supplies. The discovery and opening of
+Port Denison will be treated of elsewhere; its opening to commerce was a
+boon to those who were occupying the country immediately at the rear of
+the port. Many overlanders took advantage of the port by shearing or
+lambing their sheep wherever a chance offered, and after obtaining
+supplies for the road, were prepared to extend their search for new
+country still further away. The Bowen River country is very interesting
+and its scenery most picturesque; it has first-class grazing qualities,
+small open plains, with patches of brigalow scrub scattered over
+black-soil country. Sandstone ranges bound the creeks on the coast side,
+whence they come down to the main stream. The river is a fine stream,
+with long and deep reaches, in which are found alligators of large size
+that have come up from the Burdekin River. Among the early settlers to
+take up country was Mr. J. G. Macdonald, afterwards an early pioneer in
+the Gulf country, though not a resident there. He took up, in
+conjunction with others, a large area of country in the Bowen district,
+afterwards known as Dalrymple, Inkermann, Strathbogie, and Ravenswood.
+His residence at Adelaide Point was at one period the show place of the
+North, where Mrs. Macdonald (after whom Adelaide Point was named)
+dispensed hospitality with a kindly grace which won all hearts. Of all
+this, nothing now remains but a memory. The house is gone; Mr. Macdonald
+is dead, and the family dispersed. Carpentaria Downs was also taken up
+by J. G. Macdonald, on the head of the Einasleigh River, for a long time
+the outside settlement.
+
+One of the early sheep stations held by Mr. Henning was located on the
+Bowen River, while lower down a fine piece of country called Havilah was
+held with sheep by Hillfling and Petersen--this was before 1862. Other
+stations occupied somewhere about this time, or even earlier, were
+Strathmore and Sonoma, held by Sellheim and Touissaint, with stock from
+Canning Downs. These stations were a stage still further north, the
+surrounding country being fine open forest land, very well grassed and
+watered. These runs were the first taken up in the pastoral district
+called Kennedy.
+
+The main stock route northward followed the Bowen River settlements
+crossing Pelican Creek, a tributary of the Bowen, through Sonoma run,
+then to the Bogie, and across to the Burdekin River, following up that
+stream to the Clarke and Lynd Rivers. Knowledge of a great pastoral
+country away to the shores of the Gulf and extending far up the Burdekin
+River was in the possession of many pioneer explorers whose names are
+unrecorded, and the tide of advancing settlement followed on as fast as
+was possible, stations being formed to the right and left of the main
+routes, while others moved forward with a restless energy that nothing
+would satisfy but the best country for their stock. One route turned on
+the Bowen River to the west, and crossed the Suttor River above Mount
+McConnel near the junction of the Cape River that came in from the
+westward. This stock track soon became a main road owing to the traffic
+which was carried on from the newly-opened port of Bowen or Port
+Denison to the western settlements, even to Bowen Downs station. The
+road led across the Leichhardt Range--another heavy piece for teams,
+equal to Connor's Range, the sharp stones laming the bullocks, and
+making the ascent a trial of patience and endurance to man and beast. A
+station called Natal Downs was held by Kellet and Spry on the Cape
+River, and by this route a great many of the early settlers in the far
+west travelled their stock during 1864-65. The blacks were aggressive in
+those days on Natal Downs, and were in the habit of cutting off the
+shepherds at outstations; it was reported and believed that as many as
+eighteen shepherds were killed at various outstations in the first few
+years of settlement there.
+
+Onward and westward went the movement of stock. The principal topic of
+conversation turned always upon new country, the latest discoveries of
+good grazing lands, and the men who were following with sheep and
+cattle. The way out west in those first days led up the Cape River
+through poor country, with a good deal of spinifex grass and patches of
+poison bush. On the flat tableland dividing the Gulf waters from those
+flowing towards the Thomson, were a series of large shallow swamps,
+known as Billy Webb's Lake, a kind of halting place for stock. Between
+this and the Flinders waters lies a tract of country nearly two hundred
+miles in width, called the Desert--and the name is a well-deserved one.
+The Desert consists of spinifex ridges and sandy sterile country,
+covered in large patches with the desert poison shrub botanically known
+as "Gastrolobium grandiflora." This dangerous plant grows to a height of
+six to eight feet in separate bushes, and exhibits a bluish-silvery
+sheen conspicuous afar off. It bears a scarlet blossom like a vetch, and
+the leaf is indented at the outer end. Its poisonous nature was soon
+proved by the first stock that attempted the passage. Many of the early
+drovers lost large numbers of both cattle and sheep from its deadly
+effects. In one camp, Halloran's and Alexander's, as many as 1,500 sheep
+died in one night from eating it. All the stock passing through this
+belt of desert country paid some tribute to its evil properties. This
+poison plant is peculiar to the strip of desert country that extends
+along the dividing watershed for many hundreds of miles, from the Alice
+River reaching north as far as the Lynd.
+
+The symptoms of poisoning from this plant are a kind of madness, causing
+animals to rush about furiously, and then, becoming paralysed, to fall
+helpless to the ground, and soon expire. There are but one or two
+varieties of the plant in Queensland, though in Western Australia twelve
+or fourteen varieties of Gastrolobium are found.
+
+Besides the destructive poison plant, there is the evil-smelling
+repellant spinifex growing through this strip of vile country, as well
+as a low, close scrub, through all of which stock has to be got before
+the open plain country is reached. A great scarcity of surface water,
+and low stony ridges with heavy patches of red sand, are characteristic
+of poison country. Glad indeed were the pioneers to leave it behind, and
+with great satisfaction to stand on the rocky eminence that bounded it
+on the western side, whence they looked down the open valley of the
+Jardine, and beheld the downs and the grassy plains of the Flinders
+spreading out before them for many miles. The sight came as a surprise
+and relief after so much disagreeable travelling through the worst
+portion of North Queensland, especially should a thunderstorm have
+passed over the country recently and caused a spring in the herbage. The
+Flinders River flowing to the west and north-west towards the Gulf of
+Carpentaria, through most extensive plains and downs, traverses a
+different geological formation to that which the pioneers crossed when
+coming from the east coast. The edge of the great cretaceous formation
+which forms the major portion of the western country, is here entered on
+for the first time, and a new strange world seems to open up. A new
+fauna and flora is evident on the very first entrance into the new
+region; the birds are different and more numerous; galas, parrots, and
+pigeons abound, and assure the newcomer that he has found a new pastoral
+country, the grasses and herbage of which are more permanent, enduring
+and nutritive than those he has hitherto met with. The downs, covered
+with the Mitchell grass, with scarcely a bush or shrub to break the
+monotony, stretch away as far as the eye can see; while the heavy timber
+along the creeks and rivers indicates their course. A dreary monotony
+prevails on the western rivers, the same everlasting plains, the same
+great grassy waste of downs like an ocean without its interesting
+motion. Far ahead can be seen the river timber winding through the brown
+plains, so that the traveller can see a whole day's stage ahead. For
+over a hundred of miles along the north-eastern, or right bank of the
+Flinders River, is a tableland of basaltic formation, near which the
+river winds its course; a dark fringe of rocks rises abruptly, broken
+here and there by indentations through which flow creeks to join the
+main channel. The cone of eruption for this vast overflow of lava is
+said to be somewhere about Mount Sturgeon, to the eastward. The lava has
+flowed over the original sandstone formation, and formed a level
+tableland now broken and covered with black, porous blocks of lava of
+every size. It is utilised for pasture purposes, notwithstanding its
+forbidding aspect.
+
+Some time after Rule and Lacy stocked the Aramac, Mr. Hodgson arrived on
+it with sheep and took up and stocked Rodney Downs; he crossed the
+spinifex country from the Belyando to the Alice River, and lost about
+six thousand sheep on this track by poison bush, the Gastrolobium
+grandiflora. Mr. Meredith arrived in May of the same year on the
+Thomson, and took up and stocked Tower Hill station. During June of
+this year the Thomson and Aramac Creek were in high flood; Rule and Lacy
+were flooded out of their first camp, and removed to where Aramac
+station now is. Some stockmen looking after the company's cattle on an
+anabranch of Cornish Creek, were surrounded by water, and lived on
+jerked beef for a month. About July the head station was shifted up to
+Cornish Creek, taking the name of Bowen Downs with it, which name it has
+since retained. In 1872 the cattle station was formed into a separate
+establishment under the management of Mr. E. R. Edkins, who called it
+Mount Cornish, in honor of the late E. B. Cornish, of Sydney. This year
+wound up with a wet Christmas. Wages in those days were very high,
+stockmen getting as much as 40s. a week, and cooks 30s.; any old horse
+would bring L25. The year 1864 may be styled the year of Hegira or
+flight of stock outwards to settle new country; they came from all
+parts, and helped to fill the land everywhere with the beginning of
+civilisation. A boom had set in for pastoral occupation; the reports of
+recent explorations told of enormous tracts of grand open country
+waiting for stock to utilise it, and each one was anxious to be the
+first to secure some of it for his sheep or cattle. The head of the
+Flinders River was occupied by a few settlers, and two lots of sheep
+passed Bowen Downs, en route to the Flinders. They belonged to Kirk and
+Sutherland, and Mr. J. L. Ranken, and came from Fort Cooper way, losing
+heavily in crossing the range between Bully Creek and Lake Buchanan,
+between eight and ten thousand sheep perishing through eating the desert
+poison bush. They discovered what was the cause of such losses by
+feeding some sheep on the suspected plant when they died with all the
+symptoms of the victims in the desert track. The first white man known
+to have been killed by the blacks on the Thomson was one of the
+shepherds with Kirk and Sutherland's sheep. He was killed on Duck Pond
+Creek, a tributary of Cornish Creek. After he was buried, the blacks dug
+the body up at night and drove a stake through it, pinning it to the
+ground. Kirk and Sutherland must have reached the Flinders about April,
+and then occupied and stocked Marathon. Mr. J. L. Ranken occupied Afton
+Downs, but was dried out the following year, and he lost a number of his
+sheep in consequence of having to remove them lower down the Flinders.
+In March of this year Mr. Meredith, of Tower Hill, formed a station on
+the east side of Landsborough Creek, naming it Eversleigh, and stocked
+it with cattle. In March also Bowen Downs sent cattle up the
+Landsborough for the purpose of stocking the west side of the creek. The
+men with the cattle had a very rough trip, as there was incessant rain,
+and the country became one vast quagmire; all their rations and
+ammunition were spoilt, and they had to live on young calf, "staggering
+bob," as they called it. Mr. E. H. Butler was in charge, and after
+leaving the cattle, started for home at the Mud Hut, when a thunderstorm
+occurred that put out their fire and wet all their matches. The river
+branches were flooded, and during the next two days they had nothing to
+eat, and no fire, and were drenched to the skin by thunderstorms; their
+pack-horse with all their blankets had knocked up, and they passed the
+night without sleep, being wet and cold and hungry; next morning they
+had to swim the main branch of the river, and then walk four miles to
+the station, leaving behind one of their mates knocked up on an island
+in the river. About September of this year (1864), Bowen Downs
+despatched about fifteen hundred head of cattle in charge of Mr. Donald
+McGlashen to the Gulf of Carpentaria for the purpose of taking up
+country and stocking it. These cattle travelled up the Landsborough,
+crossed the watershed on to Walker's Creek, followed it down to the
+Flinders, and down that river to the turn off to Sackey's Lagoon, and
+down the Alexandra to the Leichhardt, then across by Miller's Waterhole
+to Beame's Brook, where the first station was formed called the Brook,
+about sixteen miles above where Burketown now stands; they arrived there
+before the end of 1864, and were the first stock to occupy the Gulf
+country. When Mr. Landsborough left the Albert River on his trip in
+search of Burke and Wills, he left a four hundred gallon tank there with
+a lot of rations in it for the use of any distressed explorers or
+others, and fastened the lid in such a way that he thought the blacks
+would be unable to open it; but when Mr. McGlashen found the tank, he
+discovered that the blacks had solved the problem, and the rations were
+not there. When they were mustering these cattle before starting, the
+boss, Mr. A. Scott Holmes, riding along with a stockman, met a
+blackfellow whose gin had two half-caste children with her, aged about
+nine and seven years; the blackfellow evidently wanted them to see the
+children, as he kept pointing to them. Some years after this it was
+reported that two half-castes were with the blacks out to the west of
+the Thomson, but nothing more was heard of them.
+
+It was during this year of 1864 that the first settlers found their way
+to the Barcoo, although the fame of its pastures had been known years
+before from the reports of Sir Thomas Mitchell and others explorers.
+Among the first to settle there was J. T. Allen, who took up Enniskillen
+in 1862, and who still resides there. Bell and Dutton took up Tambo
+station, close to where the township of the same name sprang up
+afterwards. Govett and Parsons took up Terrick, and Yaldwyn occupied
+Ravensbourne, while Moor and Reid held Moorsland, now called Lorne.
+Henry Edwards, from the Burnett, took up Malvern, which was sold the
+same year to the Ellis Bros., who then occupied Portland.
+
+In 1865, C. Lumley Hill, with Allen and Holberton, took up Isis Downs.
+Then a pause ensued in occupying new runs, and progress was checked;
+but after the passing of the Pastoral Leases Act of 1869, which gave
+greater facilities for the occupation of new country, and more liberal
+terms, many runs were occupied; among them, Mr. Hill held Westlands. A.
+B. Buchanan took up Wellshot, while Welford took up Welford Downs, and
+was killed by the blacks in 1872. Among the runs opened in those days
+were Tocal, Bimerah, Mount Marlow, and Louisa Downs. The stock to occupy
+all these runs in those early days mainly came from the Darling Downs
+and Burnett, as in the first days of the Queensland Parliament an Act
+was passed excluding New South Wales stock. Mr. Hill, in 1874, sold Isis
+Downs, which was divided into three runs called Albilbah, Ruthven, and
+Isis Downs. A great deal of the western plain country was occupied
+during the years between 1865 and 1870, and a great deal of interest and
+energy was exhibited in taking up and selling large blocks of fine
+pastoral country. Sheep for stocking country rose to high prices, but
+when the crisis occurred, there was a collapse in values, and many
+abandoned a good deal of the country and disappeared from the scene.
+
+Berkelman and Lambert discovered and settled Elizabeth Creek and
+Listowel Downs. Mr. H. E. King was the first Land Commissioner, and
+superintended the laying out of Tambo, the first town on the Barcoo. The
+price of carriage for supplies in those day was L46 per ton. Cameron and
+Crombie took up Barcaldine in 1864 with sheep from New England, and, in
+conjunction with Mr. Allen, they also took up Home Creek, Enniskillen,
+Minnie Downs, Vergemont, and Evesham. They brought their stock by the
+Burnett, the Dawson, and Springsure, over the Expedition Range. There
+was the usual trouble with the blacks after settling down. The natives
+killed the shepherds and robbed the huts of rations and cooking utensils
+that were very difficult to replace in those days. The Peak Downs was
+first reported on by Dr. Leichhardt, but many years elapsed before
+occupation set in. Among those who were prominent in the opening up and
+early settlement of the fine tableland of Peak Downs, with its rich
+soil, were De Satge and Milford, of Wolfang; Mackay, of Huntley; Gordon
+Sandeman, of Gordon Downs; Hood, of Hood and Manning; and Lamb and
+Black, of Yamala.
+
+As the character of the new country became known, many other runs near
+Hughenden were occupied by overlanders struggling along with stock,
+among them was Fairlight, on the basalt ridge, held with sheep by Henry
+Betts. Afton Downs, as has already been mentioned, was taken up with
+sheep by Mr. Ranken, who deserted it later with a considerable loss of
+stock owing to drought. Kirk and Sutherland, who had come from Suttor
+Creek with sheep in 1863 were also dried out from Marathon, and suffered
+great losses. Both of these runs now possess flowing streams in every
+direction, formed by artesian bores. Notable among the early settlers
+was the family of the Annings, father and sons, from Victoria. They held
+Reedy Springs, on the head waters of the Flinders, Charlotte Plains, and
+several other stations formed by their enterprise; the sons still occupy
+the same country, and have grown gray in pioneering. Another Victorian
+firm, Muirson, Jamieson and Thompson, occupied Mount Emu with sheep in
+1862, after much travelling about in search of suitable country. Mrs.
+Thompson, with a young family, accompanied her husband in those early
+pioneering days of roughness and privation, and lived at Mount Emu for
+many years, where her large family grew up, and her sons are now
+occupying runs throughout the district. The hospitality of Mount Emu was
+proverbial, and the refinement that prevailed in all the arrangements at
+the head station gave additional value to the welcome that was extended
+to all travellers. On the Burdekin country, the family of the Hanns,
+father and sons, possessed themselves of Maryvale, a splendid piece of
+country.
+
+The farthest outstation north in 1860-61 was that of W. Stenhouse, on
+the Clarke, a tributary of the Burdekin. Seventy miles nearer Bowen, was
+the station of Allingham Bros., and thirty-five miles still nearer port
+were located the Messrs Cunningham. Ernest Henry very early took up
+Mount McConnel, at the junction of the Suttor and Selheim Rivers; this
+is one of the old landmarks of Leichhardt when on his trip to Port
+Essington in 1844-45. Stock were taken there from Baroondah, on the
+Dawson, in 1860; and later on Hughenden station was settled with stock
+taken from Mount McConnel. Hughenden is situated at the beginning of the
+open plain country on the Flinders; it was one of the first stations
+settled there in 1864. The present head station is on the exact spot
+taken up so long ago, but is somewhat different in style to the original
+slab hut on the ridge in which Mr. R. R. Morrissett and his hutkeeper,
+old Jack Ryan, dwelt in 1864, when water for the use of the head station
+was drawn from the junction of the creek with the river, that being the
+only surface water within miles. Mr. Ernest Henry, a most energetic and
+indefatigable pioneer carried on a good deal of prospecting on the
+Cloncurry, and was the earliest discoverer of the mineral wealth of the
+district. A company was formed in 1868 to work the copper lodes
+discovered by Mr. Henry, but after expending large sums of money on
+smelting works, etc., they were obliged to cease operations on account
+of the expense of carriage and the low price of copper. H. Devilin was
+one of the most active and venturesome pioneers in discovering and
+making known to others the country on the Flinders. He opened the way
+for several stockowners in that extensive district, though he himself
+does not appear to have had much personal interest in any of the
+speculations.
+
+In opening up the highway through the head of the Flinders to the far
+west, these pioneers were the forerunners of the great wave of
+settlement that followed on immediately afterwards, notwithstanding the
+deterrent features of the desert and the poison bush, through which they
+had to pass with their stock. Up to 1864 the runs that had been stocked
+on the Upper Flinders downs were Fairlight, by Betts and Oxley with
+sheep, and Telemon station by Collins and Walpole. This last property is
+now owned by J. L. Currie, of Melbourne, is mostly freehold, and with
+the discovery of artesian water, and the introduction of fine wooled
+sheep, has become a most valuable estate. It consists of open rolling
+downs, with patches of gidya, a species of acacia. Marathon, on the
+Upper Flinders, was taken up by R. H. Sheaffe, who for five years
+represented the Burke district in the Legislative Assembly. The run was
+sold by him to Kirk and Sutherland, who were in search of grass for
+their sheep. Marathon is now owned by a Melbourne firm, and by means of
+artesian wells, carries 200,000 sheep. After being dried out from Afton
+Downs, John Ranken, a member of a very old colonial family in New South
+Wales, eventually found his way to Barkly Tableland, where he settled
+for a time. Afton Downs is situated on Walker's Creek, a tributary of
+the Flinders on the western side, and is of the usual open rolling downs
+formation. All these runs, as previously mentioned, were occupied before
+the discovery of artesian springs, and therefore subject to being
+periodically dried out. At the present day, with judicious expenditure
+on artesian wells, and other improvements, this run annually shears
+close on 100,000 sheep. Following down the Flinders through the great
+plain country, the next station occupied was Richmond Downs, where a
+struggling township named Richmond now stands; this was held in 1864 by
+Bundock and Hays, with cattle from the Clarence River, in New South
+Wales. They lost many on their way out by pleuro-pneumonia and the
+desert poison bush already described. Opposite to Richmond Downs, across
+the Flinders River, Kennedy and Macdonald took up about the same time a
+run which they called Cambridge Downs, now a large sheep station. All
+these runs on the Upper Flinders were first settled in 1864, and formed
+an outpost of settlement by which other pioneers directed their course
+lower down the river. During 1865 and the following year, another wave
+of occupation flowed on past these outside stations, and the new
+pioneers finding country further on, became in their turn a starting
+point for others, and still the tide flowed outwards and westwards till
+all available country was taken up. Those who came out during 1864 and
+1865 had a serious difficulty to contend with in facing a drier season
+than has since been experienced up to 1897. The pioneers with their
+stock were compelled to follow the course of the river, as it was almost
+certain death to go far to the west looking for water or country. All
+the tributary creeks of the Flinders were dry, and those who ventured
+out had soon to return to the main watercourse. The native dogs crowded
+in on the Flinders in thousands, and the blacks themselves had also to
+resort to it. During that trying season, none of the rivers ran in their
+channels, and even most of the large waterholes in the bed of the
+Flinders dried up, while stages of thirty or forty miles without water
+were frequent. Notwithstanding these drawbacks to stockowners who were
+on the search for some unfrequented nook to unharness on, the crowd
+pressed on in the hope of better country ahead, some Canaan far beyond,
+where hills were always green and water abundant. These men followed
+each other in quick succession and took up runs on the Lower Flinders
+and all over the Gulf country, wherever water could be found.
+
+This settlement, carried out in those early years, was most extensive
+and comprehensive, and during the time the western country was being
+sought out and utilised the Burdekin was being stocked in every part.
+One of the pioneers was Mr. Robert Stewart, of Southwick station, on
+Fletcher's Creek, a stream of pure, clear water, flowing from the great
+basaltic wall into the Burdekin. Reedy Lake station was stocked with
+sheep by O'Reilly and Reeve, near Dalrymple, where the main route from
+Bowen to the Gulf crossed the Burdekin River. Many other runs were taken
+up on the Burdekin and towards the coast, and many soon changed hands,
+the first settlers passing on to occupy country in the interior.
+Several of these first-comers took up coast runs and stocked them with
+sheep, believing they would thrive there. This was found to be a
+mistake, and from Wide Bay to the north scarcely any sheep are now to be
+met with on coastal runs. For a few years in some places they did well
+enough, but they soon began to die from fluke, worms, and grass seeds,
+and they were accordingly replaced by cattle. The sheep on being removed
+to western pastures throve well, and soon recovered health. The seeds of
+the spear grass (Andropogon contortus) were a terrible scourge--they are
+finely barbed and intensely sharp and hard; once entered they pass right
+through the skin of the sheep, even into the flesh, causing great
+annoyance and leading to poverty and death. The soil in which this grass
+thrives best is in the sandy strips along the banks of creeks. After
+seeding, the heads bunch together, in tangled masses, and shower the
+seeds on to sheep passing through. It is of use as a fodder grass only
+when young and green, although cattle thrive fairly well upon it, and
+its presence in any quantity at once determines whether the pasturage is
+favourable to sheep or not. The cattle that were brought from Bowen
+Downs to stock the runs taken up on the Gulf, were brought to their
+northern starting point from Fort Cooper and further south during 1860
+by N. Buchanan and W. Landsborough, who were both very active and
+enterprising in opening up new country. This splendid property (Bowen
+Downs) was settled by the Landsborough River Company, held in shares by
+Messrs. N. Buchanan, W. Landsborough, Cornish, and W. Glen Walker, with
+Messrs. Morehead and Young, of Sydney. The first four went out of the
+company shortly afterwards, and Mr. Cornish, after visiting the Gulf
+country, fell a victim to maladies contracted during the journey. Mount
+Cornish was known in the early days as the Mud Hut. Mr. E. R. Edkins,
+who has now been the manager for many years, was among the very early
+drovers of stock to the Gulf. He left the Murray in 1861, and started
+from the Gil-gil in January, 1862, passed Rockhampton, took in charge
+Mr. R. Stewart's cattle, and brought them to Fletcher's Creek, now
+Southwick, on the Lower Burdekin, and reached Maryvale in September of
+that year. He then returned to the Murray, and brought out another lot
+of cattle, passing Bowen in April, 1864. Here the cattle were placed in
+quarantine. After being inoculated for pleuro, they travelled on to
+Mount Emu, in September, 1864. James Gibson also took up a run on
+Junction Creek, also Wanda Vale and Cargoon stations.
+
+Among the settlers who were first in the new country on the Flinders
+were Messrs. Little and Hetzer, who took up a run called Uralla, near
+the junction of the Saxby and Flinders Rivers. Their stock consisting of
+cattle and sheep came by Bowen Downs to the head of the Flinders, and
+then followed the usual route. The blacks made some trouble at the
+station and several lives were sacrificed. Others of the pioneers to try
+their fortune in the general rush for new country were the Earle
+Brothers, who had a station near Bowen; one of them, Mr. Thomas Earle,
+took up country on Spear Creek, the head of the Norman River, in 1865,
+and called the station Iffley. The season was so uncommonly dry, that
+permanent water was the chief attraction, and the splendid waterhole at
+Iffley, more than two miles long, and very deep, decided the Earles to
+fix themselves there with their cattle and drays. There was at the time
+a vast extent of country open for settlement; the terms were fairly
+liberal, and the prospects good for those in search of new runs. The
+settlers were like a great advancing army, confident in their numbers
+and strength; and so they advanced into the unknown land, and left the
+rest to fortune. They came from all the settled parts of Australia; that
+was what induced Mr. H. F. Smith, of Barnes and Smith, to bring cattle
+from Lyndhurst and take up a run on the Lower Flinders, called Tempe
+Downs, on L Creek, so called from a tree marked L, one of Leichhardt's
+marked trees when on his expedition to Port Essington, 1844-5. In 1865
+James Kennedy took stock from Cambridge Downs, and held a fine run on
+the Upper Leichhardt River, calling it Pentland Downs. In the same year,
+James Cassidy occupied country lower down on the same river with sheep.
+One of the pioneers who went through much personal privation and
+hardship in the general forward march to discover new country, was Mr.
+Reginald Halloran, associated with his brother-in-law, Mr. Robert
+Alexander, of Proston, on the Burnett. They suffered heavy losses among
+the sheep while going through the desert, from the poison plant, and
+also from want of water. With the party was a young fellow named Briggs,
+who was killed by the blacks on Skeleton Creek before reaching Hughenden
+while a detachment of the party was camped there. The remnant of the
+stock that survived the trip were placed on a piece of country on the
+Lower Flinders, which they named Home Creek, but which was soon deserted
+by this firm, though held as a station years afterwards. Mr. Halloran
+was a man conspicuous for his utter disregard of personal comfort; he
+would start on a ride of a hundred miles without rations or blanket,
+trusting to the chapter of accidents for food, and to his saddle cloth
+for covering for the night, and he was always welcome at any camp owing
+to his geniality and fund of humour. The young fellow, Briggs, who met
+with an untimely death, had arrived at the advance camp only the night
+before for rations, and while alone in the tent next morning, the other
+man being absent horse-hunting, a party of blacks visited the camp. The
+white man showed fight, breaking a gun over the head of one of the
+blacks, but was soon killed, and when the horse-hunter returned, he
+found Briggs dead and the camp looted.
+
+A place called Sorghum Downs, on the Lower Cloncurry, now part of
+Conobie, was claimed by an old colonist and pioneer named Murdoch
+Campbell; he and his wife (a Devonshire woman), had camped on the Bowen
+River in 1863, but it was a long time before they found their way out so
+far west. Mrs. Campbell's hospitality and kindness to all travellers was
+one of the pleasant remembrances of those early hard times. Campbell
+died in 1867, and Mrs. Campbell ultimately went to New Zealand, where
+she had friends. A small firm of two men, Anderson and Trimble,
+successful diggers from the Snowy River, in New South Wales, joined the
+rest of the pushing crowd, and held a good run on the Saxby River with
+sheep.
+
+Still the tide of occupation flowed on, and when all the available
+watered runs around the Gulf were occupied in 1865 and the following
+year, those remaining unsatisfied, marched on, restless as the surges
+that beat on the shore. Several of those in charge of stock travelled up
+the Gregory River southwards, and out far away on to Barkly Tableland,
+discovered by Mr. W. Landsborough. These were among the first to make
+known the capabilities of this splendid district. The Stieglitz Brothers
+held country far away to the south on the Herbert River, called now the
+Georgina, having passed through all the Flinders and Gulf country
+unrewarded.
+
+Gregg and Nash, with sheep for the Messrs. J. and E. Brown, of
+Newcastle, followed on the far-away track to the inland Never-Never,
+Mrs. Gregg and her daughter accompanying the party in all their
+wanderings. The attention and hospitality of this lady to all travellers
+was as conspicuous as it was highly prized, and it will not be easily
+forgotten. Several other pioneers occupied runs on the Barkly
+tablelands, which was recognised as some of the finest pastoral land in
+Queensland. In after years, when this country came to be restocked by a
+new generation from the south, after being deserted and forsaken by the
+original pioneers, the new settlers were surprised to find evidences of
+a previous occupation. Where the early settlers had come from, where
+they had gone to, and who they were, were matters of curiosity; sheets
+of galvanised iron they well knew did not grow like the gidya trees,
+neither were old sheepyards (built of basaltic stones) the work of
+blacks. But who those early pioneers were, and what their fate, was
+utterly unknown, and caused much speculation.
+
+All the country bordering on the Gulf suitable for grazing purposes was
+portioned out and occupied between the years 1864 and 1868. Though in
+most cases the number of stock on each run was small, the runs were
+numerous, and most of the owners were resident. It was recognised that a
+great future was in store for this vast new territory just opening up to
+enterprise and capital. The Plains of Promise, named by one of the early
+navigators (Captain Stokes, of the "Beagle," in 1842), had been much
+talked of for years, but when they were stocked, the distant fields
+lost much of their interest. The fine rivers flowing into the Gulf of
+Carpentaria, through hundreds of miles of open plains and rolling downs,
+covered with permanent and valuable pasturage, gave to the early
+settlers good reasons for believing they were the pioneers in opening up
+a grand and wealth-producing territory.
+
+Stations were formed, stock brought out, improvements made, and the way
+opened for permanent occupation. The high hopes entertained seemed
+likely to be realised, until a change came over the aspect of things--a
+change brought about by influences far removed from the local scene, and
+in which the settlers had no voice--a change in which no amount of
+energy or sacrifice on their part could avail aught. The days of
+commercial panic set in, culminating in the crisis of 1868-69, the march
+of settlement was instantly checked, and the outward flow of
+civilisation turned backwards. The financial crisis was felt all over
+the mercantile world; banks of old standing collapsed, and low prices
+for wool and stock, and all station produce, brought the pastoral
+industry to a low ebb.
+
+In consequence of these monetary disturbances, agents declined to find
+money to carry on places so far distant as the Gulf stations--even the
+little required for current expenses. All credit was stopped, and
+supplies also, and as the newly-formed stations could not be made
+self-supporting in the absence of local markets, the stock had to be
+abandoned or removed. The tide began to ebb at a greater rate than it
+had risen; some of the stock were sent south, while the rest were boiled
+down, scarcely clearing expenses in either case; the improvements were
+abandoned as well as the runs. The sheep came in from Barkly Tableland,
+the Gregory, and the Leichhardt, and by the year 1871, there were but
+few runs occupied. The great flood of 1869-70 helped to fill the cup of
+misfortune for the Gulf residents; no such flood was ever dreamt of, or
+has ever been seen since; it rained all January, February, and most of
+March, and the rivers covered all the plain country, though the loss of
+stock was small. A few runs on the Flinders and Cloncurry were still
+kept in occupation, but they were not many, and these only struggled
+along, hoping for better times. No value was attached to runs or stock
+in any of the Gulf country then, as runs could be obtained much nearer
+settlement for next to nothing, many being thrown up through the general
+depression. It seemed as if the bottom had fallen out of the pastoral
+industry, and hope had gone, but relief came sooner than was expected.
+The Etheridge goldfield was opened, and served to employ a good deal of
+the floating population. This field is situated to the east of Normanton
+on the Delany and Etheridge Rivers, about 250 miles towards the east
+coast. The discovery of auriferous reefs there, as well as some
+alluvial gold, helped to keep trade alive, until the discovery of the
+rich fields on the Palmer in 1873, when a great demand set in for
+cattle. The financial depression lifted, the price of wool went up 100
+per cent., and a demand again arose for runs to stock; the old ones were
+all taken up, new country was applied for, and the voice of the man with
+money was heard again in the land. In the years following, up to 1884,
+much speculation was carried on in buying and selling runs and stock,
+and country for occupation was as eagerly sought after as in the early
+days.
+
+Advantage was taken of the liberal provisions of the Pastoral Leases Act
+of 1869, to take up unoccupied country, even if it was dry. Cattle were
+selling on the Palmer diggings at L10 and L12 a head cash, and the
+supply of bullocks was not equal to the demand, because the runs had
+been so thinned by the exodus of stock south to clear expenses, that no
+surplus was available to meet such a sudden demand as that caused by the
+arrival of 20,000 diggers in the north. Then the tide flowed again, and
+became the flood that helped to fill the country with work and life.
+Cattle came out in large numbers, and passed on to occupy country in the
+northern territory of South Australia, and even in Western Australia. As
+many as 30,000 head passed over the border in one year at Burketown, for
+the purpose of stocking country around Port Darwin.
+
+For several years travelling stock went out to the far north-west, and
+all had to pass through the Gulf country. The route followed from the
+borders of Queensland was by the track that Leichhardt took on his
+journey to Port Essington, between the tableland and salt water,
+crossing the Macarthur, Roper, Calvert, and other rivers. Stations were
+occupied on the Orde and Victoria Rivers on the Cambridge Gulf side with
+stock from North Queensland. In those districts some very fine open
+downs country had recently been discovered. Fisher and Lyons had 20,000
+head of cattle sent out to their country in the north-west. Osman and
+Panton also had large numbers of cattle from Queensland. Dr. Brown is
+reported to have expended L100,000 is sending sheep and cattle from the
+Adelaide side to the northern territory. The stocking of this far away
+country was extremely expensive owing to the distance the cattle had to
+travel, and the unusually high percentage of losses on the way. Some of
+the stock were two years on the road, and a new disease called red water
+attacked them when passing the Roper River. This disease is supposed to
+be due to cattle ticks (Ixodes Bovis), and has since carried disaster
+into many herds in Queensland. The average cost of some of the cattle
+when arrived on their country was equal to L7 a head, in consequence of
+losses and expenses. The Gordon Brothers were among the early drovers to
+take stock over the borders to West Australia, and they made several
+trips. The Duracks are another family of pioneer settlers in the
+northern territory, and held extensive possessions. The country
+bordering the rivers that flow into the Cambridge Gulf was reported to
+be of a superior description and of a fattening nature. Though much of
+the country in the northern territory was reckoned of an inferior
+description for grazing, the encouraging terms of leasing offered by the
+South Australian Government induced many to venture on the hazardous
+undertaking. The markets opened up by the goldfields of Port Darwin
+repaid some of their enterprise. Bullocks were sold at from L17 to L20
+cash for butchering purposes. Eventually a shipping trade in cattle was
+opened up with Singapore from Port Darwin; a company built special
+steamers for carrying stock and passengers to the northern ports. The
+results have proved satisfactory, as the s.s. "Darwin" lately (1897)
+took a cargo of 190 head of fat bullocks on board, this being her
+forty-second trip.
+
+The Cape York Peninsula, within which was found the rich Palmer
+diggings, came in for a share of settlement between 1875 and 1880. The
+first of the early pioneers to take up a cattle run on the Mitchell
+River was Mr. A. C. Grant, now of Messrs. B. D. Morehead and Co. He left
+the Bowen River with three hundred fat cattle from Havilah station for
+Messrs. Skene and Henderson, and took up Wrotham Park in 1873, situated
+between the Mitchell and Walsh Rivers, on Elizabeth Creek, 120 miles
+N.N.E. from Georgetown, a nice open piece of country, consisting of
+black soil flats and ridges. The cattle he took up realised L11 5s. per
+head cash all round; beef was then selling on the field at 1s. per lb.
+Mr. Patrick Callaghan held a few blocks of country along the Mitchell
+River, chiefly as a depot for bullocks for sale on the various diggings,
+as he became a large buyer of cattle from the local market in
+conjunction with F. Leslie, J. Edwards, and J. Duff. The transactions
+and profits of this enterprising firm were on a very large scale, one
+partner travelling outside buying cattle, another superintending the
+supply to local butchers, and the other two attending to the gold
+buying, slaughtering, and financial business of the concern. The next to
+take up country for pastoral purposes on the Mitchell water was Edward
+Palmer (the author of these notes), who, in conjunction with John
+Stevenson and Walter Reid, took up and stocked Gamboola in 1879 with
+cattle from Ravenswood and Mount McConnel runs. The extent of good
+pasture land on the Mitchell waters, or anywhere on the Peninsula,
+further north, is limited. When the Palmer goldfield was opened the
+farthest outstation stocked on the overland route was Mount Surprise, on
+Junction Creek, held by the Firths, and this was over 200 miles from the
+diggings by the nearest practicable road. The road was opened by drovers
+taking stock, and carriers and miners passing northwards with their
+faces set direct to the wonderful land of gold. The road crossed the
+Tate, the Walsh, and the Mitchell Rivers, and then followed up the
+Palmer River through some of the roughest country in North Queensland.
+When Cooktown was opened as a port for the diggings, the overland route
+was abandoned for dray traffic, and droving stock alone used it. The
+consumption of beef on the field for several years demanded an average
+annual supply of from 15,000 to 20,000 head, most of the cattle
+realising from L7 to L10 each. The stock came from coastal runs mostly,
+Dotswood and the Burdekin country supplying much of it, Bowen Downs and
+Aramac[E] also sending in many large mobs. Very few breeding cattle were
+brought out, but some small runs towards Cooktown were occupied with
+cattle, the country consisting of open timbered ridges of only a
+second-class description, but fairly well watered. The Mitchell River
+was named by Dr. Leichhardt in memory of another explorer, Sir Thomas
+Mitchell. Leichhardt saw this river where it junctioned with the Lynd,
+and one of his old camps is still to be seen on the Lynd a little above
+this junction. It is really a beautiful river, with a clear running
+stream all the year round, and some deep reaches of still water; the
+banks are covered with scrubs of pencil cedar and a great variety of
+hanging vines and thick shrubs. The principal source of the river is
+near Port Douglas on the east coast, within six miles of the township,
+on the top of the range, from whence the water flows north-west, and
+continues its course to the Gulf of Carpentaria, where it empties itself
+in latitude 15 deg. 10 sec. In its course, it receives the waters of the
+Walsh, Lynd, and Palmer Rivers, as well as the Hodgkinson, and becomes a
+mighty stream. Indeed it is one of the most picturesque and interesting
+rivers in Queensland. The upper parts of this stream were explored by J.
+V. Mulligan and his party of prospectors in 1875. Leichhardt followed it
+below the junction of the Lynd when on his trip to Port Essington,
+before leaving it to cross to the Gulf country. The Mitchell River
+country is famous for its native game; the scrubs abound with wallaby,
+turkeys, and pigeons; the river and lagoons teem with fish of every
+variety, and waterfowl cover the shallow waters where the alligators are
+unable to reach them. The open country surrounding has the large
+kangaroo and the common bustard (plain turkey) in abundance. The
+country fattens stock, and is well watered. It consists of alluvial
+soil and open ridges of a sandy nature, where the grass is coarse and is
+covered with a low mimosa scrub.
+
+[Footnote E: The word "Aramac" was coined by the late Mr. W.
+Landsborough, the well-known explorer, and is an euphonious abbreviation
+of the name of the late Sir Robert Ramsey Mackenzie, who was Colonial
+Secretary in the first Macalister Ministry (1866) and Colonial Treasurer
+and Premier 1867-8. Mr. Landsborough was fond of coining words by
+joining the first syllable of one name to the first syllable of another
+name--thus the run known as "Willandspey," on Vine Creek, near Mount
+Hope, just below the junction of the Belyando and Suttor Rivers, is a
+combination of the names of William Landsborough and Peyton, the first
+lessee of the run.]
+
+Among the many other disabilities that cattle were subject to in this
+new country was a poison bush or tree, growing along the banks of creeks
+and rivers, called the peach tree (Cannabis sp.) It is said to have been
+the cause of many deaths, for hundreds of cattle that were unused to the
+plant died along the bends of the rivers, though young stock bred in the
+country appeared to be immune to its evil effects. Notwithstanding all
+these drawbacks and discouragements, runs were taken up on the Archer
+and other rivers in the Peninsula as far as Cape York, and the rivers
+flowing into Princess Charlotte's Bay were all occupied by the pioneers
+of settlement in face of all opposition and discouragement.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE RISE OF THE NORTHERN TOWNS.
+
+
+The site of Rockhampton, now the principal city of Central Queensland,
+was chosen in 1855 by Mr. Wiseman, a Land Commissioner of New South
+Wales who had been despatched from Sydney to confirm the Archer Brothers
+in the possession of their Gracemere run. The town received its name
+from the bar of rocks running across the river at the head of
+navigation. Its first expansion dates from the rush to the Canoona
+diggings, then called Port Curtis rush, which took place in 1858, as it
+was then the nearest port to the field, and therefore handled all the
+trade to and from the diggings. When the field was declared a "duffer,"
+and the miners departed in disgust, they left the nucleus of a
+settlement behind which was subsequently to become the seaport and
+distributing centre for all the rich pastoral country now comprised in
+the Central District.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Among the first settlers to open up Gladstone was R. E. Palmer, who
+built a large wool store and wharf so that the wool from Rannes and
+other stations lately formed could be shipped from there. He then took
+up Targinie cattle station over the harbour on the north side. The town
+is now noted for its healthiness and pleasant climate, and the beautiful
+view of the harbour, studded with islands. A North Australian settlement
+was attempted here when the Gladstone Government was in power, in
+January, 1847. Colonel Barney was head of the colonising party in the
+"Lord Auckland." Both these names are perpetuated in Barney Point, and
+Auckland Creek. The party were recalled after three months stay, and the
+locality was left alone until 1854, when Captain (afterwards Sir)
+Maurice O'Connell was sent up as Government Resident.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first to discover and report on the grand harbour of Port Denison
+was Captain Sinclair, in the schooner "Santa Barbara." An expectation
+had been held out by the New South Wales Government that a handsome
+reward would be given to anyone who discovered a good harbour north of
+Port Curtis.
+
+In hope of obtaining this reward, this little craft of only nine tons
+was fitted out at private expense, and sailed from Rockhampton on
+September 1st, 1859. The party consisted of Captain Sinclair, master; W.
+H. Thomas, seaman; and Messrs. James Gordon and Benjamin Poole,
+passengers. After piloting their way through islands and reefs and heavy
+storms, besides unknown dangers from the natives, they sailed into Port
+Denison on October 17th, 1859, and were gratified and surprised to find
+such a capacious and secure harbour. They landed and examined the bay,
+surveying and sketching some parts of it, but owing to the hostility and
+treachery of the natives, who were very numerous both on the islands and
+the mainland, they were not permitted to extend their knowledge of the
+port. The "Santa Barbara" left Port Denison on October 19th, and after
+boxing about for some time among the Cumberland Islands, reached Keppel
+Bay on her return on October 31st. The harbour is of an oval form,
+probably some ten miles in extreme length, and about four miles across
+from Station Island to the mainland; it is formed partly by an
+indentation in the coast, and partly by two islands running across it.
+Here at last was a port that would be a starting point for further
+settlement in the interior, a most suitable and secure harbour,
+discovered and opened up without any expense to the Government, and with
+such small means and outfit that the journal of those enterprising and
+heroic voyagers reads like a tale of romance. Although successful in
+this matter, they were not able to obtain the promised reward, for just
+at that time the separation of the new colony took place, and their
+claim was handed over to the new Government. A petition presented to the
+Queensland Parliament procured no further recognition than that Captain
+Sinclair was made Harbour Master, and Mr. James Gordon the first
+customs officer in Townsville.
+
+Very little was at that time known of the interior comprising the
+Kennedy district, which was thrown open to pastoral occupation on
+November 17th, 1859, by proclamation of the New South Wales Government,
+it being then part of that colony. Leichhardt had passed through it down
+the Suttor; Mitchell just touched its southern extremity; Landsborough
+penetrated from the direction of Fort Cooper, into the upper waters of
+the Bowen, which river he discovered and called the Bonnar.
+
+Bowen was settled by George Elphinstone Dalrymple, Police Magistrate and
+Commissioner of Crown Lands, and several squatters who had come overland
+with him, and also by a number of persons, including Mr. James Gordon,
+who arrived at Bowen from Rockhampton per schooner "Jeannie Dove" with
+stores, a few days before Mr. Dalrymple.
+
+On the organisation of the new Queensland Government, a proclamation was
+issued withdrawing the Kennedy district from occupation, and the tenders
+previously received were returned to the tenderers.
+
+These explorers of a new port and future city were deserving of a much
+higher and better recognition than was accorded them by either
+Government.
+
+The first sale of Bowen town lands was held in Brisbane on October 7th,
+1861, when eighty-nine lots were sold, realising L2,083. Many of those
+early investors were Brisbane men, well known in business and the
+professions. The lots were mostly half-acres in area, and averaged about
+L25 to L50 per acre, the first Bishop of Brisbane (Tuffnell) figuring
+largely among the land buyers. In 1863 the demand for land called for
+several sales, as the town was progressing on account of the large
+overlanding of stock and the shipments of supplies for parties taking up
+country to the north and west.
+
+A land sale on April 20th, 1863, was held in Bowen, when seventy-nine
+lots were sold, realising L1,718; all the lots went above the upset
+price. On June 8th, 1863, another land sale took place in Bowen, when
+seventy-four lots were sold, realising L1,135; among these were some
+country lands in ten-acre lots, which realised the upset price, L3 7s.
+6d. per acre. For town lots the upset price was L20 per acre; the
+competition for fancy lots was keen enough to run them up to as much as
+L100 per lot. Still another land sale had to be held to keep pace with
+the growing town, and the demands of speculators. This was held in Bowen
+on August 3rd, 1863, when seventy-three lots found purchasers, realising
+L2,643. This sale consisted mostly of country lands, put up in lots of
+from seventeen to fifty acres, at the upset price of L1 per acre; 1,518
+acres were sold at this last land sale. These figures from official
+sources testify to the rapidity of the expansion of the new town, and
+to the high expectations that were formed as to its future rise and
+progress. Many familiar names occur in the annals of the official
+register, but most of the purchasers are now dead. Seaward, Marsh, and
+Genge, who had a large business as storekeepers, figure extensively as
+buyers, also Mr. J. G. Macdonald, James Hall Scott, Korah H. Willis,
+Thomas Cavanagh--a well-known celebrity of Bowen--and many other old
+identities are called to mind by looking through the list of the first
+land buyers in Bowen. Few now remain of those early speculators. The
+treasury of the young colony benefited by their ambition to hold land in
+the future capital of the north by the sum of L7,579.
+
+The town wore gay and holiday aspect when the Governor, Sir G. F. Bowen,
+landed in 1865. The jetty at that time was being built, and the town was
+filled with squatters from all parts of the north, getting supplies or
+tendering for new country. Flags were flying, addresses of welcome were
+presented, a bullock was roasted whole on the beach, barrels of beer
+were on tap alongside the bullock, tons of bread were there to go with
+it, and an assorted crowd was ready to do justice to both bullock and
+beer. A levee was held, an undress one, of course, as evening dress had
+not reached so far north at that time, but coats were found for every
+one in which to make a bow to the Governor. The only block hat that had
+reached the latitude of Bowen was worn by Mr. R. H. Smith, afterwards
+member for the district, who had the honor of escorting His Excellency
+up to the town. A ball was held in the evening in honor of the event,
+and many other things took place that this chronicle will pass over.
+
+Frederick Bode, at Strathdon, W. Powell, of Salisbury Plains, J. G.
+Macdonald, of Inkermann, Collings, at Eton Vale, A. C. Grant, at
+Dartmoor, all were settlers in Bowen district in the early days.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Townsville was named after Captain Robert Towns, of Sydney, of the firm
+of R. Towns and Co., who held stations inland from Cleveland Bay, and as
+it became necessary to open some other port north of Bowen, which had
+hitherto been the distributing centre, explorations were made by some of
+the managers of these stations, foremost among whom was Mr. Ball, the
+result being the discovery of the site of the present town, which was
+gazetted as a port of entry in October, 1865. On the 10th of that month,
+Mr. James Gordon arrived to perform the duties of Sub-Collector of
+Customs, and a great number of other official duties as well.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Cardwell is situated near the head of Rockingham Bay, opposite the north
+end of Hinchinbrook Island, and distant north-west from Brisbane about
+950 miles, in latitude 18 deg. 16 sec. S., longitude 146 deg. 4 sec. E.
+Population of district and town, 3,435. The first settlement in the
+locality took place in 1863, and it became a place of considerable
+importance, being the nearest port on the east coast to the Gulf of
+Carpentaria, but since then other ports have been opened, offering
+greater facilities for shipping.
+
+The first telegraph line from the east coast to the Gulf of Carpentaria
+commenced at Cardwell, but the expense connected with keeping the line
+open across the Sea View Range and through the dense jungle on the coast
+side thereof, proved too great, and the route was finally abandoned. Up
+to 1873, Cardwell was the most northern port on the east coast of
+Australia, and the port of entry for the Herbert River district. The
+town is now in a languishing state, but the excellence of the port may
+yet redeem it from obscurity.
+
+It was from here that Kennedy's expedition took its final departure for
+the north early in June, 1848, and in connection with that memorable
+event, we may quote a paragraph recently appearing in a Queensland
+journal:--
+
+     "A SAD REMEMBRANCE BRINGS."
+
+     Recently a remarkable discovery was made at the foot of
+     the Coast Range to the north of Cardwell--relics of the
+     vehicles left by Kennedy, the explorer, when on his
+     ill-fated journey up York Peninsula. It may be remembered
+     that the party landed at Tam O'Shanter Point, Rockingham
+     Bay, on May 30th, 1848, and that on July 18th the carts
+     were abandoned, the party going on with twenty-six pack
+     horses and fifty sheep. The story of the fate of Kennedy
+     and nearly all of those who accompanied him has been
+     frequently told, and the discovery of the remains of the
+     carts, which have lain for nearly half a century in the
+     jungle, revives interest in one of the saddest episodes
+     in Australian exploration. The exact locality of the
+     relics is kept a strict secret, the possessor of the
+     secret being of opinion that he should profit by it. No
+     doubt the Government would be glad to secure information
+     which would enable it to establish the authenticity of
+     statements which have been made on the subject.
+
+The first intimation the southern parts had of the existence of gold in
+the north was a telegram from Cardwell dated September 9th, 1873. It ran
+as follows:--"Prospectors Mulligan, Brown, Dowdall, A. Watson, and D.
+Robertson, got one hundred and five ounces on the Palmer River, which
+they prospected for twenty miles. They say nothing of the country
+outside the river. Nearly all are leaving here." This news spread like
+wild-fire and created a great sensation all over Australia; the
+difficulty was to get to the Palmer quick enough. The Government sent
+Mr. Bartley Fahey, Sub-Collector of Customs at Normanton, to explore the
+Mitchell River in order to open communication from Normanton towards the
+new field. Mr. G. E. Dalrymple, leader of the north coast expedition,
+was ordered to proceed to the Endeavour River, and he arrived at Cook's
+Landing on October 24th, 1873, but the expedition was recalled. In the
+meantime, the A. S. N. Co.'s steamer, the "Leichhardt" (Captain
+Saunders), left Brisbane on October 15th with some members of the
+Endeavour River expedition on board. Mr. A. C. MacMillan and his party
+were taken on at Bowen. The "Leichhardt" arrived at Townsville on
+October 20th, and took on all the horses, forty-six in number, and one
+hundred and fifty diggers, all for the new Palmer rush. Mr. Howard St.
+George and party embarked at Cardwell, and on Saturday, October 25th,
+1873, the "Leichhardt" was made fast to the mangroves on the Endeavour
+River, in sixteen feet of water, and the new township began its
+existence on the site where the famous navigator, Captain Cook, on June
+17th, 1770; beached his damaged vessel for repairs. The gold fever was
+irresistible, and helped to lift the town into prominence at once,
+drawing people from all parts of Australia. Four months after the
+landing of Mr. St. George, J. V. Mulligan, arriving from the Palmer
+field, described Cooktown as a large progressing township, about half a
+mile long, with stores, public houses, and shops of all sorts, with
+steamers and other boats coming in and going out every few days, and
+containing not less than two thousand people, though some estimated the
+numbers at a much higher figure. Cooktown dates its existence from the
+landing of the passengers by the steamer "Leichhardt" in 1873. The first
+Police Magistrate appointed was Mr. Thomas Hamilton, who also acted as
+Sub-Collector of Customs. Mr. James Pryde was the first Clerk of Petty
+Sessions. When the first court was held on December 27th, 1873, it was
+to deal with the charge of stealing a goat from Townsville.
+
+Mr. Gold, Commissioner St. George, and Mr. A. C. MacMillan, soon started
+on their expedition after landing at Cooktown, accompanied by
+eighty-six diggers, the command being one hundred and eight strong. They
+reported finding a good track to the Palmer. One reminiscence of their
+journey remains in the name of the original track, which is now known as
+Battle Camp, because the natives came down from the adjoining hills to
+dispute the right of the white men to travel through their country.
+Things in Cooktown kept booming along, and in April, 1874, there were
+from three to four thousand people camped between Grassy Hill and the
+outside boundary of Cooktown. During that month, sixty-five publicans'
+licenses were issued, and thirty more applied for; there were also
+twenty eating houses, twelve large stores, twenty small ones, six
+butchers, five bakers, three tinsmiths, four tent makers, six
+hairdressers, seven blacksmiths, besides doctors, chemists, fancy shops,
+watchmakers, bootmakers, saddlers, etc., in proportion, and all going
+full speed ahead. Until the discovery of the Palmer field, and the
+opening of Cooktown, Cardwell was the most northern port of call on the
+Queensland eastern coast, and was the telegraphic centre of news from
+the Etheridge and Gilbert goldfields. The golden news from these far
+northern diggings was of a most glittering nature, but there was a
+reverse side of the picture in the hardships and privations endured.
+
+In 1874, the Cooktown "Courier" was started, and shortly afterwards the
+"Herald." The journalistic standard of the early days of Cooktown was
+esteemed, comparatively speaking, brilliant. The Queensland National
+Bank opened a branch there in 1874, followed by the Bank of New South
+Wales and The Australian Joint Stock Bank. Religion was not neglected
+either. In 1876, Cooktown was proclaimed a municipality, and from thence
+to 1878, it prospered mightily. Gold was plentiful, and its export was
+measured by the ton. The official returns in 1878 showed something over
+forty tons as having passed through the Customs, but that did not
+represent the measure of the enormous richness of the Palmer, as
+thousands upon thousands of ounces of gold were secretly taken away to
+China. Since then the goldfields have gradually dwindled down in their
+returns, and the Palmer of to-day, or even the Palmer of a few years
+ago, was not the grand and glorious field that made Cooktown rise like
+magic by the side of its splendid harbour. The later discovery of tin on
+Cannibal Creek, and the Annan River, again caused some stir in business,
+but of a much quieter description than in the halcyon days of golden
+light. The beche de mer industry has also been a great help to business
+people in Cooktown. The great red-letter day in Cooktown was the turning
+of the first sod for the Cooktown-Maytown Railway, on April 3rd, 1884,
+by the Mayor, Mr. Edward D'Arcy, when a tremendous public demonstration
+took place. Mr. George Bashford was the contractor for the first
+section, and he gave a great banquet on the occasion, inviting people
+from all parts of Queensland to be present. Like many other towns in
+Queensland, Cooktown in recent years has suffered from depression, but
+there is a solid future before it still. With one of the finest harbours
+on the east coast, it is the key to the Torres Strait route and to New
+Guinea. The reef-bearing country on the Palmer has still to be
+developed, and the great extent of this mineral wealth is as yet quite
+under-rated. Besides containing tin and coal in abundance, North
+Queensland has other grand resources in its back pastoral and
+agricultural country.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The town of Normanton was opened by the settlers as a better port for
+shipping for the Lower Flinders stations than Burketown, which was
+inconvenient, being too far to the west, and difficult of access. The
+Norman River, so called by Landsborough after the captain of the
+Victorian Government ship "Victoria," is a fine and deep river.
+
+Messrs. W. Landsborough and G. Phillips were the first to navigate the
+Norman, in January, 1867. They chose the site for the township on the
+left side of the river, where some high ironstone ridges come close in
+on the river bank. Here was room for the extension of a large city,
+naturally drained, and free from the possibility of floods, with ready
+access to the back country. Unfortunately, the upper reaches of the
+river are obstructed by bands of rocks running across from bank to
+bank, that hinder navigation. These, however, could be removed at small
+cost.
+
+Among the first to settle in the town was Dr. Borck, a popular medical
+man; his brother still keeps a store in the town. Another hotel built in
+the first days was that of Mr. A. McLennan, who had been concerned in
+the first occupation of Burketown. Ellis Read, trading for R. Towns and
+Co., soon had a fine store established, and carried on a large business
+with the stations, and also with the diggings opening on the Etheridge
+River. The first team to arrive in the town was driven in down Spear
+Creek by George Trimble from his station on the Saxby, at the head of
+the Norman River. Then wool commenced to arrive from Donor's Hills and
+other stations on the Flinders, even as early as 1868, and was shipped
+away to Sydney by any chance vessel offering. One of the early traders
+to the Norman was a well-known skipper on the east coast, Captain Till,
+of the "Policeman," schooner, who made several voyages there. Normanton
+was never affected by sickness as Burketown had been, and its progress
+was steady, though slow. The country around was well watered, but not
+adapted to agriculture. Lagoons of fresh water fringed the river, and
+were well supplied with game, the river full of splendid fish, some of
+which ranged up to twenty pounds in weight. Alligators abounded in all
+the brackish waters, as they do in all tidal rivers in the Gulf, while
+the crocodile (so called), a smaller but quite harmless creature, is
+found in fresh water only. Being amphibious in its nature, it can adapt
+itself to pools and rivers a long way inland, and is found wherever
+there are deep lagoons, and in all the waters flowing into the Gulf of
+Carpentaria.
+
+In the early times, when one of R. Towns and Co.'s vessels was unloading
+at the bank of the river, one of the Kanakas employed was seized by an
+alligator. The man held on to a mangrove tree, and his mates beat the
+alligator over the head until he let go, but not before he had so torn
+the flesh from the man's leg that he bled to death.
+
+Among those who are to be reckoned as the oldest inhabitants of the Gulf
+country, was John Harrix, who came over with the first cattle of Mr. J.
+G. Macdonald from Bowen in 1864, and who owned some teams and a small
+station near Normanton. A partner of his named Macdonald came down the
+Flinders early in 1865. Percival E. Walsh, a nephew of Mr. W. H. Walsh,
+of Degilbo, helped to settle some runs in the Gulf country. He took up a
+run on the Dugald, naming it Granada, which was sold afterwards to
+Messrs. Hopkins Brothers. He also restocked Iffley after its desertion
+by its first owners, the Earle Bros., now of Yacamunda, on the Suttor
+River. The early citizens of Normanton include the names of Peter
+Armstrong, David Swan, Charles B. Hely, Charles Borck, John Edgar
+Byrne, for many years proprietor of "Figaro," and a hundred others who
+more or less helped to form this city of the Gulf. Many of them are now
+resting in the cemetery outside the town.
+
+R. Towns and Co. had forty thousand sheep on the Leichhardt, near
+Floraville, and a shearing shed near tidal water lower down the river,
+where a small steamer (the old "Pioneer," the remains of which are still
+to be seen at Sweer's Island), came for the wool. The country proving
+subject to terrible floods and unsuitable for sheep, the numbers
+gradually decreased until the remnant were finally removed.
+
+The Etheridge goldfield was opened in the early days of Normanton, and
+found occupation for many teams and much labour.
+
+Prices in the early days were at a really famine level; flour was often
+sold at L40 a ton, and other goods at a corresponding rate. The writer
+had experience of these prices when loading his own team in those early
+days.
+
+Normanton had many advantages over her sister settlement, Burketown, and
+when the port became known, all the station trade drifted there, and
+Burketown declined in consequence.
+
+Normanton was, in 1891, connected with Croydon by a railway ninety-four
+miles in length, which cost L211,000, and was constructed by Mr. G.
+Phillips, C.E., on a principle new to Queensland, the sleepers being of
+mild steel, instead of wood, on account of the ravages of the white
+ants. The line between Croydon and Normanton passes through a perfectly
+level and very uninteresting country, a melancholy sandy waste of
+ti-tree flats, covered with the innumerable pinnacles and mounds made by
+white ants; the pasturage is as poor as the country looks.
+
+From Normanton a number of carriers are employed to carry goods to
+Cloncurry and the many stations trading therewith. Many teams are found
+carrying loading by the side of the railway line to Georgetown and the
+Etheridge past Croydon, ignoring the services of the railway. A punt
+service connects the town with the carrier's camp on the opposite side
+of the river, where loading starts for the Etheridge. The carrier's
+waggon is loaded fully up to its carrying capacity of from six to seven
+tons, and is drawn on to the punt by the team; on its arrival on the
+opposite side, the team draws the load on to the bank ready to depart on
+its journey. The country to Georgetown is generally of an inferior
+description. Towards the Cloncurry (southwards) for the first twenty
+miles, the road passes through timbered country, bloodwood and messmate
+of a poor class, then it opens out after passing Reaphook Range into
+open treeless plains and black soil, with excellent pasturage, and this
+extends for hundreds of miles to the interior, the whole of which is
+occupied by cattle and sheep stations that draw their supplies from
+Normanton up to a certain point, when the trade is induced by special
+arrangements of rebates on traffic rates, to diverge to Townsville, at
+the expense of the Gulf ports.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+About the same time that Townsville was opened as a port in order to
+meet the requirements of the new movements in stock on the country
+surrounding the Gulf, Burketown commenced its rather chequered career as
+a commercial port in 1865.
+
+The first supplies were brought by the "Jacmel Packet," chartered and
+loaded by R. Towns and Co., from Sydney. She was the second vessel in
+the Albert River, the first being the brig "Firefly," in which Mr.
+Landsborough brought his horses, which were landed a mile below the site
+of the town. The old vessel afterwards went to pieces in the river. The
+manifest of the "Jacmel Packet" was perhaps the most varied and
+strangely assorted that a trading vessel ever carried; the general cargo
+included pigs, dogs, fowls, houses, building materials, outfits of every
+kind, drays, rations, rum, and other spirits. In such fashion was the
+mercantile trade of Carpentaria commenced. On the opening of the goods,
+a saturnalia ensued, and the times were lively. The overlanders having
+money to spend, and not having indulged in a "spree" for years, took
+advantage of the absence of all control, and thoroughly enjoyed
+themselves in bush fashion; a fight every half hour, horse racing on the
+plain, or in "the street" as it was called, and strong rum for
+everyone. Other vessels quickly followed the first venture with more
+supplies. One of them, the "Gazelle," from Sydney, made a very quick
+trip of sixteen days to the mouth of the river, where she broke her back
+on a sandbank; the hulk was towed up the river, and gradually mouldered
+away just opposite the town. In 1866 the first wool was shipped to
+Sydney from the Gulf; the first load of wool taken into Burketown being
+from Conobie station, shorn in November, 1865, on the Cloncurry, about
+200 miles distant. The assistance the first settlers received from the
+Government amounted to little or nothing; the administration situated
+nearly two thousand miles away, had little care or thought for the
+struggling outsiders in the far-away Gulf country. The settlers had to
+protect themselves from blacks as well as from whites, and as it was
+some years before Burketown was made a port of entry, goods had to be
+cleared at Brisbane before sailing for Burketown. When the port was
+opened, the Customs Officer, Mr. Sandrock, was kept at Sweer's Island,
+where supplies had to be cleared before going on to the mainland. This
+meant a great loss of time to those who brought in teams for loading.
+All departmental work had to be done in Brisbane, and there also the
+first applications for runs and declarations of stocking had to be made.
+
+The tide of settlement had been too swift and too strong for the
+authorities to keep pace with, and although a Land Commissioner, in the
+person of Mr. J. P. Sharkey was sent out in 1866, and the Government
+were represented the same year by Mr. W. Landsborough in Burketown, the
+fact was evident that people were pretty well left to do as they liked.
+Burketown in 1866, and for the two or three following years, made some
+little progress, or appeared to do so. The drovers and shepherds, paid
+off after long trips with stock, had good cheques to spend, and their
+money was laid out in the lavish way peculiar to the old bush hand.
+Wages were high for all sorts of employment, 35s. to 45s. a week being
+the lowest. Everything was dear in the new town, but that made little
+difference to men who had not been in a town for years and had money to
+spare.
+
+One of the first vessels to arrive in the Albert River in 1866 was the
+"Margaret and Mary." She was said to have touched at some infected port
+in Java, and after arrival a fatal sickness broke out in Burketown that
+nearly carried off all the population. All hands that came in the ship
+died except the captain, his wife also falling a victim. A new crew had
+to be engaged to work the vessel before she could get away. There is
+little doubt but that the great mortality among the residents of
+Burketown during 1866 was traceable to the infection brought by this
+vessel. It was the wet season at the time, and this, in conjunction with
+the reckless life led by most of the people, and the want of medical
+assistance, increased the danger of the disease, and scores of strong
+men succumbed to its malign influence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It would be difficult to say how many men fell victims to the epidemic,
+but there must have been at least a hundred, besides those who died on
+the surrounding stations. The disease, which ended in fever and
+delirium, was as fatal to the strong as to the weak, and the little
+cemetery soon looked like that of an old established town, so numerous
+were the graves. This outbreak gave Burketown an evil name. People began
+to leave it, and when Normanton was opened in 1867 with the prospect of
+becoming a more suitable port for the district, many removed there to
+carry on their business. Shortly after this, Burketown was absolutely
+deserted, not a living soul remained, and nothing was left to mark the
+spot except heaps of empty bottles and jam tins, and some large iron
+pots belonging to a boiling-down plant. A few stumps remained standing
+on the open plains where once had been buildings. The hulls of the
+"Gazelle" and "Firefly" lay falling to pieces in the river, and none
+were left to sigh over Burketown's fallen fortunes, or sing a dirge in
+memory of its history; its short and merry life was over, and none
+lamented.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In these early days, Sweer's Island was a kind of marine suburb
+belonging to Burketown, a sanatorium about thirty-five miles from the
+mouth of the Albert, where the fever-stricken people were taken to
+recover. Mr. W. Landsborough, the Police Magistrate, or Government
+resident, lived there with his family. Mr. J. P. Sharkey, the first Land
+Commissioner, and Mr. Ellis Read, in charge of R. Towns and Co.'s
+stores, also resided on the island. Life was much pleasanter there than
+on the dead plains surrounding Burketown, and the sea breezes were
+constant and refreshing. On Sweer's Island, which is only about nine
+miles long, and from half a mile to three miles in width, vegetables and
+watermelons grow in profusion. A township was surveyed called Carnarvon,
+after the Earl of Carnarvon, allotments were sold and buildings erected.
+The first Customs House in the Gulf was here, and Mr. Sandrock was the
+first officer. The soil on Sweer's Island is sandy, and the grass thick
+in places. The turtle ponds made there by Captain Norman of the
+"Victoria" in 1861-2, were still to be seen in 1866, as also was the
+well sunk by Flinders in 1803, from which fresh water was still
+obtainable. Opposite the island, towards the west, lay Bentinck Island,
+much larger than Sweer's, though unoccupied, except by the natives,
+whose fires could be seen every evening after dark. About forty miles
+north-east of Sweer's Island is Bountiful Island, noted for its oysters,
+and also for turtles, large numbers resorting there at certain seasons.
+Sweer's Island has been deserted for many years, and is no longer a
+health resort. The buildings are gone, and the people also. The only
+residents now (1897), are a family of the name of Creffield, who keep
+some cattle, goats and sheep on the island.
+
+To the south-west of Burketown is a fine run called Lawn Hill,
+comprising a lot of good country surrounded by mountains, and well
+watered. This property was taken up by Mr. Frank Hann and Mr. E. R.
+Edkins in 1875. The former bought up many of the brands of cattle left
+in the district by former occupiers, and also travelled stock from
+Lolsworth on the Burdekin, and by this means a large herd was soon
+raised. At the same time the Watson Brothers stocked Gregory Downs,
+which is only ninety miles from Burketown. Then Mr. F. H. Shadforth, who
+had come all the way from Victoria overland with his family, took up
+Lilydale, next to Lawn Hill. In those days the supplies had to be
+obtained from Normanton, so Hann, Watson, and Shadforth chartered a
+schooner, loaded her with station supplies and material for a store for
+Foulkes and Harris to start business. The schooner arrived, and the
+store was erected on the site of old Burketown, but disaster followed.
+Foulkes was drowned, and Harris was killed by his team of horses bolting
+and dragging the waggon over him. Then Watson Brothers ran the store for
+a time, Mr. P. S. Watson taking charge and enlarging it in every way.
+Shortly afterwards Mr. Michael Kelly opened a public house, and the town
+commenced its second term of existence. Mr. Jack Reid soon opened
+another public house, and Burns, Philp and Co. began another store
+under the management of Mr. Theodore C. Amsden. Then police protection
+under Senior-constable Synnott, arrived, as the people were becoming
+rather lawless. Mr. P. Macarthur was appointed Customs Officer, and in
+conjunction with this appointment held many other offices. Finally the
+Queensland National Bank opened a branch. The town now progressed
+quickly owing to the great number of cattle passing through to the
+northern territory and the reoccupation of all the deserted runs. A
+Divisional Board was formed in 1884, and the population of the town rose
+to three hundred and fifty. Burketown resumed her old activity in
+business matters, and the evil name died out with the memories of the
+old days. So mote it be!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE MINERAL WEALTH.
+
+
+An expedition under the leadership of William Hann, sent out by the
+Queensland Government left Fossilbrook station on June 26th, 1872, and
+on August 5th, reached the Palmer River, named after the then Premier of
+Queensland, Sir A. H. Palmer. They found traces of gold in the ravines,
+and on both sides of the river, so that it was Hann's party who first
+discovered the existence of gold on the Palmer. This expedition went
+right through to where Cooktown now stands, and on to the Bloomfield
+River. From the description of the country given in Hann's journal, one
+of the well-known old northern prospectors named James V. Mulligan,
+concluded that gold would be found in quantities, and with the
+restlessness proverbial among his class, formed a party to go out and
+prospect the Palmer country. His expedition consisted of himself, James
+Dowdal, Alexander Watson (these two miners leaving Charters Towers with
+him), David Robertson, Peter Brown, and Albert Brandt, who joined him at
+Georgetown. Mulligan and his party left the Etheridge on June 5th 1873,
+passed Mount Surprise and Fossilbrook, the farthest out station in those
+days, and went on to the Tate River, through poor, rough country, only
+obtaining colours. They proceeded northwards to the Walsh River, and saw
+one of W. Hann's camps on their way. After travelling down the Walsh a
+few days, they crossed Elizabeth Creek to the Mitchell River, where they
+had some trouble in finding a ford, the river being quite six hundred
+yards wide, with high and scrubby banks on either side, and a strong
+flowing stream. After effecting a crossing with their packs, rations,
+etc., they passed on to Mount Mulgrave, fifteen miles further north.
+This well-known landmark is a precipitous bare rock dominating the
+surrounding country, and visible for many miles. They soon reached the
+Palmer River, where they continued prospecting, and obtained a good show
+of gold in the river and tributary creeks. Blacks were very numerous
+along the main river, necessitating guard being continually kept; they
+caught abundance of fish while camped on the river, where they spent a
+month, finding gold almost everywhere, some of it coarse, and some very
+fine. The party started back for the Etheridge, following the same route
+by which they had come. The scene of their operations was a little above
+Palmerville, and they prospected thence to Maytown. They were absent
+from Georgetown three months, and procured one hundred and two ounces of
+gold, valued at L4 an ounce. It was a prosperous trip, and all the
+party returned in good health.
+
+In 1874, J. V. Mulligan went on another prospecting expedition from
+Cooktown. He named the St. George, a tributary of the Mitchell River,
+and the party did a lot of prospecting and exploring in the country on
+the Upper Mitchell, where some fine pastoral country was discovered.
+While on this trip they made the discovery of the hot boiling springs at
+the head of the Walsh, mistaking the steam of it for the smoke of a
+blackfellows' fire.
+
+Before the end of 1873, there were over five hundred diggers on the
+Palmer, and the escort left in December with 5,058 ounces of gold,
+leaving a balance of 3,000 ounces in the banks. The first warden on the
+Palmer was Howard St. George, and the field developed at a furious rate.
+In the course of two years there were over fifteen thousand white men
+and twenty thousand Chinese located in and about the Palmer. The
+discovery of the field came as salvation to the north after the
+stagnation following upon the low prices and depression ruling since
+1867. The price of cattle went up enormously, and horses could be sold
+anywhere at good prices. The workings were along the creeks and rivers
+where water was plentiful, and the gold was obtained in quantities on
+the bars or ledges crossing the river. Rations were dear in the early
+days; carriage to Maytown was up to L120 a ton, beef was selling at 1s.
+per lb. A great deal of the loading was carried by pack horses from
+Cooktown, the diggings being situated among the highest tablelands in
+North Queensland, and scattered over a large extent of mountainous
+country. Byerstown, near the source of the Palmer is about fifty-five
+miles south-west from Cooktown. The situation is elevated, being near
+the culminating line of the Great Dividing Chain. Tin occurs in the low
+ranges to the south that separate the Mitchell from the Palmer, and also
+in the valley of the Bloomfield to the east. The blacks were dangerous,
+the wet seasons severe on the Palmer, and the first diggers had many and
+bitter trials. Early in 1874, the last of the flour was selling at 3s.
+6d. per pannikinful, and even an old working bullock when killed was
+eagerly bought up at 1s. per pound; the last pairs of Blucher boots were
+sold at 38s. Horseshoe nails were exchanged for their weight in gold,
+and old horseshoes were eagerly sought after. As early as April, 1874, a
+riot occurred in Cooktown, when the dissatisfied diggers rushed the
+"Florence Irving," steamer, for free passages. It was said there were
+three thousand people waiting to get away, and the police and miners had
+a fierce fight for the upper hand. Then other rushes took place on the
+goldfield as new discoveries were made, and the "Palmer fever" became
+bad again.
+
+In 1871 the following party of prospectors had been in the vicinity of
+the country that afterwards became so famous for its golden produce, but
+they missed the rich deposits, and kept a lower course down in the
+level country towards the Gulf of Carpentaria, namely, Messrs. T.
+Leslie, J. Edwards, Charles Ross, T. Hackett, and J. Duff. Some of these
+men became wealthy afterwards through buying cattle and retailing them
+and by buying gold. Leslie, Duff, Edwards, and Callaghan joined in a
+company and fairly coined money on the Palmer goldfield; all were
+extremely popular men. Maytown was called Edwardstown for some time
+after it was opened, and the name was so printed on the bank's cheque
+forms. Another of these early prospectors was W. T. Baird, known as Bill
+Baird, who had led a most adventurous life and had amassed several small
+fortunes; the last one he made was at Mount Romeo tin mines; he led a
+rough knockabout life, doing bush work or cattle droving when hard up,
+etc.; he was killed by the natives of Batavia River while prospecting
+there; he was a general favourite for his good humour and
+kindheartedness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Croydon, a reefing field on the waters of the Norman River was
+discovered about 1886 by W. C. Brown and Aldridge, who obtained the
+reward of L1,000. The field comprises several mining centres scattered
+about in the hill country, which commences here and extends away to the
+east. No alluvial gold has been discovered on this field; reefing has
+been the only way of working the gold, which is more or less connected
+with refractory ores. The future of this field is well assured, as the
+reefs maintain their character at all depths reached, and the place is
+decidedly businesslike and stirring. The absence of good timber adds to
+the cost of working the reefs, but the extension of the railway to
+Georgetown, which is contemplated, will add to the facilities for
+obtaining supplies, and will also increase the traffic in other ways.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Georgetown is on the left bank of the Etheridge River, so called after
+D. O. Etheridge, one of Mr. J. G. Macdonald's drovers who came out to
+the Gulf with the first lot of cattle through this country. It is about
+one hundred and sixty miles west, in a straight line from Cardwell. The
+surrounding country is gold-bearing, and known as the Etheridge
+goldfield; silver, copper, tin, and lead are also among its mineral
+products. This was one of the first reefing districts opened in the
+North of Queensland, but owing to the expense of carrying on the mines
+on account of the cost of carriage, labour, and mining appliances, none
+but the best mines have been worked. The formation is granite, and
+pyrites with the stone has helped to increase the cost of working. The
+field is very extensive, and embraces a large number of small mining
+centres covering an enormous area of gold-bearing country. In the first
+days, alluvial gold was sought for over large portions of the field. A
+specimen nugget found in June, 1896, at Mount Macdonald, weighing 151
+ounces was dollied and smelted, yielding 85 ounces of gold, valued at
+L3 5s. per ounce. Other large specimens were found recently in the same
+locality.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Cloncurry is the commercial centre of a district rich in various
+minerals. It is situated on the right bank of the Cloncurry River, a
+tributary of the Flinders, and is about 430 miles west-south-west, in a
+straight line from Townsville, and about 240 miles south from Normanton.
+The copper deposits are very extensive, the whole surrounding
+mountainous district being more or less copper-bearing. Lodes of gray
+ore and blue carbonates are numerous, and virgin copper and malleable
+ore have also been found. The difficulty and expense of carriage has
+prevented the field from taking that position as a mining centre to
+which it is entitled; other metals found are gold, silver, lead, iron,
+and bismuth. The Cloncurry goldfield includes a large tract of country,
+extending eastwards to the Williams River, and southwards to an equal
+extent. Reefing has been carried on of late, but not to any great
+extent. In the early days of gold discovery, alluvial sinking attracted
+a large population, and some splendid nuggets were found (mostly on
+Sharkey's Flat), weighing from five to forty ounces, the gold being of
+the highest Mint value, L4 3s. 6d. per ounce. Gold is still produced at
+some of the outlying diggings, extending over to the Leichhardt River in
+the west, where the whole country is mineral-bearing. The Cloncurry
+Copper Company expended large sums of money in machinery and sinking
+shafts and prospecting in opening up some of the lodes of copper so
+abundant there, but owing to the depreciation in the value of the
+mineral and the great expense of mining and carriage to port, the
+operations had to be entirely suspended. The first to discover copper
+and make use of it was Mr. Ernest Henry, in 1865. Henry discovered lodes
+of copper on the Leichhardt and in several other places, and has
+distinguished himself not alone as an enterprising pioneer squatter and
+settler, but also as an early and most indefatigable prospector for
+minerals. In conjunction with Mr. R. K. Sheaffe, at one time member for
+the district, and subsequently Mayor of Sandgate, he helped to open much
+of the Gulf country, and has spent a fortune and a lifetime in
+pioneering in outside districts.
+
+The Black Mountain is on the opposite side from the town across the
+river, and is, as its name denotes, a real black mountain. It is a most
+extensive outcrop of nearly pure metallic iron ore, and it is calculated
+the amount in sight is over thirteen millions of tons: great masses of
+the ore are lying all round the base of this enormous outcrop.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Clermont is situated on a tributary of the Nogoa River, about two
+hundred and twenty-seven miles distant by railway from Rockhampton, and
+well known for its mineral resources. Since 1862 large quantities of
+copper have been obtained, and the surrounding country is also
+auriferous, alluvial mining having been carried on with more or less
+success. Four miles from Clermont are the ruins of old Copperfield, a
+township prosperous from 1864 to 1870, in the palmy days of the Peak
+Downs Copper Company, which paid dividends of eighty per cent., and in
+1867 sold copper to the amount of L120,000. Owing to a great fall in the
+value of copper, the property was sold for L3,000, and this mining
+enterprise collapsed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+INCIDENTS OF THE EARLY DAYS.
+
+
+The early arrivals with stock in the Gulf country were obliged to obtain
+rations and supplies from Bowen, on the east coast, as that was the only
+port then opened in the North of Queensland. The distance was from five
+to seven hundred miles through the desert country and down the Flinders,
+and as the old-fashioned pole bullock-dray with only two wheels was then
+in vogue, no great quantity could be carried in one dray load. The
+opening of Burketown in 1865 as the second port after Bowen in North
+Queensland, enabled the early settlers to obtain supplies more easily,
+although the cost was still excessive. But the rations were fresher than
+those the overlanders had been used to. Some of the flour that had come
+out with the parties had been years on the road, and was very much the
+worse for the long journey. This flour could only be used after much
+sifting and airing; it was made into small thin cakes called Johnny
+cakes, which were cooked in the ashes and eaten hot; even then it was
+bitter and nearly brown in colour. The grubs and worms had long since
+left it, or died in it from old age. It was said that some flour from
+Bowen Downs that had left Sydney years before and come out to the Gulf
+stations just formed, being too strong to use, was thrown out, and the
+dingoes and crows were found lying dead round it. The sugar in those
+days was the dark, treacly kind, that left a stain on the floor like
+blood; it came in casks. However, people were not very particular as to
+the quality of the supplies, provided there was anything at all to eat.
+Pig weed (portulacca), boiled or roasted on a shovel was one of the
+changes open to travellers; tea was made from the marjoram bush; and
+very fair coffee was made from the scrapings of the burnt edges of
+dampers, and was called Scotch coffee. When Burketown was opened, the
+fresh supply of flour and stores was very welcome to the early settlers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For the first year or two of Burketown's existence, a saturnalia of a
+most original and determined fashion set in. There were only two or
+three women in the town, and no police, and the crowd enjoyed themselves
+in their own breezy, sunshiny way. Burketown was the haven of refuge for
+all the outsiders and outlaws from the settled districts when they had
+made other places too warm to hold them any longer.
+
+  "God forsaken, devil may care,
+  Every one with his sins to bear;
+  From East, from West, they are camping there;
+  Where all the bad lots go."
+
+All kinds of characters made their way out to the Gulf in those early
+days. Men went there who had been wanted by the police for years. Horse
+stealing and forging cheques were very common pastimes among the fancy,
+and Burketown society, in its first efforts to establish itself, was of
+a kind peculiarly its own.
+
+An ex police officer (O'Connor), who started business in Burketown, and
+who hailed from the land of the shamrock, knew many of the "boys," as he
+called them. One noted character broke out of the lock-up, swam the
+Albert River, swarming with alligators, got a horse somewhere or
+somehow, and was followed by Mr. W. D'Arcy Uhr far into New South Wales,
+and brought back to Burketown, only to be discharged, whilst Mr. Uhr,
+who was one of the smartest officers of the police was asked for an
+explanation for leaving his district without permission.
+
+The following case of horse-stealing will serve to show the lawless
+state of things prevailing in the outside regions when the borders of
+civilisation were undefined, and no laws could be enforced.
+
+Three men were implicated, all notorious characters, even for those
+days. They were called Dublin Bob, Firearm Jack, and One-armed Scotty.
+They had spent some time mustering the horses and in building yards to
+hold them, on Bowen Downs run. As soon as the theft was discovered, they
+were followed by Mr. J. T. C. Ranken, the manager, Mr. J. Moffat,
+Junior, a blackfellow, Jacky, and another man. They overtook the
+horse-stealers on the range near Betts' Gorge, took possession of the
+horses, and arrested the thieves, as Mr. Ranken and the other white men
+had been sworn in as specials before starting. As they were riding
+along, Mr. Ranken saw a horse down a gorge that he thought he
+recognised, and leaving the prisoners in charge of the others, giving
+them strict instructions to guard them carefully, he went to look at the
+horse. On returning, he found the men had escaped, and no satisfactory
+explanation was ever given as to their departure. This was in the year
+1866, when there was a great demand for horses in consequence of so much
+stock being driven to take up new country. In the previous year, 1865,
+the first sheep were brought on to Bowen Downs, and another mob of
+cattle was sent out to the Gulf country in charge of J. Neil, who
+stocked the country on the Alexandra, a tributary of the Leichhardt
+River, where there was a large waterhole ten or twelve miles long. The
+Mud Hut on the Thomson had to be abandoned owing to the scarcity of
+grass and the waterhole drying up before the end of the year. The year
+1865 was a very dry one on the Thomson, the Barcoo, and the
+Flinders--waterholes went dry that year that have never gone dry in the
+thirty-five years that have followed. Law and order in those days was a
+"go-as-you-please" sort of arrangement. At a shanty about twenty-five
+miles from Burketown, a man was shot by the keeper of the shanty, and
+died. The man was prosecuted, but owing to his detention waiting trial,
+and his long sea voyage west about the Leeuwin, and other extenuating
+circumstances in the case, the man being compelled to keep order in a
+lonely place amongst a very disorderly crowd, he got off.
+
+During the year 1864, a man named G. Nicol, and his wife, both of whom
+had been employed at Bowen Downs, and had left with the intention of
+going to Rockhampton, were found dead between Bowen Downs and
+Stainbourne. They had been offered quiet horses for the journey, but
+they preferred to walk. As they did not turn up at Stainbourne, a search
+was instituted, and they were found on one of the branches of Bullock
+Creek, both dead. The woman had been dead much longer than the man, as
+portions of her corpse were missing, while the body of the man was
+whole; the woman had a hole in her skull; the man had a revolver with
+two chambers empty. She was the first white woman on the Thomson, and
+was a very kind decent little body. The story remains one of the
+mysteries of the bush that will never be solved. Another tragedy that
+marked this year was the murder of Mr. Meredith, of Tower Hill station,
+and his overseer by the blacks. Mr. Meredith had been away from his
+station on a visit, and when returning passed his teams loaded with
+rations on the road somewhere between Bully and Cornish Creeks. In
+passing them he promised either to meet them himself or to send someone
+else. When he got to Cornish Creek, he saw so many blacks that he
+decided to meet them himself; therefore, on arrival at the station, he
+obtained fresh horses, and started back, taking his overseer, Mr. Robert
+McNeely, with him. He intended to stay with the teams until they were
+past all danger, but he never reached them. Both men were killed on
+Cornish Creek, about fifty miles above Bowen Downs. The exact spot was
+unknown, nor were the bodies ever recovered; but their clothes, watches,
+etc., were found in the blacks' camp. The men with the teams were the
+first to find out that something was wrong, for on bringing up their
+horses one morning, they found some of the Tower Hill station horses
+among them, one in particular that Mr. Meredith always rode himself.
+Suspecting trouble, they went on to the Bowen Downs teams, a few miles
+ahead, and the teamsters went back with them to search, and in the
+blacks' camp articles were found which left no doubt that both Mr.
+Meredith and his overseer had been killed. No doubt there had been a
+night attack when the two pioneers were asleep in their camp, unaware of
+the approach of the observant enemy. Blacks seldom attacked during the
+day, but preferred to steal stealthily upon their victims and kill them
+in their sleep. Numerous cases of this description might be mentioned,
+and it was the rule among experienced bushmen to either keep watch at
+night, or else to shift camp after dark.
+
+In the early days, the blacks of North Queensland, and especially of the
+Peninsula, used to be troublesome to stock, and never failed to kill
+horses and cattle whenever a chance offered, cutting up and carrying
+away the carcase to the scrubs or ridgy country. Great numbers of stock
+were killed by them in the early days of settlement all over the Cook
+district. Even teamsters' horses have been known to be killed close to
+the road during the night, cut up, and carried away, or skinned of the
+flesh and the skeleton left entire. Not alone to stock did they confine
+their attacks, for many a white man and Chinaman, of whose death there
+is no record, fell before their spears, and it is maintained they ate
+their victims on many occasions. The usual war of reprisals went on
+between the intruders and the native race, and the latter soon went
+under, although the tribes inhabiting the country around the main rivers
+were numerous. In no district in Queensland have the blacks shown
+themselves more hostile to the settlers than in the Peninsula. The
+Jardine Brothers' journal of their trip to Cape York is a record of
+continued and unprovoked attacks by blacks on their little party. One of
+the early settlers, a Mr. Watson, was killed on his own verandah at his
+station on the Archer, and Gilbert, the naturalist belonging to
+Leichhardt's party, was killed in a night attack by blacks, not far from
+the Mitchell River. The lonely gullies about the Palmer hide the record
+of many a lost prospector done to death by the savages; while the sight
+of one of them was enough to cause a stampede among a camp of a hundred
+Chinese, for the poor Chinamen always fell easy victims to the blacks,
+as they would never show fight, and seldom carried firearms. It was a
+very common occurrence for the early settlers to bring in cattle to the
+yard for the purpose of drawing broken spears out of their sides. Horses
+were hunted down as readily as cattle, and this in a district noted for
+its native game.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE MEN OF THE NORTH.
+
+
+There were never lacking men ready for the enterprise and hardship of
+pioneering when there was such a field of profitable work open before
+them, work that was for those trained in bush experience, hardy and
+acclimatised as they were. The life, in spite of hardships, was not
+without attraction and satisfaction to many who took part in it. There
+was a kind of fascination to many bushmen in the idea of being the first
+to enter upon new and unknown scenes; to note the surprise of native
+game beholding for the first time the presence of the stranger, and to
+observe the terrified astonishment of the aborigines when first they saw
+the white intruders; all this tended to add to the romance and interest
+of helping to open a new district. But outside pioneer life in early
+days had a reverse side; there was little or nothing of comfort or
+relaxation; there was always hardship and exposure; there was no Sunday
+for rest, no holiday, no Eight Hour Day, nothing but constant movement
+and watching. The duties were shared by all alike; each had to take a
+turn at anything and everything, cooking one time, driving a team
+another, shepherding sheep occasionally, herding cattle sometimes,
+cutting timber, making bough-yards for sheep, lambing down a flock of
+ewes, shifting hurdles, and poisoning dingoes, killing and salting beef,
+ear-marking, washing and shearing sheep, looking for stragglers, yoking
+bullocks, building huts, tracking and hunting stock, all little duties
+that made up the routine life of the outside grazier. They all took
+their turn, and generally there was one dish and one table. Where the
+ways and customs consequent on the life brought all on a partial level,
+the man who could turn his hand to anything from shoeing a horse to
+weighing out a dose of quinine or driving a bullock team, was the most
+valuable.
+
+
+THE STOCKMAN, OR STOCKRIDER.
+
+  He was native to the soil and bred,
+    Merely a cowboy he;
+  A nomad's life was what he led.
+    And all he wished to be.
+
+He is a class of his own, and is a man of some importance in the daily
+life of a station. The term may mean to many any man who can climb into
+a saddle; but a good stockman is not so easily picked up, nor is he made
+out of any material to hand. A good and experienced stockman, one who
+knows his work thoroughly, is active, and can ride well, can command
+wages all the year round. His work is not by any means easy; there are
+long hours, in fact all hours, hard fare, and often no lodging but the
+bare ground; he must endure hunger and thirst, cold, heat, and wet, and
+often has to take a watch at night. When at work in the yard branding
+and drafting, he has either to endure tremendous dust, or else he is
+covered with mud. But the trained stockrider makes light of all these
+discomforts, in fact he looks on them as all in the bill of fare, and
+belonging to the day's work. He is hardy, wiry, as well as possessed of
+a good deal of endurance and pluck, and like all men who ride much, is
+nearly always lean in condition. He is generally the owner of a couple
+of horses and an outfit of saddle, swag, stock whip, and spurs, and
+takes an interest in all racing and sporting matters. As a rule, he is
+not a saving man, although some may lay up enough money to start a small
+store. The native youth makes the best all-round stockman; many follow
+horse-breaking at times, or take a turn at droving. To draft on
+horseback in the cattle yard, or in the yard on foot, to castrate and
+brand horses and calves, to ride a young horse, to make a leg or head
+rope out of green hide, or a pair of hobbles, to counterline a saddle,
+to cook a damper, all comes within the province of the stockman. Towns
+and townspeople are not much in his way, any more than the customs of
+the city are congenial to his free-and-easy style of associations.
+Moleskin trousers, Crimean shirt, cossack boots, and felt hat, are his
+rig out. The modern type is less pronounced than he of the ancient
+school, the flash, hard-riding, tearing, loud-swearing, rowdy stockman
+of olden days, with a stockwhip sixteen feet long, sporting breeches and
+leggings, and a loud red shirt. Stockmen have very little to do with
+unions, but are seldom without employment on stations or on the road.
+
+
+THE COOK.
+
+Bush cooks are of every shade of colour, complexion, and social
+standing, from the foreign count who has been expatriated for political
+leanings, to the squalid shuffling Chinee, or the wily, treacherous
+Cingalee. Hut keeper was the term employed in the olden days when two
+shepherds had each a flock of sheep folded for the night inside a yard
+made of movable hurdles, and a hut keeper was joined to them to do a bit
+of cooking, as well as to shift one set of hurdles each day. He was
+supposed also to watch at night against native dogs, strychnine not
+being so much in use then to reduce the numbers of these pests. They
+were men of dirty, lazy habits; their cooking was fearful, consisting
+simply of boiling a bit of beef or mutton, making a damper, and rinsing
+out a tin pannikin. Greasy-looking, growling, and drunken they were,
+with scarcely energy enough to fetch a little wood or water; to wash
+their clothes was an unheard-of thing. Those who cook for drovers on the
+road have to be more alert; a good man on the road is a great
+consideration, and it is no sinecure to cater for a party while
+travelling with stock. The cook is exempt from watching, as he has to
+be up during the night to get breakfast ready by daylight for the men to
+start on with their cattle. Some good cooks will provide hot suppers for
+the men in all weathers. The shearers' cook is quite another variety. He
+is often a boss man employs one or two others under him, and gets top
+wages, but he has to be up to the mark, for our shearer is a fine
+specimen of an inflated growler, and will have nothing but of the best,
+and up to time, tea and cake between meals, duff and all the luxuries
+for dinner; in any case he comes in for a full share of the shearer's
+arrogance and abuse. Station cooks comprise all sorts, good, bad, and
+indifferent, clean and unclean; but one who can make real good bread is
+a rarity, and all are self-taught. They frequently get good wages, but
+soon become lazy and dirty, and often a Chinaman has to be put on to do
+the kitchen cooking. About the towns it is notorious that European cooks
+cannot be relied on for any time on account of their drinking habits,
+and once again the Chinaman has to be resorted to.
+
+
+THE SHEARER.
+
+This class of labourer has been very much in evidence of late years in
+Queensland on account of the numerous strikes that have taken place,
+brought about by them or their leaders, although it is the best paid of
+all unskilled work in the colony. The Shearers' Union attempted to rule
+all labour and labour interests throughout the whole colony, and
+succeeded for a long time in keeping things in a very disorganised
+state. There is nothing in shearing that any man could not master in a
+few days, although the work may be laborious when long continued. The
+money earned is out of all proportion to what other classes of labour
+receive, nevertheless the shearer is the most discontented and turbulent
+of all classes, and very decidedly aggressive. He can earn in a few
+months enough to keep him for the rest of the year without work, he is
+gregarious in his habits, and travels about in mounted groups, generally
+armed. He may be said to be a flash man, given to gambling, dicing, and
+other sports, and a good deal of his money is spent at roadside
+shanties. When at work, however, he is sober and industrious, as most of
+them are desirous of making a good tally at the end of the shearing, and
+the rules of the shed forbid any latitude for loafing or mischief.
+Shearing by machine instead of by hand will tend to modify the aspects
+of the work, and allow more men to learn the art. Shearers travel from
+shed to shed during the season, and sometimes earn from four to six
+pounds a week. They live on the best that can be got. Instances are
+common of men shearing over two hundred sheep per day for days running.
+Amongst the shearers will be found many respectable men, who have homes
+or selections of their own on which their families reside, and who
+travel round a few large sheds to earn enough money to carry on with and
+support their homes.
+
+
+THE BULLOCK DRIVER.
+
+The man of strong body, and of stronger language, the old
+"bull-puncher," is going out. He was an institution of early days when
+the pole-dray was in vogue, a fearful kind of vehicle that tipped up
+going out of a steep creek with a load on, and going down would bear on
+the polers fit to break their necks. The four-wheeled waggon has for a
+long time superseded the old bullock-killing dray, but the driver
+remains much the same. Instead of driving ten bullocks in a pole-dray,
+he yokes up eighteen or twenty to a waggon and draws instead of three
+and a half tons, about seven or eight tons.
+
+His whip is a terrible long plaited thong with a strip of green hide
+attached, and a handle like a flail, with it he wakes the echoes and his
+oxen at the same time. The crack of the whip is accompanied by a voice
+as deep and hoarse as the bellow of one of his own long-suffering
+yoked-up slaves, and his lurid language makes even his bullocks shudder.
+To see the "bullocky" at his best is only given to those who travel with
+him for a whole trip, and observe his style of getting out of
+difficulties that would dishearten many another man. He is full of
+resource, and not lacking in energy, and when his team is bogged in a
+creek in a seemingly hopeless mess, and beyond all appearance of ever
+being extricated, after exhausting his ample stock of dire profanity, he
+proceeds in a methodical manner to dig under his wheels and corduroy
+the track with branches and limbs of trees, weeds out his jibbing
+bullocks, and with renewed energy and awful voice, he calls on his
+patient and weary team for a big effort, and out they walk with their
+load on to the bank. The "bullocky" was a great factor in the early days
+of settlement, where there were no roads and loading had to be dragged
+over mountains and through steep creeks and over all obstacles. His
+bodily strength, great experience, and energy, came in to help in no
+small degree to keep settlement alive. The arrival of the bullock teams
+was quite an event, perhaps after being months on the road, and when all
+supplies had run short--not that the fact of supplies being short on the
+station would induce them to hasten their progress, for no bullock
+driver was ever known to hurry or go out of his slow, crawling pace for
+any inducement whatever. The "bullocky" could drink rum in buckets, and
+was always given to use his fists. Take him all round, he was about as
+rough a specimen of a bush artist as could be found; but he was
+hospitable in his camp; it was always "Come and have a pot of tea,
+mate," to any traveller. The quicker-moving horse teams and the
+railways, are elbowing the bullock driver out into the never-never,
+where there are still opportunities for his special faculties, and it is
+not often that bullock teams, with their wood and iron yokes, and dusty,
+hairy drivers, are seen on any roads coming into railway stations. To
+ask a bullock driver where he got his beef from was not always a safe or
+prudent question; it was looked upon as a piece of wanton impertinence
+that would require suppression. After putting down so much on the debit
+side, something should be said to the credit of the carrier. He must
+have been hard-working and thrifty to have acquired the necessary
+capital to purchase his waggon and team. Physically, he must be
+exceptionally strong to stand the life he leads. Mentally, he must be
+full of resource to overcome the obstacles he meets with on unformed and
+often uncleared roads. Morally, he must be passing honest, for he often
+carries loads of great value, for the safety of which he alone is
+responsible for weeks and often months. These men take up the work of
+distributing goods where the railways end. Their duties are arduous and
+responsible, and they deserve more consideration than they generally
+receive.
+
+
+THE TRAMP.
+
+  "My life is a failure, the weary one said,
+    And the days of my youth are past;
+  But I still tramp along, and am not afraid,
+    While grub in the bush shall last.
+
+  "My shirt is patched, and my trousers are torn,
+    My hat is a sight to see,
+  The nap of my blanket has long been worn,
+    And is patched with an old soogee."
+
+The tramp is found everywhere in the world. The bush tramp is only
+another variety, and since the big strikes took place in Queensland some
+years ago, the tribe has multiplied, as it taught them to loaf on the
+stations for rations. Now they make a practice of getting all their
+supplies for the road from the station stores, pleading they have no
+money, and from policy rations are given them, and no questions asked.
+Many men carrying their swags on their backs are really looking for
+work, and deserve encouragement by the gratuity of a little rations to
+help them along, as stations are far apart in the outlying districts. As
+station owners are dependent on these same swagmen for the extra labour
+they require from time to time, it is policy to keep on good terms with
+a class that can work incalculable damage to station men that have miles
+of grass in sheep paddocks to burn, woolsheds to demolish, and gates on
+the main road to be left open, with no evidence forthcoming as to how
+fires were started, etc., and no police to supervise or control the
+actions of these irresponsible wanderers. But the tribe of "whalers," as
+they were called in New South Wales, men who tramped up one side of the
+Darling River, and tramped down on the other side, never betraying any
+desire to find work, these can be found in the Queensland bush too, but
+not far out, where there are long dry stages between the stations, and a
+shortness of water which terrifies these old "bummers." There are men
+who have tramped all over the colonies--every colony in Australia they
+have been through, and know all the tracks. They come up to a station
+and ask for work in a sort of a way, and then ask for rations to carry
+them on, even asking for a bit of tobacco; they say they have no money
+(and their appearance confirms all they say), and have done no work, for
+six months past, or longer, tramping all the way, and never a job. Their
+rags and swag betray dire poverty; their clothes patched in every
+colour, so that a blackfellow would hardly wear them, and they are dirty
+in the extreme. These men are not decrepid or weak, but are simply lazy,
+whilst the fine dry climate enables them to live without hard work.
+Occasionally, in order to procure some tobacco or a little money for a
+spree at a shanty, they will take a job for a time as rouseabout or
+wood-chopper, but they are soon off on the "wallaby track" again. It is
+a recognised custom now among stations in the west and north-west to
+ration the swagmen as they pass along, and the cost to some stations
+during the year is very considerable; they just bring up their ration
+bags and get them filled, and go to the creek to camp and cook the
+evening meal they have walked perhaps twenty miles to obtain, but which
+cost them nothing but the exercise. Poverty is the inheritance of some,
+but many of these wanderers are poor because as soon as they do earn a
+few pounds at odd jobs during shearing time, they march at once to the
+nearest bush shanty and drink what they have earned until turned away,
+and then tramp back to the stations, begging rations as they go along,
+and at the same time regarding the donors with a consuming and
+persistent malice. The professional tramp is not a nice character,
+there can be no mistaking him, with his swag done up in a long roll, and
+hung round his shoulder and down his side, a billycan and water-bag in
+his hand. He creeps along slowly with sore feet and shuffling steps,
+camping in the shade when he can to rest; he has no companions
+generally, and his life is a joyless and miserable one; but there he is,
+and there he will remain, for his tribe will not die out, because no one
+will refuse to give a little rations to a wayfarer because he is hard
+up, ragged, and penniless.
+
+
+THE DROVER.
+
+  He knew of every drover's way,
+    From Normanton to Bourke;
+  From far Port Darwin's ample bay,
+    Right through to Muswellbrook.
+  The desert plains he knew full well,
+    Where duststorms blind the eye;
+  And oft he had come from Camooweal,
+    Drivin' stock to Narrabri.
+
+The life of a drover, under the most favourable circumstances, is the
+reverse of a pleasant one, but like all nomadic occupations, it has a
+fascination for many bushmen. The drover would appear to be regarded as
+the common enemy of every owner or superintendent through whose run he
+passes, although in many cases it is a fact that roads are fenced off so
+that a drover cannot leave them without breaking down the fences. In
+many instances the only permanent water on the stock routes has been
+fenced in by the owner of the run. The principal wealth of Australia is
+stock, and these, both sheep and cattle, to be marketed need bringing
+down to some seaport or market, either as stores or fats. Sometimes long
+distances are travelled, from one end of Australia to the other, the
+journey occupying months. At starting, the stock are counted and handed
+over to the charge of a competent drover, who delivers them at the end
+of the journey, and is paid either by contract at so much per head, with
+an allowance for losses, or else by weekly wages, the owner finding the
+whole plant and money. Overlanding is a constant source of anxiety from
+start to finish of the journey. The varying items, such as floods,
+droughts, disease, incompetent hands, lost stock, and the surveillance
+from the owners of runs through which they pass, make up the daily
+routine of a drover's life. Stormy nights, when cattle become very
+restless, keep the drover awake and anxious. His duties are of a
+responsible nature, and he requires a good deal of tact and patience to
+manage his men properly, for he may have over a dozen employed with him
+on a droving job. With sheep the anxiety is not so great as with cattle
+or horses, as sheep are much easier to manage. The law provides that
+unless detained by flood, stock shall be driven not less than six miles
+every twenty-four hours. In most instances this distance is exceeded,
+but should the drover fail to travel the prescribed distance, through
+any accident, the owner or manager of the run turns up at the camp and
+gives the drover the option of either moving his stock on the proper
+distance, if it is only one mile ahead, or of appearing at the nearest
+police court, perhaps a hundred miles away, to answer an information for
+a breach of the Pastoral Leases Act or the Crown Lands Act. Although,
+perhaps only a nominal fine may be imposed, the vexatious delay, loss,
+and inconvenience of attending at the court, induce the drover to avoid
+any needless infringements of the Act. Some managers of runs are ever
+ready to pounce on any unfortunate drover who may deviate a few yards
+from the regulated half mile on each side of the road, and then it will
+be so arranged that the drover will not get a summons until he is a
+hundred miles away from where the offence was committed, when he has to
+leave his stock in the hands of the men, while he returns to answer the
+trivial charge; he is always fined, as he cannot well defend his case,
+and he is anxious to return to his duties.
+
+As a rule, the drovers in Queensland are a trustworthy and respectable
+class of men--of course there are exceptions, but these are soon found
+out. Cases have come to light where cattle sold on the road have been
+returned as knocked up lame, or dead from pleuro, and grog has been
+entered in the accounts as stores supplied. The owner is a good deal at
+the mercy of the drover after the latter has taken charge of the stock,
+as he has then very little control over them until they reach their
+destination. Some drovers have a plant of their own, twenty or thirty
+good horses, a dray or waggonette, and saddles, and make contracts to
+shift cattle or sheep at so much per head, paying their own men, and
+finding everything. The wages of drovers are always high, but not too
+high when the care and constant work are taken into consideration.
+Sundays and week days alike, rain or fine, grass or no grass, whatever
+turns up, it all means that the drover, or man in charge has to be on
+hand and see to things himself. The life is monotonous, wearying and
+fatiguing in the extreme. Man and boss alike have to rise before dawn,
+roll up blankets or swag, get breakfast, catch horses, and move the
+cattle off the night camp as soon as it is light, then ride all day with
+them, keep them moving slowly along feeding on any grass to be found,
+watering them when a chance offers, carrying a bit of lunch on the
+saddle, and a quart pot to boil some tea in. After the day's journey is
+over, the cattle have to be rounded up on the camp at sundown and then
+each takes his turn at watching during the night, which means three
+hours solitary riding round in the darkness, turning in any cattle
+inclined to stray out from the camp, and keeping up one's spirits by
+calculating how long the trip will last. When the weather is fine, the
+life is bearable, if monotonous, but when it rains, especially in cold
+rain and wind, the pleasures of droving are limited; with wet ground to
+lie on, wet clothes to ride in, and scarcely fire enough to cook at,
+with stock restless and troublesome at night, the drover will sometimes
+think longingly of the home and the comforts he once despised. Still,
+droving is a popular calling, and men have followed it constantly for
+years, procuring a long droving job during the season, and spelling
+their horses when work is scarce.
+
+More provision should be made for regular stock routes throughout the
+country, and the area of these should not be included in the runs on
+which lessees have to pay rent, as the case is now. The drover's calling
+is a necessary one, and he should have more protection and greater
+facilities for getting his stock to market, and not a continual fight
+for the rights of the road as he has now.
+
+  "In my wild erratic fancy, visions come to me of Clancy,
+    Gone a-droving down the Cooper, where the western drovers go;
+  As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,
+    For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know."
+
+  --"Banjo."
+
+
+A. S. N. CO.
+
+Not least among the forces that worked for the settlement of the north,
+may be reckoned the steamer services. In this respect, the old A. S. N.
+Co. held the premier position, as their steamers were the first in all
+the ports of Queensland, and the colony is much indebted to the energy
+and enterprise of that Company. From Brisbane to Cooktown, their
+steamers were the first to cast anchor in the new harbours and help to
+develope the trade of the coast. Although not always very popular, for
+the public complained often at the charges made for freight and
+passages, the Company gave a good helping hand towards the opening up of
+the young country.
+
+A few notes about the history of this pioneering Company, obtained
+through the agency of their secretary, Mr. F. Phillips, may be of
+interest to some. It was originally established under the name of the
+Hunter River Steam Navigation Company, in August, 1839, with a capital
+of L40,000, and premises at the foot of Margaret Street, Sydney. In
+April, 1841, the "Rose," steamer, arrived from England, 172 tons burden.
+In October of the same year, the "Shamrock" arrived from England, under
+Captain Gilmore, being 123 days out. The "Thistle" had previously
+arrived. In 1841, the Company advertised their intention of sending one
+of their steamers to Moreton Bay, and the "Shamrock" sailed thither in
+December of that year. The fares were L8, L6, and L4; freight, 20s.
+wool, 20s. per bale. After five months, the steamer was withdrawn, as
+the trade was not remunerative. In September, 1842, the "Tamar," and
+"Sovereign," steamers, were purchased by the Company from Mr. Grose for
+L12,000; they were then carrying on a trade with Twofold Bay, Melbourne,
+and Launceston. In July, 1844, two water frontage allotments in Brisbane
+were secured for L50, and Mr. James Paterson was appointed manager in
+October, 1845. The Company's engineering works were established at
+Pyrmont in February, 1846, the land being leased for that purpose. The
+"Eagle," steamer, a well-known old northerner, was built for the Company
+at their Pyrmont works. On March 11th, 1847, their steamer, the
+"Sovereign" was wrecked in the south passage in Moreton Bay, and
+forty-four lives lost. In March, 1851, the Company's name was changed to
+the Australian Steam Navigation Company, it was incorporated, and its
+scope enlarged. The capital of the Company was L320,000, divided into
+16,000 shares of L20 each, and the opposition of the Melbourne Steamship
+Company, which had been carried on at a great loss to both, ceased. In
+May, 1858, the Company offered the colonies a mail service to Galle, and
+in September of the same year the rush to the Port Curtis diggings set
+in, and land was purchased by the Company at Rockhampton in 1860. Their
+steam service was extended to Bowen, a port which was just then opening
+a way to inland settlers to obtain their supplies from, and the Company
+obtained a contract for a mail service between Adelaide and King
+George's Sound. In February, 1863, a new opposition was started by the
+inauguration of the Queensland Steamship Company. The following year the
+A. S. N. Co. had extensive wharves and stores built for themselves both
+in Brisbane and Rockhampton. The "Leichhardt," steamer, was built at
+their works for the northern trade, and the Company's operations were
+extended to Townsville in 1865, Captain Trouton being appointed manager
+the next year. In January, 1868, the Queensland Steamship Company was
+wound up, and its steamers and wharves bought up by the A. S. N. Co. In
+1870, the Californian mail service was opened by H. Hall, who chartered
+the company's steamers "Wonga" and the "City of Melbourne" for that
+purpose. Campbell's Wharf in Sydney was bought for a large sum in 1876,
+and the next year Captain O'Reilly leaving the Brisbane agency, Mr. W.
+Williams was appointed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In 1878, three Chinese crews were obtained for the A. S. N. Co.
+steamers, a circumstance which caused a strike in November, 1879,
+lasting until the following January. The Company had been engaged in the
+trade between Newcastle and Sydney, but this was abandoned in September,
+1880, when the plant and stores were sold to the Newcastle Steamship Co.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In January, 1887, the extensive intercolonial trade of the A. S. N. Co.
+ceased, and all their steam fleet was sold to a new company called the
+A. U. S. N. Co. The fleet stood at L481,000 in their books, and was sold
+for L200,000. The shareholders received L20 8s. 9d. per share, the par
+value being L20 per share; the shares when the fleet was sold were L9
+10s. in the open market, but the increase in the value of the landed
+properties of the Company helped to this satisfactory result.
+
+
+BURNS, PHILP & CO.
+
+Throughout Australia, but above all in the northern parts of Queensland,
+the name of Burns, Philp and Co. ranks foremost among the many wealthy
+and large companies that have helped to develop trade in the northern
+parts, and a short account of the growth of this great business may
+prove interesting. Intimately associated with North Queensland, the
+business of the Company has grown and prospered with the growth and
+prosperity of the youngest colony of the group, and much of the rapid
+opening of new ports and harbours on the northern coast line, and also
+among the Pacific Islands, is due directly to the natural business
+capabilities of the founders of the Company.
+
+A number of shipping agencies are also held in North Queensland, Western
+Australia, and Sydney, and the Company itself owns a fleet of small
+vessels used in the coasting, lightering, and island trade. Altogether
+there are between sixty and seventy steamers, sailing vessels, and
+lighters owned and chartered which fly the flag of Burns, Philp and Co.,
+and the red, white, and blue, with Scotch thistle in the centre, is a
+flag well known throughout the Pacific Islands and all round Australia.
+A mail service is run by the Company between Cooktown, New Guinea, and
+Thursday Island, also a three years' contract was in 1897 entered into
+with the Government of Western Australia to run weekly between Albany
+and Esperance. Considerable trade is done with the Solomon Islands, and
+steamers run regularly from Sydney in this trade. The Company have also
+steam and sailing services with the New Hebrides, Louisades, New Guinea,
+New Britain, Ellice, and Gilbert, and many other islands in the Pacific,
+having a ten years' contract with the Commonwealth Government for
+regular communication with all the islands which are practically under
+British control, while branch businesses have been established at Port
+Moresby and Samarai in British New Guinea, at Elila in the New Hebrides,
+Nukualofa in the Friendly Islands, and elsewhere. The first steam
+service down the Gulf of Carpentaria from Thursday Island was
+inaugurated by the senior partner of the Company, Mr. James Burns, in
+the year 1881, by means of the little steamship "Truganini," which used
+often to be overcrowded with passengers and freight for Normanton.
+
+The Company is the largest colonial shipper to the European and Eastern
+markets of Pacific Island produce, such as copra, beche de mer,
+sandalwood, ivory nuts, tortoise shell, and, above all, pearl shell, for
+which Torres Straits is so famous; add to this the amount of tallow,
+wool, and other Australian produce annually exported, and it will give
+some idea of the export business done. The Company has two fleets of
+pearl shelling luggers, comprising about forty pearlers in all.
+
+Burns, Philp and Co. is essentially a company of a co-operative
+character, and a glance at the share list will show that the great bulk
+of shareholders are managers, employees, and others actually working in
+the company. This tends to a live interest all round, and each branch
+vies with the other in good management and success. The business was
+originally established at Townsville, thirty years ago by the senior
+partner, Mr. James Burns, and the new offices lately completed there at
+a cost of L15,000 are the finest in North Queensland, while recently,
+premises costing L50,000 were erected in Sydney. Mr. Philp, now the Hon.
+Robert Philp, Premier of Queensland, joined Mr. Burns some twenty-five
+years ago. Both are Scotchmen, the one hailing from Edinburgh, and the
+other from Glasgow. The Company was formed into a limited liability
+company twenty-one years ago.
+
+Much could be written of the varied character of the business of Burns,
+Philp and Co., which embraces almost every colonial interest besides,
+while they are allied to a group of other colonial companies which act
+in accord with them, notably the North Queensland Insurance Company, and
+other concerns. For some years the Company engaged in the whaling
+enterprise with fairly successful results, but the detention of Captain
+Carpenter, and the seizure of the whaling barque "Costa Rica Packet" by
+the Dutch authorities in the Malay Archipelago, abruptly terminated what
+promised to be a most important colonial enterprise. It will be
+remembered that the Dutch Government had to pay a considerable sum to
+the captain, owners, and crew of the vessel for this wrongful seizure.
+
+The total turnover of this Company now exceeds two millions sterling,
+and it is one of the largest and most progressive of the purely
+Australian concerns.
+
+In the Sydney office a special telegraphic operator is always at work,
+and cable and telegraphic messages are sent to, and received from, all
+parts of the world direct. This is the only company in the colonies
+which has a Government operator established on the premises solely for
+its own business.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+ABORIGINALS OF NORTH QUEENSLAND.
+
+
+Where did the natives come from?
+
+How long ago?
+
+Where did they land first?
+
+Where are their ancestors?
+
+Were they ever civilised?
+
+These and similar questions occur to those who regard the natives of
+Australia with interest. They live only in the past, there is no future
+for them, here at least. Their origin is involved in impenetrable
+obscurity. Scarcely on the earth is to be found a race similar to the
+aboriginals, whilst their antiquity is beyond doubt, and also the fact
+that they have a common origin. Their speech, habits, colour, customs,
+and superstitions, proclaim in the strongest terms that they all came
+from a common source; from the far north of Australia to the farthest
+south, a hundred proofs are forthcoming to show a common ancestry. Words
+that have a similar meaning are used on the Darling River and in places
+in the Gulf of Carpentaria; the weapons are similar all over the
+continent; their faces and figures are similar, allowing for the
+effects of varieties of food and climate. In the three hundred years
+since the first contact between Europeans and the New Hollanders, no
+change has occurred; they were then spread over Australia, the same in
+habits and life as they are now, and the only result of the contact of
+the two races of men, the civilised and the savage, is that the native
+is fading away before the white man like mist before the morning sun.
+Nothing can avert the doom that is written as plainly as was the writing
+on the wall at Belshazzar's feast. And to what purpose would we preserve
+them? What good could accrue from maintaining a remnant of a race that
+it is impossible to civilise. The buffalo of America, like the Red
+Indian himself (the hunter and the hunted), pass over the river in front
+of the advancing tide of civilisation.
+
+As a study, the native race of Australia is eminently interesting, for
+in them we have living representatives of the stone age; remarkable for
+their pureness of race, having had no admixture from any other nation
+through countless generations for their great antiquity, for before the
+pyramids of Egypt were built, they had occupied Australia and for the
+silence of all history and traditions concerning them and their destiny
+of doom; as a race problem they are full of interest.
+
+From Cape York to the Great Australian Bight, and from the Leeuwin to
+the Great Sandy Spit on Frazer's Island, there is no difference in the
+type of the native of Australia, although the quality and quantity of
+their food has caused some of the tribes to be more robust and better
+developed than others. In the north, where food is plentiful, there are
+many fine specimens of men over the average height of the European. Many
+of the northern aboriginals are tall, muscular men, of great activity
+and endurance, with keen sight and observation, and they often attain to
+a good old age. Nearly all are bearded, with hair that is wavy rather
+than straight or curly. They are not a cowardly race, as among
+themselves they conduct their fights with a certain degree of honour,
+and with great pluck, not taking advantage of an opponents' accident.
+They excel in throwing their spears with the wommera or throwing stick,
+and can hit a mark at a distance of seventy to eighty yards with great
+force; the boomerang is used for game, such as ducks or pigeons, as well
+as in warfare, and is really a formidable weapon. On the north-east
+coast, they use a wooden sword which is wielded with both hands, and
+seems to have been an improvement or an innovation on the boomerang,
+where the dense scrubs prohibited the use of the throwing weapon.
+
+They appear to have been from all time a race of hunters, ever living on
+the products of the chase, and from the scarcity of game, and difficulty
+in keeping it when killed, they seldom remain more than one or two
+nights in one camp, but move about in small parties. Although the
+tribes or families are always on the move--a nomad hunter race--their
+districts are well defined, and they seldom trespass on the hunting
+grounds of an adjoining tribe, unless with consent. This strict
+delimitation of districts and dislike of trespass, has led to a great
+diversity in their dialects, and every little tribe seems to have a
+different language; in a distance of one or two hundred miles, the names
+for the commonest things may be altered, although the same social system
+prevails substantially throughout all tribes, with little or no
+variation.
+
+In their original state they could not have been an unhappy people; when
+food was plentiful, they made weapons and shaped their stone tomahawks,
+which of itself was a work of slow progress; they wove nets for their
+game, and composed or sang their wild songs, or still wilder
+corroborrees, or dances. Obedient to the laws and customs handed down
+from their ancient forefathers, and following out the rites of their
+marriage laws with great strictness, they lived healthy lives to a good
+old age, while the increase of the race was checked by the amount of
+food each district could supply. With the advent of the white race, the
+social system that held them together for thousands of years, became
+disturbed and broken into, and their natural food supplies were
+destroyed. Thus, with the introduction of new diseases, this primitive
+race of mankind is fast disappearing, apparently without a thought or
+struggle or hope, and after a few years not a remnant of them, or any
+sign of their occupation of the country will remain. Some of their
+customs appear to be very general, such as knocking out the two front
+teeth among women, and sometimes among men; this is done by a sudden
+blow on the end of a stick which is placed on the tooth, and then
+knocked inwards. A very general custom is boring a hole through the
+septum of the nose, although it is not often that an ornament is put
+through it. Another manner of adornment is by raised cicatrices made on
+the chest and back and arms, by cutting the skin with a piece of sharp
+flint and putting in gum or clay. In their native state, they do not
+appear to have made any attempt at any kind of covering or dress, either
+male or female, except that young girls wore an apron round the loins
+made of fibre or grass hanging down a few inches. For camping at night
+they used ti-tree or other bark as a shelter when procurable, and always
+slept between two or three small fires, making a slight hollow in the
+ground so as to get the warmth of the fire above them, and generally
+choosing the sandy beds of rivers away from the wind. In the Gulf
+country, during the wet season, they made small sleeping benches raised
+on forks driven in the ground, about three feet high, with sheets of
+bark laid flat, and over them other sheets of bark bent in a
+half-circle, so as to throw off rain; beneath these structures or
+sleeping places they kept up a smoke to save them from the mosquitoes,
+which in the Northern Peninsula, were dreadfully annoying. It was the
+duty of the gins to keep the fire going during the night. In dry weather
+or windy nights, a breakwind made of boughs or branches was used as a
+protection, behind which they made their small fires for sleeping by.
+The cooking was generally done away from their camp fires, mostly during
+the daytime.
+
+In the Gulf country also, the coast blacks make small gunyahs of bent
+twigs thatched with grass. These are only used during the wet season as
+a protection, chiefly from mosquitoes.
+
+The treatment of the native races has always been a difficult question.
+Whenever new districts were settled, the blacks had to move on to make
+room; the result was war between the races. The white race were the
+aggressors, as they were the invaders of the blacks' hunting territory.
+The pioneers cannot be condemned for taking the law into their own hands
+and defending themselves in the only way open to them, for the blacks
+own no law themselves but the law of might. The protection of outside
+districts by the Native Police, was the only course open, although the
+system cannot very well be defended any more than what was done under it
+can be. The white pioneers were harder on the blacks in the way of
+reprisals when they were forced to deal with them for spearing their men
+or their cattle or horses even than the Native Police. But how were
+property and the lives of stockmen, shepherds, and prospectors in the
+north to be protected unless by some summary system of retribution by
+Native Police or bands of pioneers? The vices and diseases of the white
+race have been far more fatal to the blacks than the rifles of the
+pioneers, more particularly when they were allowed about the towns,
+where they always exhibit the worst traits of their character, becoming
+miserable creatures, useless for any purpose, and an eyesore to
+everyone. Those employed on stations as stockriders and horse-hunters
+become very useful and clever at the business, having a special aptitude
+for working among stock, and they are, as a rule, well treated, clothed,
+and fed. The Northern Peninsula up to Cape York is the only territory in
+Queensland where the natives may still be found in their original state,
+and on some of the rivers flowing into the Gulf they are still numerous.
+
+Their cave drawings show their taste for drawing or sketching to have
+been of the rudest; just a few marks on their boomerangs, line drawings
+on water koolimans, and some attempts at drawing figures on rocks in
+caves are all that have been discovered. The drawings are found wherever
+sandstone caves are found, and many of these are to be met with on the
+range about the Normanby River, near Cooktown, where the steep cliffs
+have been eaten into by the weather or by landslips, leaving hollows or
+caves in which the blacks have camped and ornamented with figures rudely
+drawn and coloured with red ochre or pipeclay; many of these drawings
+represent nothing at all; in some a hand is drawn, occasionally an
+attempt at some bird, or animal, or tree. Sir George Grey describes some
+elaborate drawings on the north-west coast of Australia found in caves
+of a similar nature, and large numbers are found on the coast near the
+Roper River in the Gulf of Carpentaria, and at Limmen's Bight, in the
+hollows of rocks, where, sheltered from the weather, the face of the
+stone is entirely covered with their rude attempts.
+
+All the lands in the southern seas are supposed to have been populated
+by castaways, driven by gales out of their reckoning, and landing
+haphazard at the first land or shore. The first visitor to the unknown
+and uninhabited land, arriving by accident, would have a struggle for
+existence, and a hard one too; he would have to improvise his weapons
+for the chase, and to learn to adapt himself to his new surroundings.
+His only chance of existence would be to become a nomad, a hunter; and
+all his spare time would be taken up in finding food and making weapons
+for the chase; for which Nature provided in a rude way the materials
+such as flints that break with a cutting or conchoidal edge that would
+answer very well for carving flesh, fashioning spears, or hollowing
+vessels for carrying water, though large shells could be used for this;
+the gum that exudes from many trees would serve to fasten handles to
+these flint knives. Hard rocks, such as diorite, would be used for axes.
+These stones require a vast amount of patience in chipping and grinding
+into shape. To make canoes out of sheets of bark would become a
+necessity for fishing and visiting the islands, and they would have to
+be sewn together with twine made from the inner bark of a tree.
+Wonderfully well made some of those canoes on the coast are; three
+sheets of thin bark tapered to a point; one sheet for the bottom and one
+each to form the sides; the fire is laid on some mud on the bottom, with
+a shell to bail out. Using a single paddle on each side alternately, the
+natives will make long voyages among the islands on the coast. Primitive
+Nature would be the castaway's granary or storehouse; the herbs and
+fruits as they grew naturally, and the wild animals and fish would form
+the only means of subsistence.
+
+Arriving in the country with such surroundings and difficulties to
+contend with, no wonder the castaways remained in a state of savagery.
+Without any means to better their condition, or even to know that it
+could be bettered, they remained as they landed, simple savages or
+children of Nature, quite satisfied with their surroundings, and happy
+enough if left alone to follow their own mode of life. What spare time
+they had would be passed singing songs or composing them. The women
+would assist in all the work of life and perform all the drudgery,
+collecting roots, nuts, and fibre; grinding the seeds, making the fire,
+and carrying wood and water to the camp. It is well known that savage
+women are possessed of uncommon endurance and vitality. In the course
+of ages, as their numbers increased, they would gradually spread abroad,
+carrying with them the customs and habits of their forefathers, but not
+improving or adding to the knowledge of the tribe. The natural instincts
+of the aboriginals are sharpened by exercise, and their skill in
+tracking is marvellous; they can follow the trail of another black over
+bare rocks or on the driest earth; they can recognise an acquaintance by
+the track of his foot. As bushmen they excel, having the faculty of
+being able to steer a course to any place they may wish, even in the
+dark, although, from superstitious ideas, they do not travel about much
+at night. Most of their quarrels are over their women; one man
+appropriating the wife of another. It is allowable by their laws for a
+man to have several wives, and marriage by arrangement is the general
+course. They are betrothed at a very early age, and the girl remains
+with her parents till the man comes to claim her. The brother-in-law has
+the right to marry the widow, and is expected to do so. The
+mother-in-law never looks on the face of her son-in-law, avoiding him on
+every occasion, even if in the same camp; this is a custom peculiar to
+all parts of Australia, and even to other savage peoples outside the
+continent.
+
+They are all compelled to marry within their class, and all tribes come
+under the same system, an equal rule prevailing all over Australia. The
+system of their marriage laws is puzzling to white people, but it is
+well understood by every black, male or female, old or young, and will
+be referred to further on, under the class system, the writer having
+collected information of several class systems for Mr. A. W. Howitt, of
+Victoria.
+
+The blackfellow generally wears his hair long, and usually caked into
+thick matted rope-like coils, with a band of red above the forehead, or
+else a native dog's tail. When dressed for a dance or corroborree, the
+hair is sometimes tied in a tuft with cockatoo feathers on the top. The
+married women wear their hair shorter, but the unmarried women generally
+wear it long. When mourning for the dead, the hair is plastered all over
+with mud, and the eyes and forehead are painted round with pipeclay.
+
+The natives are fond of singing, and their voices are melodious, while
+they keep excellent time by beating two boomerangs together; they sing a
+sort of monotonous chant, and keep it up in camp to a late hour. Their
+songs of mourning are always pitched in a minor key, and convey a
+dreadfully sorrowful expression; they are sung by both male and female,
+but the chant is soon varied, as their natural inclination is to be
+merry, and they look on most things in a ludicrous light. Their sense of
+humour is very keen and to mimic everything is their chief delight. The
+clear ringing laugh that they indulge in, and their merry chatter, are
+an indication of the cheerful nature and freedom from care, that help
+to make them so contented and easily pleased.
+
+They believe that the spirits of the dead, which are good and bad, go
+about at night and hold communication with some members of the tribe,
+particularly with the medicine men, or doctors. The medicine men claim
+to have power to talk with the spirits, and the blacks firmly believe
+that they have such power of communication. These old men are also
+supposed to preserve the traditions and superstitions of the tribe, and
+they alone can perform with efficacy the various ceremonies attendant on
+the healing of the sick; they also instruct the young men in the beliefs
+of the tribe and as to the proper conduct of their lives, and this they
+do at special meetings known as bora meetings. It is the special
+privilege of the old men to hold communication with the spirits of the
+departed, by which they become possessed of much knowledge which they
+impart to their tribe. They believe they have the power of making rain
+and healing the sick. The blacks live in continual dread of death, which
+they attribute to some spirit agency or to witchcraft. Scarcely any
+death is put down to natural causes, except those killed in fight;
+sickness and death are always regarded by them as the works of an enemy
+at a distance. This belief is universal among Australian blacks. They
+have various ideas as to how this evil influence is brought about; one
+of them is by pointing a bone at the victim, and for this a piece of a
+human leg bone sharpened to a point and several inches long is used.
+They live in dread of this bone (Thimmool) being pointed at them, and
+have a great aversion at any time to touch or even look at any bones of
+deceased members of the tribe. It is supposed that the pointing of the
+bone causes a gradual wasting away of the victim until death takes
+place. Another process is to take the pinion of a bird, the two bones
+fastened together with wax, including some hair of the person whose
+injury is intended; this is stuck in the ground and surrounded with
+fire, then it is set in the sun, and again returned to the fire, varying
+the performance according as to the extent of the harm to be caused;
+when sufficient sickness has been caused, they place the bone in water,
+thus dispelling the charm. This process is called "Marro." There is a
+superstition about abstracting the kidney fat of a blackfellow for
+promoting luck in fishing, and this is said to be done in various ways.
+The blacks are very good to the aged and infirm, and carry them from
+camp to camp; they are also good to the blind, whom they feed and care
+for, and when death ensues, they will mourn and chant their death song
+nightly.
+
+The aborigines believe that the spirit survives after death, and that it
+walks about on earth for a time, and then departs for another country
+which is supposed to be among the stars, the road to which is by the
+milky way, and the ascent by the Southern Cross, as by a ladder. The
+life supposed to be led there is similar to that on earth, but the food
+is abundant and shade trees and water are everywhere. They have names
+for all the constellations, and understand their times and movements.
+The Pleiades they call "Munkine," the name for a virgin or unmarried
+girl. Orion's Belt is called "Marbarungal," they believe him to have
+been a great hunter who formerly dwelt among them. The moon is a male,
+who, they say, was once a blackfellow, who killed a lot of their people.
+The latter burnt him in the struggle, and they point to the shadows on
+its surface as marks of the scars. A paper was read before the Royal
+Society of Brisbane by E. Palmer on October 2nd, 1885, "Concerning some
+superstitions of North Queensland aborigines."
+
+Cannibalism is practised among the blacks everywhere, but more from
+custom following certain traditions than for the sake of food; certain
+blacks are eaten, while others are not; those killed in a fight are
+generally eaten. In some places they skin the dead blackfellow, and
+twist the skin round a bundle of spears with the hair sticking up on
+top, and they carry this to different camps, sticking it in the ground
+by the points of the spears; children are sometimes eaten when they die.
+
+They are expert at all game hunting, and in snaring wildfowl; the plain
+turkey can be caught with a long reed on the end of a spear with a
+running noose made of twine and quills; with this in one hand, and a
+bush in the other, a man with patience will creep up close enough to
+catch a turkey round the neck. They make strong nets of cordage, having
+a large mesh to catch emus, kangaroos, or wallabies. These nets they
+stretch in certain places, and drive the game into them; small hand nets
+are used to catch fish with; pigeons and ducks are snared in nets which
+are stretched across creeks. The habits of birds and animals are closely
+studied, and their instincts are overmatched by the cunning of the
+savage, who wants them for food.
+
+All their food is cooked before being eaten, generally on stones made
+red-hot. It is wrapped in green leaves, and then covered over with hot
+ashes to steam. In the north they eat the alligator when they can manage
+to kill one, and the small fresh-water crocodile, found in most of the
+Gulf rivers, is also an article of food.
+
+Seeds of various grasses are ground into a paste with water and poured
+into the ashes to cook, while some fruits and nuts require great
+preparation before using, as they are extremely poisonous without such
+treatment. In preserving game, the blacks are very cruel, they twist the
+legs out of joint to prevent them getting away, and keep them alive in
+this way until they are wanted for cooking.
+
+They eat the dingo, and everything else that lives; and are very clever
+at discovering the nests of the native bees; honey, or "sugar-bag," as
+they call it, is a favourite food of theirs. It is only by constant
+moving about from camp to camp that a supply of food can be kept up, the
+women doing their share of providing by digging up yams and roots,
+fishing for crayfish and mussels, and grinding seeds between two stones.
+Their life is a constant worry for food from day to day, and nothing
+passes them that can be eaten. A favourite food of theirs is the tuber
+of the water-lily growing in lagoons, of this they even eat the stalks
+or stems of the seed stalk.
+
+The dugong, a large marine grass-feeding mammal is netted and speared;
+the flesh, when dried, is similar to bacon, and in the Wide Bay dialect
+is called "Koggar," the same name they give to the pig. White ants are
+esteemed a treat, and their nests are broken into, and the young ones,
+with the eggs winnowed from the dirt are eaten raw, as well as the
+grubs, which are the larva; of some locusts or beetles, and which are
+cut out of the trees.
+
+
+THE CLASS SYSTEM.
+
+All natives acknowledge the same system of class divisions, and these
+correspond all over Australia. The blacks are born into these divisions,
+and the idea is instilled into them from the beginning that they are to
+observe them as sacred.
+
+Though differing in name or in totem, the classes and divisions prevail
+everywhere, and a blackfellow knows at once which of the divisions
+corresponds to his own in a distant tribe.
+
+All things in Nature are divided into the same classes, and are said to
+be male and female; the sun, moon, and stars are believed to be men and
+women, and to belong to classes similar to the blacks themselves.
+
+The following is an instance of the system of class divisions belonging
+to a tribe on the Upper Flinders River, in the Gulf of Carpentaria,
+calling themselves "Yerrunthully." They had four class divisions,
+namely:--
+
+    Male     marries   Female.         Children are
+
+  Bunbury      ...    Woonco      ...   Coobaroo
+  Coobaroo     ...    Koorgielah  ...   Bunbury
+  Koorgielah   ...    Coobaroo    ...   Woonco
+  Woonco       ...    Bunbury     ...   Koorgielah
+
+Each boy and girl in the tribe is born under one of these divisions, and
+is subjected to the laws, connected with tribal marriages. These classes
+are represented by totems, which are different in other tribes lower
+down the river:--
+
+  Bunbury       Carpet Snake      Tharoona
+
+  Coobaroo    { Brown Snake       Warrineyah
+              { Emu               Gooburry
+
+  Koorgielah  { Plain Turkey      Bergamo
+              { Native Dog        Cubburah
+
+  Woonco        Whistling Duck    Chewelah
+
+Many other instances could be given, but they all partake of the same
+divisions and classes. A blackfellow can only marry into one class,
+namely that opposite to his name, the other three are forbidden to him
+strictly. The descent seems to be reckoned through the mother, for the
+child takes its name, not from its mother's class, but from the
+grandmother's class. The class name always goes back to that of the
+grandmother on the female side, the father's class name having no
+influence in the matter. Woonco's daughter is always Coobaroo, and
+Coobaroo's daughter is always Woonco, and so on through succeeding
+generations. The father might possibly be of a name representing the
+proper class, but from a far away tribe, for they correspond in class
+though not always in name; still the children take their name through
+the mother in this tribe. The blacks understand these relationships
+well, and exemplify them with two sticks crossed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+PHYSICAL FEATURES.
+
+
+The annual reports issued by the Water Supply Department of Queensland
+give detailed accounts of the annual and average rainfall over the whole
+of the colony, with the results of boring for artesian water, both
+privately and by Government. It is one of the most valuable and
+interesting reports issued, and with the rain maps accompanying it,
+conveys in a moment an accurate estimate of the average rainfall both on
+the coast and in the far interior. Beginning at Mackay, where the
+tropical rains commence, and following the coast line to Cape York, the
+record is higher than anywhere else in the colony, owing to the near
+approach of the high ranges to the coast. The maximum rainfall recorded
+in one year is reported at Geraldton, where 211.24 inches fell in 1894;
+Cairns can boast of 174.56 inches as its highest rainfall; this occurred
+in 1886. At Cape York, the average is 60.87; and at Mackay, 72.73
+inches; these numbers give a general indication of the humidity of the
+climate on the east coast of North Queensland. As we advance into the
+interior a far different climate prevails, and the farther west we go,
+the lighter becomes the rainfall, till it would almost appear as if it
+scarcely ever rained in some places in the interior, which are not much
+raised above the level of the sea. At Birdsville, low down on the
+Diamantina River, on the borders of South Australia, the rainfall taken
+for three years, amounted to only 5.72 inches, and on the Mulligan,
+where for six years an average was taken, it amounted to only 5.77
+inches. At Boulia, on the Burke River, the average for nine years was
+13.54 inches.
+
+Between these extremes of great dryness and excessive moisture, the
+intervening country shows a graduated increase or decrease as one
+approaches or recedes from the eastern coast. As very few water-ways
+exist to carry off surplus water, the drainage being often imperceptible
+to the eye, this seems a merciful dispensation of Nature, as under such
+conditions any great rainfall would place the whole country under a sea
+of water long enough for all animal life to become extinct. The water
+that flows down the usually dry channels of the western rivers
+southwards comes from the Gulf watershed, where the rainfall is much
+heavier, averaging at Cloncurry 20.80 inches. The amount of rainfall
+determines largely the nature of the fauna and flora of a country, and
+causes it to vary, even in the same latitudes. Between the high coastal
+districts and the vast rolling plains and downs of the interior these
+differences are so marked and distinct that they seem like two separate
+countries; climate, timber, herbage, and even animal life are so
+different in the two regions that it seems extraordinary such contrasts
+should exist in the same latitude in one country. All along the east
+coast, where the rainfall is heavy, we find forests of splendid hardwood
+and scrubs containing cedar and pine of gigantic growth. In the
+interior, the timber is as a rule dwarfed, hollow, and crooked; the
+principal timbers being the acacia family, such as the gidya, myall,
+brigalow, boree, etc. The grasses of the interior adapt themselves to
+the climate, and are of a far hardier growth than the coast grasses; one
+season without moisture does not impare their wonderful vitality; the
+salt bushes are the hardiest of all vegetation in the interior, and are
+of the greatest value to pastoralists. Birds are found on the coast that
+never visit the interior districts; while the galas and corellas are
+never found in a wild state near the coast. During the wet season in the
+summer months many seabirds migrate to the interior for a few weeks.
+
+Accompanying the report of the Hydraulic Engineer is a coloured map
+showing the sites of artesian bores and tanks and the supposed area of
+the lower cretaceous or water-bearing strata, as well as the underlying
+impermeable palaeozoic rocks. The whole of Western Queensland may be said
+to belong to the lower cretaceous formation; here and there, where it
+has not been denuded by the action of the atmosphere, the desert
+sandstone may be found overlaying it. The whole of this vast area of
+water-bearing rocks has been proved by artesian bores, most of which are
+far below the level of the sea. The knowledge of the area of the
+water-bearing country in the interior is extending as additional bores
+are put down. Some of the bores within the known belt of the water area
+have been abandoned owing to causes that may be generally classified as
+accidents.
+
+The Government have sunk a number of wells, while hundreds of flowing
+bores that now stud the great western country have been put down by
+private enterprise. The policy of the Government has been to determine
+the area within which artesian water may be hopefully searched for, and
+to provide water in arid country or on stock routes, and excellent
+results have attended the carrying out of this policy. The Winton bore
+is down in the lower cretaceous beds 4,010 feet, it gives a flow of
+720,000 gallons of water a day, at a temperature of 192 degs.; the
+surface level is 600 feet above the sea; it will take about L8,000 to
+cover the total cost of sinking, etc. The Charleville bore has the
+largest flow of any Government bore, giving 3,000,000 gallons in the
+twenty-four hours, but some bores on Tinenburra, on the Warrego River,
+give as much as 4,000,000 gallons. About 800 private bores have been
+sunk in search of artesian water in the western area of Queensland; of
+these 515 give a total output of 322 millions of gallons in the
+twenty-four hours, and the total cost of them amounted to nearly
+L2,000.000. This expenditure made within sixteen years, is creditable to
+the energy and forethought of the western settlers. Some of the bores
+are not overflowing, and the water is raised by pumping, though the
+supply is inexhaustible. By the flow of water thus brought to the
+surface, the devastating effects of the periodical droughts have been
+minimised, and large areas have become available to profitable
+occupation that previously were waste country. The flow of this artesian
+water from the private and public bores is worth more to Queensland than
+a river of gold. They have completely changed the face of the country,
+and removed the anxiety of the stock owners towards the end of the
+season, when all surface water (except the most permanent lagoons) has
+dried up and formed mud traps to catch all weak stock that venture near
+them. These tiny perforations of the earth's surface have helped to
+solve the difficulty of settlement on the western lands, where we find
+the rainfall diminishing as we go further west. As these little threads
+of water find their way across the plains and form into small ponds in
+the hollows, the wildfowl resort to them as if they were natural waters,
+while the bulrushes (typha angustifolia), soon follow and grow in
+masses, although these are only to be found round springs, and never in
+permanent lagoons or rivers. Some curious features are connected with
+the artesian water supply; sometimes the temperature is very high, that
+of the Dagworth bore reaching 196 degrees, while the pressure of the
+Thargomindah bore is over 230 lbs. to the square inch. The water supply
+tapped is perhaps beyond calculation, and up to the present time there
+is no indication of exhaustion.
+
+The source of this enormous pressure of water that is capable of sending
+a jet over a hundred feet above the surface, is still unexplained, and
+many theories are afloat as to its origin; some of these go far afield
+for reasons for the great supply and strong pressure. The enormous
+rainfall on the coast ranges, where the intake probably occurs, and
+where the impermeable rocks approach the surface, carrying the water
+under the lower cretaceous, or more recent formation (which is shown to
+be the most extensive in Western Queensland), seems to be the most
+reasonable to adopt at the present time. These water-bearing strata must
+cover very large areas in Australia, for a bore at Tarcanina, near the
+south coast on the Great Australian Bight, is down over 1,000 feet below
+the level of the sea, and throws the water to a great height above the
+surface.
+
+Mr. R. L. Jack, the Government Geologist, in a paper on artesian water
+in the western interior of Queensland read before the Australian
+Association for the Advancement of Science, in Brisbane, January, 1895,
+argues in a most convincing manner as to the source of artesian supplies
+of water, giving the intake or gathering ground at about 55,000 square
+miles, over a region where the mean average rainfall taken at thirteen
+meteorological stations along the line of outcrop, amounts to 27 inches
+annually, which is considerably greater than that of the interior of the
+downs country. The greater part of the rainfall is not carried away by
+the channels of the rivers, neither is it evaporated, but sinks through
+porous strata into the earth, and does not return except through springs
+or submarine leakage. The fact of all this great supply of water finding
+its way to the sea at great depths, shows what little effect a few bores
+can have on the enormous annual supply. It is an encouragement to extend
+the number of bores, which are so necessary to successfully settle the
+arid plains of the distant interior, in order to anticipate the waste of
+water.
+
+The fact of an artesian bore diminishing its flow may be due to many
+causes other than shortage of supply, faults in the tubing or caving in
+of the strata may account for it. We have here the secret of successful
+settlement in inland Australia--an inexhaustible supply of water fit for
+all the wants of man.
+
+The Normanton bore, practically on the edge of the Gulf, and sunk from a
+level of about 30 feet above the sea, struck artesian water at a depth
+of 1,983 feet, or 1,950 feet below sea level. This bore and the one at
+Burketown, both of which were successful in reaching artesian water,
+were put down by the Government during the time Mr. G. Phillips
+represented Carpentaria in the Legislative Assembly, 1893-5.
+
+
+THE GRASSES AND FODDER PLANTS.
+
+An enumeration of all the fodder plants and herbage common to North
+Queensland would require a long catalogue, as variety is Nature's law in
+this case, and the western soil teems after the wet season with flowers,
+herbs, grasses, and fruits all more or less adapted for use as fodder.
+The prospect on the wide spreading plains after the early thunder
+showers in November and December is very refreshing to the eye that has
+been for months staring on the dry stalks of the Mitchell grass, or else
+on the brown bare earth. Trailing vines of the melon and cucumber family
+spread themselves in profusion, the fruit of which is eagerly sought
+after by stock. Convolvolus flowers and vines grow among the young green
+grasses, and many varieties of the compositae show in bright yellow their
+gleaming flowers, mingled with hibiscus of every hue. The growth of
+plant life is marvellous after the fall of soft rain on the warm rich
+soil. Portulaca, known as pigweed, is among the first of the plants to
+spring up, and grows in great masses; the seeds form a principal article
+of food for the birds that frequent the plains, the young plants are
+also used by stock, and are not despised by man in an emergency. All
+life, vegetable and animal, revives suddenly after the surface of the
+earth has been saturated with the life-giving element; frogs and locusts
+sing their songs of joy day and night; flies increase beyond
+conception, and mosquitoes and sandflies torment to distraction both
+man and beast.
+
+On the plains, the first vegetation to spring up is the sensitive plant,
+spreading its delicate foliage over the surface, the leaves closing
+during the heat of the day, and opening in the evening. The small
+creeping plant said to be poisonous to stock (Euphorbia Drummondi),
+appears immediately after rain. The climbing vine (Capparis lucida),
+which bears a sub-acid fruit not unlike passion fruit, at this time of
+year gives out its white flowers and fruit at the same time. The scent
+of the innumerable flowers on the plains, the tender herbage, the young
+grasses sending their seed stalks several feet high, and all the soil
+covered densely with vegetation and herbage suitable for stock present a
+picture to the eye, so utterly opposed to that which prevailed but a few
+weeks before the advent of the rains, that the spectator can scarcely
+believe it to be the same country. The seeds of some plants will remain
+dormant for years, and then suddenly spring up in profusion; for
+instance, the plant commonly known as peabush, a leguminous annual
+(botanically Sesbania aegyptica), has only a periodical growth, and at
+such times, varying for many years, it covers the plains in such rank
+masses that the stockriders get quite bewildered when searching for
+stock through its scrublike density; for several years after this
+abundant growth, the plant will scarcely be noticeable; it is said that
+every three years is a peabush year, but the writer cannot support the
+theory, as he can only call to mind four or five really bad peabush
+seasons in a period of thirty years. The seeds which fall to the ground
+in great quantities form the sustenance for flocks of pigeons and other
+birds, but much seed must also fall down the cracks of the earth and
+bide their time for a chance of springing into life. The flowers of this
+plant grow in lilac and yellow on the same stalk. Cattle are fond of it
+when young, and mustering stock in a peabush year has many extra
+difficulties on account of the prolific growth of this intermittent
+annual. It will sometimes grow to a height of fifteen feet, and in
+swampy places is so dense that it is difficult to keep even a few horses
+in sight when driving through it; after it dries and the seeds fall to
+the ground, the stalks break off, and the sweep of the water over the
+plains during the succeeding year gathers these dry stems against the
+trees in enormous masses like small haystacks, and there they remain
+until a bushfire reduces them to ashes. The masses of peabush carried
+down creeks and watercourses at certain seasons will yet prove a source
+of danger to railway and road bridges when such structures come to be
+built on the western plains comprising the watersheds of rivers flowing
+into the Gulf of Carpentaria. Though peabush grows strongly on flooded
+ground, it can be found of a sturdy growth on ridges or high plains or
+downs during a favourable year, especially where water lodges between
+ridges. It is an ancient and historical plant, for the flowers that
+composed the wreath found on an Egyptian mummy of ancient date, when
+softened and opened with warm water, were found to be identical with the
+flowers of the peabush of the Flinders River and western plains of North
+Queensland.
+
+The native pastures have not been improved by the introduction of stock;
+the evils of overstocking and the want of bushfires to keep down the
+under-growth, have in some districts deteriorated or exterminated some
+of the best of the fodder grasses. The best of all indigenous grasses is
+known as Mitchell grass, a perennial of strong growth, and capable of
+resisting the driest weather; there are many varieties of this grass,
+which is found only on the plains and downs of the interior. It
+possesses the faculty of shooting green from the old stalks at the
+joints, and taking up moisture, renewing its youth again. The Mitchell
+grass grows in isolated strong bunches, and its presence is a sure sign
+of a fattening country. The following are the best known varieties:--
+
+"Astrebla pectinata," common Mitchell grass, growing in erect tussocks
+of two or three feet high.
+
+"A. triticoides," wheat-eared Mitchell grass; this plant is taller and
+coarser than the last, attaining a height of four or five feet.
+
+"A curvifolia," or curly Mitchell grass; plant forming erect tufts one
+or two feet high, the leaves narrow and much curved.
+
+"A. elymoides," weeping Mitchell grass; plant decumbent, the stems
+several feet long.
+
+The blue grass (Andropogon sericeus), is an annual of soft rapid growth,
+with a branching seed-stalk that breaks off and is blown by the wind in
+masses into waterholes; the blacks use the fine seeds of this grass for
+food.
+
+"Anthistiria membranacea," called the Flinders or Barcoo grass, is an
+annual of a reddish colour, found all over the western plains. It is
+soft and brittle, breaking easily off to fall on the ground, when stock
+will pick it up; it makes excellent hay, keeping sweet for years, and is
+one of the most fattening grasses.
+
+The varieties of the indigenous grasses that cover the great western
+plains are innumerable; all are more or less eaten by stock, even the
+triodia or spinifex that is looked on as a desert grass, and of a
+formidable and forbidding nature. Spinifex is a very drought-resisting
+plant, and in times of great scarcity and extreme drought, when all
+other grasses have dried out and been blown away, the spinifex is there
+with its erect spiney leaves, possibly bitter to the taste, but still
+life sustaining to stock, as has been proved in many a severe drought.
+It grows on sandy sterile ridges, and seems to adhere to the latest
+geological formation, the sandstone or cainozoic period; it is found on
+ridges adjacent to alluvial flats where the richest herbage and grasses
+are found in abundance.
+
+Kangaroo grass (Anthistiria ciliata), is found mostly in coastal
+districts, and although a good pasture grass when green, it soon dries
+and requires burning.
+
+There are two prominent varieties of spear grass in the north, the worst
+being the black spear grass (Andropogon contortus), which grows in sandy
+spots along the banks of creeks, or on sandy ridges; it is not of much
+use as a fodder grass, but becomes a terrible scourge to sheep when ripe
+and seeding. The seeds are barbed, and as sharp as needles, and having
+once entered the skin they work into the bone, causing intense annoyance
+and irritation, and ultimately death. The other spear grass (Andropogon
+Kennedeyii), not so dangerous, but of little use to stock, is a
+coarse-growing, strong grass, seven or eight feet high, with a reddish
+bloom, and strong seeds that penetrate saddlecloths and clothes in
+countless hundreds.
+
+Herbage fills the spaces between the tufts of grasses soon after the
+rains, and the plains develop a dense growth of pasturage; but after
+continued dry seasons, all herbage disappears, and the grasses follow in
+time, until very little is left except the roots, and a few of the more
+hardy salsolaceous plants. These form a striking feature in the economy
+of Nature in the plain country, the salt bushes are ever present in one
+variety or another, and help to keep stock in health and condition. The
+various species of "Atriplex" abound, and being very drought-resisting,
+they are reckoned amongst the most valuable fodder plants. Sir Thomas
+Mitchell was the first to make salt bush known after his first
+expedition over sixty years ago.
+
+"A. Nummularia," passing under the curious vernacular of "Old Man Salt
+Bush," is truly grey enough. Some of these plants have been propagated
+in north-west America with great success, turning the barren alkali
+lands that were never known to grow anything, into valuable pastures.
+Tons of seeds are raised annually for Utah, Arizona, and other States.
+In Africa the salt bushes are cultivated from seeds and even cuttings,
+and their value is acknowledged everywhere. They endure scorching heat,
+live without rains, are eaten by all kinds of stock, proving nutritious
+and wholesome to them, are easily raised from seed, and can, with a
+little care, be propagated from cuttings.
+
+The blue bush (Chenopodium), is common all over the Gulf of Carpentaria
+watershed, growing in swampy spots where water lies; it is a great
+favourite with all kinds of stock, and is getting scarce owing to its
+being eaten out so much.
+
+Wild rice (Oryza sativa), grows in swampy places throughout the Gulf
+country; the grain is well-defined, but small; all stock are fond of it,
+when green; it grows to a height of three or four feet. The rice of
+commerce is the produce of cultivated varieties of this grass.
+
+Edible shrubs are extremely plentiful, and are of great value when grass
+becomes too dry to be nutritive. A peculiar feature in the vegetation of
+the western plains is the "roley-poley," which is called in America the
+"tumble weed." This is an annual of quick growth after rains, growing in
+a spherical form from a common root; when the stem dries, it breaks off
+close to the ground, and the ball of dried vegetation is driven by the
+winds over the plains at a furious rate, topping the fences, and piling
+up against them in masses. It causes the greatest consternation to
+horses as it is driven across the downs. It possesses no virtue as a
+fodder plant.
+
+
+FOSSILS OF ANCIENT AUSTRALIA.
+
+The Australian continent has undergone great changes during the past
+geological ages, and most probably has been connected in remote times
+with part of Asia, and not unlikely with South America by some now
+submerged land. But whatever the connection may have been in the very
+distant past, it has been shut off from the larger northern land masses
+at so remote a period that the higher forms of mammals have not found
+their way to it, as in Africa and South America. Great changes have
+taken place in the continent itself. It is supposed that, at one time,
+in what is called the cretaceous or chalk age, a great sea spread from
+the north right across from what is now the Gulf of Carpentaria,
+covering immense tracts of level plain country in the interior of
+Australia, including Western Queensland, and part of New South Wales, so
+that the western half of the continent was separated from the eastern at
+least in the northern parts. Gradually the land rose and great lakes
+were formed in the interior, especially in the region of Lake Eyre, and
+a growth of vegetation sprang up of a more luxuriant type than is to be
+found now in those western parts, otherwise the enormous animals, such
+as the giant diprotodon, huge extinct kangaroos, birds larger than the
+moa, as well as crocodiles and turtles, could never have found
+sustenance to multiply in such numbers as their fossil remains testify
+they did in nearly every part of central Australia, and in the interior
+of North Queensland. In this sea, which washed the base of the mountains
+on the west, was deposited the sandy formation which has become the
+level inland plains. From some cause so far unknown, the land became
+desiccated, the lakes lost their freshness, and became great salt pans,
+the vegetation and the animals dependent on it became extinct, until a
+dry and arid region was produced, with a river system that fails to
+reach the sea, but becomes absorbed in the great sandy interior. The
+smaller types of marsupials of a hardier nature and capable of removing
+to greater distances for food, maintained their existence, while the
+giants of a similar race have left only their bones embedded in the
+drift to testify to the mighty changes that Nature has wrought out in
+the past ages. Fossil diprotodons of gigantic size and struthious birds
+rivalling in stature the New Zealand moa, are found in Central
+Australia. At Lake Callabonna in the great salt Lake Eyre basin, there
+are hundreds of fossil skeletons of these animals, many of which have
+been removed to the Adelaide Museum. In that locality they are found
+most frequently on the surface of the dry salt lake, and have been
+preserved by a natural coating of carbonate of lime; the bones are found
+at various depths.
+
+Nearly the whole of interior Australia, including Western Queensland, is
+one vast cemetery of extinct and fossilised species, scattered along the
+surface, or buried deep in cement or drifts, and in clays hidden beneath
+the present surface formation. The open plains of the Upper Flinders
+disclose great deposits of marine fossil shells, belemnites and
+ammonites, and also remains of extinct animals. On the Lower Leichhardt
+River, in the Gulf of Carpentaria, forty or fifty feet beneath the
+alluvial deposits forming the banks of the river, and firmly embedded in
+the hard cement, which is an ancient drift formed of water-worn stones
+in an ironstone clay, are found the bones of innumerable extinct
+gigantic species of animals that found sustenance and multiplied in
+enormous numbers over the Gulf country in some far back pre-historic
+age. On the Walsh River are found large numbers of fossils, mostly
+shells of the ammonite species. The bones that have been buried for
+countless ages in these ancient drifts are well preserved, and are not
+very dissimilar in appearance to the bones of animals dying recently on
+the surrounding plains, although they are completely fossilised and
+changed into the appearance of stone. The utter extinction of these
+gigantic species, comprising diprotodon, nototherium, and zygomaturus,
+and other species, grasseaters and flesheaters alike, can only be
+accounted for by a great change of climate, and great and long-continued
+droughts, reducing the herbage and causing the remaining living animals
+to crowd into the drying-up lagoons and lakes, there to become bogged in
+thousands, and die as the stock die in the waterholes after a long
+drought. Some of the fossils are those of animals of a gigantic size,
+much larger than any existing native animals; the teeth found are twice
+the size of an ordinary bullock's, and the jaws carrying them are of
+enormous size and strength. There are remains of alligators over thirty
+feet long, and turtles of much greater dimensions than any existing in
+the present day. The vegetation in the marshes and territory forming
+North Queensland must have been of a luxuriant and tropical description
+in those days to have supported such large types of marsupials--animals
+that would require a more abundant moisture, larger rainfall, and
+heavier foliage, than are now to be found on the western slopes of the
+ranges. Deeply interesting is the study of the ancient forms of life
+that roamed over the densely-wooded marshes of the interior, when the
+flora represented a type found now only along the rich alluvial banks of
+the rivers on the east coast.
+
+
+GEOLOGY OF QUEENSLAND.
+
+The following facts are summarised from the geology of Queensland
+written by Mr. Daintree, as the result of his investigations, whilst
+prosecuting the search for new goldfields on behalf of the Queensland
+Government in the northern portion of their territory, as also from the
+official reports of the Geologist of Southern Queensland, and other
+sources.
+
+The consideration and history of the different formations will be taken
+in their sequence of time, as far as the stratified or sedimentary rocks
+are concerned. The igneous rocks will be described under the various
+groups of Granitic, Trappean, and Volcanic.
+
+  _Aqueous_:--
+      Alluvial (recent).
+      Alluvial, containing extinct faunas.
+      Desert sandstone, Cainozoic.
+      Cretaceous    }
+      Oolitic       } Mesozoic
+      Carbonaceous  }
+      Carboniferous } Palaeozoic
+      Devonian      }
+      Silurian      }
+  _Metamorphic._
+
+Alluvial.--Fresh-water deposits skirt all the present watercourses, but
+the accumulations are insignificant on the eastern watershed, except
+near the embouchures of large rivers, such as the Burdekin, Fitzroy,
+etc. On the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria, however, and in the
+south-western portions of the colony, where the watercourses have
+scarcely any fall, and where in seasons of excessive rain the country is
+nearly all inundated, fluviatile deposits are very extensive. Though the
+dense lavas of the Upper Burdekin (volcanic outbursts of a late Tertiary
+epoch) are traversed by valleys of erosion, in some cases 200 feet deep,
+and five miles broad, yet very narrow and shallow alluvial deposits
+skirt the immediate margin of the watercourses draining such valleys. It
+is only near the mouths of the larger rivers that any extent of alluvium
+has been deposited, and even these areas are at the present time in
+seasons of excessive rain, liable to inundation, showing that little
+upheaval of this portion of Australia has taken place since the last
+volcanic disturbances terminated.
+
+The meteorological or climatic conditions during this period were nearly
+identical with those of the present time, heavy rains during the summer
+months causing violent floods, removing seaward the aerial
+decompositions and denuded materials from year to year.
+
+What lapse of time is represented during this period of erosion is a
+matter of speculation, but it seems certain that the mollusca of the
+present creeks were also the inhabitants of the waters during the whole
+period of denudation since the last volcanic eruption.
+
+From the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north, to Darling Downs in the
+south, however, the fossil remains of extinct mammalia have been found
+in breccias and indurated muds, which are the representatives of the
+beds of old watercourses through which the present creeks cut their
+channels. At Maryvale Creek, in latitude 19 deg. 30 sec. S., good
+sections of these old brecciated alluvia occur. The fossils from this
+section, as determined by Professor Owen, are "Diprotodon Australis,
+Macropus titan, Thylacoles, Phascolomys, Nototherium," crocodile teeth,
+etc.
+
+Imbedded in the same matrix occur several genera of mollusca
+undistinguishable from those inhabiting Maryvale Creek.
+
+The fact of these older alluvia forming both the bed and the banks of
+the present watercourse, goes to prove that Diprotodon and its allies
+inhabited the Queensland valleys when they presented little difference
+in physical aspect or elevation from that of the present time. The
+crocodile (Crocodilus Australis), however, had then a greater range
+inland than it has now. A study of these Diprotodon breccias leads to
+the conclusion that the remains are chiefly entombed in what were the
+most permanent waterholes in seasons of excessive drought, and that the
+animals came there in a weak and exhausted state to drink and die, just
+as bullocks do under similar conditions at the present time.
+
+No human bones, flint flakes, or any kind of native weapons have yet
+been discovered with the extinct mammalia of Queensland.
+
+
+CAINOZOIC.
+
+Desert Sandstone.--On the eastern branches of the Upper Flinders and
+elsewhere, fine sections are exposed of lava resting on horizontal beds
+of coarse grit and conglomerate, which lie in turn unconformably on
+olive-coloured and gray shales with interstratified bands and nodules of
+argillaceous limestone containing fossils of cretaceous affinities. I
+have called this upper conglomerate series "Desert Sandstone," from the
+sandy barren character of its disintegrated soil, which makes the term
+particularly applicable.
+
+Without doubt, it is the most recent widely-spread stratified deposit
+developed in Queensland. The denudation of the "Desert Sandstone" since
+it became dry land has been excessive, but there still remains a large
+tract "in situ," and all the available evidence tends to show that this
+"Desert Sandstone" did at one time cover nearly, if not quite, the whole
+of Australia. The journals of the two Gregory's description of the new
+settlement of Port Darwin, all bear evidence to the continuity of this
+so-called "Desert Sandstone" over all the extended areas investigated by
+them.
+
+Augustus Gregory's description of the sandstones of the Victoria River
+agrees with those of the "Desert Sandstone" of Queensland, the specimens
+from either locality being undistinguishable the one from the other,
+while the same barren soil, the same hostile spinifex, the same fatal
+poison plant, mark its presence from Perth to Cape York.
+
+In Queensland, the upper beds are ferruginous, white and mottled sandy
+clays, the lower being coarse alternating grits and conglomerates; the
+extreme observed thickness has not exceeded 400 feet. A characteristic
+view of the upper "Desert Sandstone" beds is shown in Betts' Creek, on
+the Upper Flinders. Whether these are marine, lacustrine, or estuarine
+deposits, there is hardly sufficient evidence to show.
+
+What may be the value of this "Desert Sandstone" for free gold, is at
+present unsolved; but the very nature of its deposition seems to
+preclude the idea that that metal will be found in paying quantities,
+except where direct local abrasion of a rich auriferous veinstone has
+furnished the supply.
+
+
+MESOZOIC.
+
+Cretaceous.--As early as 1866 a suite of fossils was collected by
+Messrs. Sutherland and Carson, of Marathon station, Flinders River, and
+forwarded for determination to Professor McCoy, in Melbourne. They were
+never figured, but his manuscript names are as follows:--
+
+  _Reptilia._
+
+  Ichthyosaurus Australis. "M'Coy."
+  Plesiosaurus Sutherlandi.
+  Plesiosaurus macrospondylus. "M'Coy."
+
+  _Cephalopoda._
+
+  Ammonites Sutherlandi. "M'Coy."
+  Ammonites Flindersi. "M'Coy."
+  Belemnitella diptycha. "M'Coy."
+  Ancyloceras Flindersi.
+
+  _Lamellibranchiata._
+  Inoceramus Carsoni. "M'Coy."
+  Inoceramus Sutherlandi. "M'Coy"
+    (identical with the English species I. Cuvieri).
+
+In company with Mr. Sutherland, who supplied McCoy with the
+before-mentioned materials, Mr. R. Daintree visited the Upper Flinders,
+and carefully collected the fossils from three localities, viz.,
+Marathon station, Hughenden station, and Hughenden cattle station.
+
+At Marathon, which is some forty miles further down the Flinders than
+Hughenden, there is, close to the homestead, an outcrop of fine-grained
+yellow sandstone, which has been quarried for building purposes, and
+below this, to the edge of the waterhole supplying the house, is a
+series of sandstones and argillaceous limestones, containing numerous
+organic remains. These were submitted to Mr. Etheridge for examination
+and correlation, the result of which appears in the appendix to his
+work. The Hughenden cattle station is twenty miles further up the
+Flinders than the Hughenden head station. Here hundreds of Belemnites
+are strewn over the surface of the two ridges which front the cattle
+station huts, but they are rarely found in the soft shales which crop
+out from under an escarpment of "Desert Sandstone." The lithological
+character of these cretaceous strata is such that decomposition is
+rapid; the resulting physical aspect being that of vast plains, which
+form the principal feature of Queensland scenery west of the Main
+Dividing Range; but that the "Desert Sandstone" has extended over all
+this country is evidenced by its existence either in the form of
+outliers, or as a marked feature "in situ" in all main watersheds, or by
+its pebbles of quartz and conglomerate, which are strewn everywhere over
+the surface of the plains. The height of the watershed between the
+Thomson and Flinders Rivers is locally not more than 1,400 feet above
+sea level, and as the former river has to travel as many miles before
+reaching the sea, it is easy to understand why, in a country subject to
+heavy tropical rains at one period of the year, followed by a long dry
+season, the river channels are ill-defined, and vast tracts of country
+covered by alluvial deposits. Down the Thomson and its tributaries,
+these mesozoic rocks are known to extend, though much obscured by flood
+drifts. That this portion of the mesozoic system extends throughout the
+whole of Western Queensland to Western Australia is also more than
+probable, hidden, however, over large areas by "Desert Sandstone."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mineral Springs.--There is one other subject of practical interest
+connected with the great mesozoic western plains, and that is the
+occurrence of hot alkaline springs, which suggest the possibility of
+obtaining supplies of water on the artesian principle over some portion
+at least of this area.
+
+At Gibson's cattle station, Taldora, on the Saxby River, a tributary of
+the Flinders, a spring of hot water rises above the surface of the
+plain, and its overflow deposits a white encrustation, which on analysis
+by Dr. Flight, under the direction of Professor Maskelyne, afforded:--
+
+  Water                     27.793
+  Silica                     0.600
+  Chlorine                   3.369
+  Sodium                     2.183
+  Carbonic Acid             33.735
+  Soda                      31.690
+                            ------
+                            99.370
+
+Apart, therefore, from the 5.552 per cent. of chloride of sodium, the
+deposit consists of sequi carbonate of soda or native "Trona," and as
+such is used by the settlers for culinary purposes, etc.
+
+
+PALAEOZOIC.
+
+"Carboniferous."--Whilst the affinities of the southern coalfield of
+Queensland are mesozoic, a northern field, of even larger extent, has a
+distinct fauna more resembling the Palaeozoic Carboniferous areas of
+Europe.
+
+The Dawson, Comet, Mackenzie, Isaacs, and Bowen Rivers drain this
+carboniferous area; and numerous outcrops of coal have been observed on
+these streams. No commercial use, however, has yet been made of any of
+these deposits, as the measures generally are too far inland to be made
+available until the railway system of the country is extended in that
+direction.
+
+"Devonian."--From the southern boundary of Queensland up to latitude 18
+deg. S., a series of slates, sandstones, coral limestones, and
+conglomerates extend to a distance 200 miles inland; these are sometimes
+overlain by coal measures, sometimes by volcanic rocks, and consequently
+do not crop out on the surface over such districts. North of latitude 18
+deg. S., however, over the Cape York Peninsula, this series (so far as
+we have any evidence), is absent, granites and porphyries capped by
+"Desert Sandstone" forming the ranges on the eastern, and their abraded
+ingredients the sandy ti-tree flats, those on the western side of that
+inhospitable tract of country, a never-ending flat of poor
+desert-looking sandy ti-tree country, stretching away to the shores of
+the Gulf of Carpentaria.
+
+In the limestone bands, which form the lower portion of the series,
+corals are very numerous; in fact, the limestones, where little
+alteration has taken place, are a mass of aggregated corals; and as this
+class of rock has resisted aerial destruction better than the associated
+slates and sandstones, the barriers thus formed mark the trend of the
+rock system to which they belong, in a very picturesque and decided
+manner; their bold, massive, and varied outline chiselled into the most
+delicate fretwork by Nature's hand, is relieved by a wealth of
+richly-tinted foliage, unknown in the surrounding bush; and the eye
+jaded with the monotony of the eternal gum tree turns with delight to
+the changing tints and varied scenery presented by these barrier-like
+records of the past. This class of country is very much in evidence at
+Chillagoe. On the track from the Broken River to the Gilbert diggings,
+Devonian rocks several thousand feet thick may be observed, as they are
+continuous in dip, without being repeated, for at least five miles
+across the strike, with an average inclination of 60 deg.
+
+Although on the Broken River and its tributaries a breadth of thirty
+miles with a length of sixty miles, is occupied by a persistent outcrop
+of Devonian strata, gold has only been discovered in remunerative
+quantities in a small gully, where a trapdyke has penetrated the
+Palaeozoic rocks of the district.
+
+The following districts, however, where Devonian rocks prevail, have
+been the centres of gold mining enterprise:--Lucky Valley, Talgai,
+Gympie, Calliope, Boyne, Morinish, Rosewood, Mount Wyatt, Broken River,
+portion of Gilbert.
+
+In every case here cited, the country is traversed by trap rocks of a
+peculiar character, either diorite, diabase, or porphyrite; and
+tufaceous representatives of these are also found interstratified in the
+upper portion of the same formation, and occasionally throughout the
+other beds.
+
+At Gympie, the auriferous area is confined to veins traversing a
+crystalline diorite, or within a certain limit of its boundary, marked by
+the presence of fossiliferous diabase tufas.
+
+Whatever may have been the solvent and precipitant of the nobler metals
+in the auriferous veinstones associated with trap intrusions, all other
+but hydrothermal action may safely be eliminated, the very nature of the
+reefs, composed as they are of alternating layers of a promiscuous
+mixture of quartz, calcspar, pyrites, etc., affording unmistakable
+evidence on this point. The gold also contained in the trap dykes
+themselves is always accompanied by pyrites, both (according to
+Daintree), hydrothermal products separating out during the cooling down
+of the trap intrusions. Auriferous lodes, occurring in areas where
+hydrothermal action has attended trap disturbances of a special
+character in Queensland, are generally thin--to be estimated by inches
+rather than feet; but taken as a whole they are far richer in gold than
+those enclosed by sedimentary rocks.
+
+
+GRANITIC.
+
+Outcrops of granite extend along the eastern coast of Queensland from
+Broad Sound to Cape York, and inland as far as the heads of streams
+running direct from the inner coast range to the sea.
+
+Very little rock of this character is met with west and south of the
+Dividing Range which separates rivers flowing to the eastern and
+northern coast, and those trending south to the Murray or Cooper's
+Creek.
+
+The granites of Queensland vary very much in their crystalline texture,
+passing from true granites into porphyry and quartz porphyry.
+
+
+TRAPPEAN.
+
+Much stress has been laid on the value of certain intrusive trap rocks
+as specially influencing the production of auriferous veinstones in
+Queensland.
+
+The petrology of these may be divided into four type classes:--1.
+Pyritous porphyrites and porphyries. 2. Pyritous diroites and diabases.
+3. Chrome iron serpentines. 4. Pyritous felsites.
+
+
+VOLCANIC.
+
+Whilst the older trappean rocks have apparently had so much influence on
+the disturbance and fracture of the sedimentary strata older than the
+Carboniferous, and by a secondary process have evidently been centres of
+mineralising action, the volcanic seem to have played the most important
+part in determining the elevation and present physical outline of
+north-eastern Queensland. The main outbursts of lava have taken place
+along the Dividing Range which separates the eastern and western waters,
+and therefore on the line of the highest elevation of the country. The
+more northern volcanic areas, are probably contemporaneous with the
+upper volcanic series of Victorian geologists, so extensively developed
+in the western districts of that colony. These have issued from
+well-defined craters still in existence, and are probably of Pliocene
+Tertiary age.
+
+The southern areas, viz., Peak and Darling Downs, etc., are older,
+agreeing with the lower volcanic of Victoria, which have been ejected
+through fissures, and have in no case a very extensive flow beyond the
+lines of fracture through which they issued. These may be referred to
+the Miocene Tertiary epoch. The rock masses forming both the upper and
+lower volcanic are basic in character, and may be all termed or grouped
+under the general term "dolorites."
+
+The volcanic soils of Queensland are those best adapted for the grazier
+and agriculturist.
+
+To epitomise:--With the exception of the McKinlay Ranges, a line drawn
+parallel to the eastern coast, at a distance of 250 miles, would include
+all the palaeozoic, metamorphic, granitic, trappean, and volcanic rocks
+represented in the colony, both coal groups lying within the same area.
+
+The mesozoic and cainozoic systems occupy the surface area to the
+westward. The volcanic rocks follow the line of greatest elevation on
+the main watershed at altitudes from 1,500 to 2,000 feet above sea
+level. The chief granitic mass extends from Broad Sound to Cape York,
+with an occasional capping of "Desert Sandstone." Westward from the
+Dividing Range, "Desert Sandstone" and the cretaceous and oolitic groups
+alternate one with the other to the extreme limit of the colony.
+
+
+AREA OF FORMATIONS.
+
+Estimating the entire extent of the colony at 600,000 square miles, a
+rough approximation to the areas occupied by the different geological
+formations is as follows:--
+
+                                                        Square Miles.
+
+  Valueless land, "Desert Sandstone"                         150,000
+
+  Scrubby and thickly timbered
+    inferior pastoral,               { Carbonaceous }
+    but valuable as containing       { Mesozoic and }         24,000
+    coal, iron ore, &c.              { Palaeozoic    }
+
+  Fair pastoral, and valuable        { Devonian     }
+    for its associated minerals      { Silurian     }         60,000
+    and metals                       { Metamorphic  }
+
+  Fair pastoral                        Granitic              114,000
+
+  Good pastoral                      { Cretaceous  }
+                                     { and Oolitic }         200,000
+
+  First-class pastoral and           { Alluvial    }
+  agricultural                       { Volcanic    }          52,000
+                                     { Trappean    }
+                                                             -------
+                                                             600,000
+
+Looking at the matter from an economical point of view, we find that
+one-fourth of the Colony of Queensland is valueless, whereas
+three-fourths furnish good pastoral land. Of this latter 60,000 square
+miles contain extensive and very valuable mines of gold, with numerous
+outcrops of copper and lead ores, to which may be added rich deposits of
+tin ore; 24,000 square miles are capable of producing illimitable
+supplies of coal and iron; 52,000 square miles are, as far as soil is
+concerned, best adapted for the agriculturist and squatter. In
+conclusion, it may be asserted that there is here a wealth of material
+resource which compares favourably with that of any other Australian
+colony.
+
+
+THE GREAT BARRIER REEF.
+
+North Queensland owes one of its chief claims to distinction to its
+numerous ports and harbours. In fact, the whole coast from Lady Elliott
+Island northwards to Cape York is one large harbour; protected as it is
+from the ocean swell by the Great Barrier Reef, a natural breakwater,
+extending for nearly a thousand miles, with a depth from ten to twenty
+fathoms, and a distance from the main land which varies from twenty to
+fifty miles. The sea outside is profoundly deep, and a few islets are
+found on the line of reef, also a few ship canals through the Barrier
+Reef. "The Great Barrier Reef of Australia; its products and
+potentialities," by W. Saville Kent, F.L.S., is a splendid work, and
+beautifully illustrated. This work shows the reef to be full of marine
+wonders and is intensely interesting; its various forms of life and
+marine vegetation would fill volumes. The Great Barrier Coral Reef of
+Australia, the marvellous extent of which was first made known by
+Captain Cook, is one of the wonders of the universe. Its linear
+measurement is no less than 1,250 miles, extending from 9-1/2 deg. of
+south latitude to Lady Elliott's Island, the most southern true coral
+islet in the chain or system. Its whole area lies within the territorial
+jurisdiction of Queensland, and the greater portion in North Queensland
+of which it forms one of the most valuable possessions. Raw material to
+the value of over L100,000 annually is obtained from the reefs and
+waters for exportation. The distance from the main land to the outer
+edge or boundary of this gigantic reef varies from ten or twelve miles
+to thirty. It is mostly formed of a chain of detached reefs and coral
+islets, many submerged or partially exposed at low water, with several
+openings, a few of which offer secure passage for large vessels.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+SOME LITERARY REMAINS.
+
+
+The late Mr. Palmer had some skill as a versifier, although the
+exigencies of his arduous life in the pioneering days would not permit
+of his adding the extra finish to the lines which, more often than not,
+were as he himself phrased it, "strung together as the result of
+sleepless hours passed during the nights while camping out on a large
+cattle run in the west." A few of his efforts are here preserved:--
+
+
+THE GIDYA TREE.
+
+(Acacia Homoeophylla.)
+
+  Where roll the great plains to the west,
+    Near a homestead pleasant to see,
+  With far-stretching limbs and spreading crest,
+    Grows a grand old acacia tree.
+  Nor winter winds, nor sun's fierce heat
+    Can change its staunch solidity,
+  For many a century's storms have beat
+    On this great, grey, gidya tree.
+
+  At early morn, their joyous lay,
+    The butcher-birds sing in melody.
+  And merrily pass the hours away,
+    All under the gidya tree.
+  The grey doves in its shade rejoice,
+    From eyes of kites they're free,
+  And call their loves in plaintive voice,
+    From under the gidya tree.
+
+  In scarlet bloom, the mistletoe swings,
+    From its branches droopingly;
+  And all around its odour flings,
+    Right under the gidya tree.
+  The milk-plant twines its length along,
+    As if 'twould hidden be;
+  Creeping its way 'mong the leaves so strong,
+    Of this ancient gidya tree.
+
+  The panting cattle gladly come,
+    And sheltered fain would be,
+  From burning heat of noonday sun,
+    Camped under the gidya tree.
+  Like the shade from a great rock cast
+    O'er the land so soothing lay;
+  All Nature seeks some rest at last,
+    Far under the gidya tree.
+
+  When life is o'er and troubles past,
+    How sweet that rest will be,
+  For weary ones who come at last,
+    Safe under the gidya tree.
+  "Nunc dimittis," my work is done,
+    And soon from care set free;
+  That peace I wish will soon be won,
+    Deep under the gidya tree.
+
+
+MY OLD STOCK HORSE.
+
+(Norman.)
+
+"Norman," a large bay horse, bred on Conobie about 1870, broken in three
+or four years after, and worked on till twenty-four or twenty-five years
+old as a stock horse, and then nearly as good and safe to ride as ever.
+A surer, better stock horse was never ridden, and always ridden by the
+writer.
+
+  I have a friend--I've proved him so
+    By many a task and token;
+  I've ridden him long and found him true,
+    Since first that he was broken.
+
+  For twenty years we both have been
+    In storm and sunny weather,
+  And many a thousand miles we've seen,
+    Just he and I together.
+
+  From Cooktown's breezy seaborn site,
+    By Palmer's golden river;
+  Where Mitchell's waters clear and bright,
+    Roll on their course for ever.
+
+  Across the Lynd and Gilbert's sands,
+    And many a rocky river;
+  Through trackless desert, forest lands,
+    We've journeyed oft together.
+
+  Then on the great grey plains so vast,
+    Where the sun's rays dance and quiver,
+  Through scorching heat and south-east blast,
+    We've toiled on Flinders River.
+
+  Through tangled scrubs and broken ground,
+    We have often had to scramble;
+  To wheel the cunning brumbie's round,
+    From where they love to ramble.
+
+  Old Norman ne'er was known to fail,
+    Or in the camp to falter,
+  And just as sound to-day and hale,
+    As when he first wore halter.
+
+  Good horse, you well have earned your rest,
+    Your mustering days are over;
+  For all your time you'll have the best,
+    And pass your life in clover.
+
+  The Indian's simple faith is plain,
+    That in the land of shadows,
+  He'll have his faithful dog again
+    To hunt in misty meadows.
+
+  And should a steed a soul attain,
+    This surely then will follow--
+  I'll meet that grand old horse again,
+    And hail him "Good old fellow!"
+
+Conobie, October 8th, 1894.
+
+
+THE WATCHER.
+
+  The night wind keen and chill is creeping
+    Across the plains with moaning sound;
+  A rider there his watch is keeping,
+    Where cattle camp in peace around.
+
+  The Southern Cross shines clear and bright,
+    And marks the hour that speeds;
+  While Nature's sounds, borne on the night,
+    Accustomed to, he little heeds.
+
+  The hooting of the mopoke owl
+    Floats on the midnight air;
+  The prowling dingoe's dismal howl
+    Is chorused wide and far.
+
+  The curlew's cry, so wild and shrill,
+    Pierces the air with startling sound;
+  While o'er the waters calm and still,
+    The wild fowl chase each other round.
+
+  He cares not for the keen wind cold,
+    Nor for the hour that's past;
+  For thoughts of other days still hold
+    His memory to the last.
+
+  He minds him of his youth time ever,
+    And the farm where he was born;
+  The meadows green, and the flowing river,
+    And the fields of tasselled corn.
+
+  The sweet perfume of the apple's bloom,
+    The sight of the mountain's blue,
+  The drooping willows and yellow broom,
+    And waving wheatfields too.
+
+  He sees the cows from the pasture land,
+    As down the lane they come,
+  And sister Nell, with pail in hand,
+    To wait their coming home.
+
+  He sees again his father ploughing,
+    In the old-fashioned sturdy way,
+  He hears again the cock's shrill crowing,
+    That waked him oft at break of day.
+
+  His memory takes him back apace,
+    To early manhood's prime,
+  When a gentle voice and pleasant face
+    Impressed him for all time.
+
+  For loving lass and wandering lad,
+    Since ever the world began,
+  Though parted in grief, the love they had,
+    Will come to each again.
+
+  His wayward life he ponders on
+    With anguish deep and keen,
+  And as the past he looks upon,
+    Sadly thinks--it might have been.
+
+  But vain regrets will help him not.
+    Nor vanished hopes renew;
+  He only knows his present lot
+    Has duties stern to do.
+
+  He cares not now whate'er befalls,
+    His faith he still will keep;
+  The next on watch in turn he calls,
+    And folds himself in sleep.
+
+
+Conobie, June 21st, 1894.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+  LIST OF BOOKS
+
+  PUBLISHED BY
+
+  ANGUS & ROBERTSON
+
+  89 CASTLEREAGH STREET, SYDNEY
+
+  205 SWANSTON STREET, MELBOURNE
+
+
+
+
+  SOLD IN ENGLAND BY
+
+  THE AUSTRALIAN BOOK COMPANY
+
+  38 WEST SMITHFIELD, LONDON, E.C.
+
+
+
+
+THE COMMONWEALTH SERIES
+
+  Crown 8vo., 1s. each (_post free 1s. 3d. each_).
+
+  =ON THE TRACK: New Stories.=                       _By HENRY LAWSON_
+
+  =OVER THE SLIPRAILS: New Stories.=                    _By H. LAWSON_
+
+  =POPULAR VERSES.=                                  _By HENRY LAWSON_
+        _Now first published in book form._
+
+  =HUMOROUS VERSES.=                                 _By HENRY LAWSON_
+        _Now first published in book form._
+
+  =WHILE THE BILLY BOILS: Australian Stories.=
+        =First Series.=                              _By HENRY LAWSON_
+
+  =WHILE THE BILLY BOILS: Australian Stories.=
+        =Second Series.=                             _By HENRY LAWSON_
+
+  =MY CHINEE COOK AND OTHER HUMOROUS VERSES.=    _By BRUNTON STEPHENS_
+
+  =HISTORY OF AUSTRALASIA: From the Earliest Times
+   to the Inauguration of the Commonwealth.            _By A. W. JOSE_
+
+  =HISTORY OF AUSTRALIAN BUSHRANGING.=              _By CHARLES WHITE_
+
+        Part   I.--THE EARLY DAYS.
+        Part  II.--1850 to 1862.
+        Part III.--1863 to 1869.
+        Part  IV.--1869 to 1878.
+
+[Symbol: asterism] For press notices of these books see the
+cloth-bound editions on pages 4, 5, 6, 9 and 13 of this catalogue.
+
+
+JOE WILSON AND HIS MATES.
+
+     By HENRY LAWSON, Author of "While the Billy Boils;" "When
+     the World was Wide and Other Verses;" "Verses, Popular
+     and Humorous;" "On the Track and Over the Sliprails."
+
+     Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. (_post free 4s._) in
+     paper covers, 2s. 6d. (_post free 3s._)
+
+=The Athenaeum= (London): "This is a long way the best work Mr. Lawson
+has yet given us. These stories are so good that (from the literary
+point of view, of course) one hopes they are not autobiographical. As
+autobiography they would be good; as pure fiction they are more of an
+attainment."
+
+=Pall Mall Gazette:= "We can see in these rough diamonds the men who
+have of late so distinguished themselves at Eland's River and
+elsewhere."
+
+=The Argus:= "More tales of the Joe Wilson series are promised, and this
+will be gratifying to Mr. Lawson's admirers, for on the whole the
+sketches are the best work the writer has so far accomplished."
+
+=The Academy:=--"I have never read anything in modern English literature
+that is so absolutely democratic in tone, so much the real thing, as
+_Joe Wilson's Courtship_. And so with all Lawson's tales and sketches.
+Tolstoy and Howells, and Whitman and Kipling, and Zola and Hauptmann and
+Gorky have all written descriptions of 'democratic' life; but none of
+these celebrated authors, not even Maupassant himself, has so absolutely
+taken us inside the life as do the tales _Joe Wilson's Courtship_ and _A
+Double Buggy at Lahey's Creek_, and it is this rare convincing tone of
+this Australian writer that gives him a great value. The most casual
+'newspapery' and apparently artless art of this Australian writer
+carries with it a truer, finer, more delicate commentary on life than
+all the idealistic works of any of our genteel school of writers."
+
+
+VERSES: POPULAR AND HUMOROUS.
+
+     By HENRY LAWSON, Author of "When the World was Wide, and
+     Other Verses," "Joe Wilson and His Mates," "On the Track
+     and Over the Sliprails," and "While the Billy Boils."
+
+
+     Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. (_post free 4s._).
+
+
+_For Cheaper Edition see Commonwealth Series, page 2._
+
+
+FRANCIS THOMPSON, in =The Daily Chronicle=: "He is a writer of strong
+and ringing ballad verse, who gets his blows straight in, and at his
+best makes them all tell. He can vignette the life he knows in a few
+touches, and in this book shows an increased power of selection."
+
+=Academy=: "Mr. Lawson's work should be well known to our readers; for
+we have urged them often enough to make acquaintance with it. He has the
+gift of movement, and he rarely offers a loose rhyme. Technically, short
+of anxious lapidary work, these verses are excellent. He varies
+sentiment and humour very agreeably."
+
+=New York Evening Journal:= "Such pride as a man feels when he has true
+greatness as his guest, this newspaper feels in introducing to a million
+readers a man of ability hitherto unknown to them. Henry Lawson is his
+name."
+
+=The Book Lover:= "Any book of Lawson's should be bought and treasured
+by all who care for the real beginnings of Australian literature. As a
+matter of fact, he is the one Australian literary product, in any
+distinctive sense."
+
+
+
+
+ON THE TRACK AND OVER THE SLIPRAILS.
+
+     Stories by HENRY LAWSON, Author of "While the Billy
+     Boils," "Joe Wilson and his Mates," "When the World Was
+     Wide and Other Verses," and "Verses, Popular and
+     Humorous."
+
+     Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. (_post free 4s._).
+
+_For Cheaper Edition see Commonwealth Series, page 2._
+
+=Daily Chronicle:= "Will well sustain the reputation its author has
+already won as the best writer of Australian short stories and sketches
+the literary world knows. Henry Lawson has the art, possessed in such
+eminent degree by Mr. J. M. Barrie, of sketching in a character and
+suggesting a whole life-story in a single sentence."
+
+=Pall Mall Gazette:= "The volume now received will do much to enhance
+the author's reputation. There is all the quiet irresistible humour of
+Dickens in the description of 'The Darling River,' and the creator of
+'Truthful James' never did anything better in the way of character
+sketches than Steelman and Mitchell. Mr. Lawson has a master's sense of
+what is dramatic, and he can bring out strong effects in a few touches.
+Humour and pathos, comedy and tragedy, are equally at his command."
+
+=Glasgow Herald:= "Mr. Lawson must now be regarded as facile princeps in
+the production of the short tale. Some of these brief and even slight
+sketches are veritable gems that would be spoiled by an added word, and
+without a word that can be looked upon as superfluous."
+
+=Melbourne Punch:= "Often the little stories are wedges cut clean out of
+life, and presented with artistic truth and vivid colour."
+
+
+WHILE THE BILLY BOILS.
+
+     Stories by HENRY LAWSON, Author of "When the World Was
+     Wide and Other Verses," "Joe Wilson and his Mates," "On
+     the Track and Over the Sliprails," and "Verses, Popular
+     and Humorous."
+
+     Twenty-third Thousand. With eight plates and vignette
+     title, by F. P. Mahony. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d.
+     (_post free 4s._).
+
+_For Cheaper Edition see Commonwealth Series, page 2._
+
+=The Academy:= "A book of honest, direct, sympathetic, humorous writing
+about Australia from within is worth a library of travellers' tales....
+The result is a real book--a book in a hundred. His language is terse,
+supple, and richly idiomatic. He can tell a yarn with the best."
+
+=Literature:= "A book which Mrs. Campbell Praed assured me made her feel
+that all she had written of bush life was pale and ineffective."
+
+=The Spectator:= "It is strange that one we would venture to call the
+greatest Australian writer should be practically unknown in England. Mr.
+Lawson is a less experienced writer than Mr. Kipling, and more unequal,
+but there are two or three sketches in this volume which for vigour and
+truth can hold their own with even so great a rival."
+
+=The Times:= "A collection of short and vigorous studies and stories of
+Australian life and character. A little in Bret Harte's manner, crossed,
+perhaps, with that of Guy de Maupassant."
+
+=The Scotsman:= "There is no lack of dramatic imagination in the
+construction of the tales; and the best of them contrive to construct a
+strong sensational situation in a couple of pages."
+
+
+WHEN THE WORLD WAS WIDE AND OTHER VERSES.
+
+     By HENRY LAWSON, Author of "While the Billy Boils;" "Joe
+     Wilson and his Mates," "On the Track and Over the
+     Sliprails," and "Verses, Popular and Humorous."
+
+     Eleventh Thousand. With photogravure portrait and
+     vignette title. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, gilt top, 5s.
+     (_post free 5s. 5d._).
+
+_Presentation edition, French Morocco, gilt edges, 9s._
+
+=The Speaker= (LONDON): "There are poems in 'In the Days when the World
+was Wide' which are of a higher mood than any yet heard in distinctively
+Australian poetry."
+
+=The Academy:= "These ballads (for such they mostly are) abound in
+spirit and manhood, in the colour and smell of Australian soil. They
+deserve the popularity which they have won in Australia, and which, we
+trust, this edition will now give them in England."
+
+=Newcastle Weekly Chronicle:= "Swinging, rhythmic verse."
+
+=Sydney Morning Herald:= "The verses have natural vigour, the writer has
+a rough, true faculty of characterisation, and the book is racy of the
+soil from cover to cover."
+
+=Bulletin:= "How graphic he is, how natural, how true, how strong."
+
+=Otago Witness:= "It were well to have such books upon our shelves....
+They are true history."
+
+
+THE MAN FROM SNOWY RIVER AND OTHER VERSES.
+
+     By A. B. PATERSON.
+
+     Twenty-Seventh Thousand. With photogravure portrait and
+     vignette title. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, gilt top, 5s.
+     (_post free 5s. 5d._).
+
+_Presentation edition, French Morocco, gilt edges, 9s._
+
+=The Literary Year Book:= "The immediate success of this book of bush
+ballads is without parallel in Colonial literary annals, nor can any
+living English or American poet boast so wide a public, always excepting
+Mr. Rudyard Kipling."
+
+=The Times:= "At his best he compares not unfavourably with the author
+of 'Barrack Room Ballads.'"
+
+=Spectator:= "These lines have the true lyrical cry in them. Eloquent
+and ardent verses."
+
+=Athenaeum:= "Swinging, rattling ballads of ready humour, ready pathos,
+and crowding adventure.... Stirring and entertaining ballads about great
+rides, in which the lines gallop like the very hoofs of the horses."
+
+Mr. A. PATCHETT MARTIN, in =Literature= (London): "In my opinion it is
+the absolutely un-English, thoroughly Australian style and character of
+these new bush bards which has given them such immediate popularity,
+such wide vogue, among all classes of the rising native generation."
+
+
+_London: Macmillan & Co., Limited._
+
+
+THE POETICAL WORKS OF BRUNTON STEPHENS.
+
+     New edition, with photogravure portrait. Crown 8vo, cloth
+     gilt, gilt top, 5s.
+
+_See also Commonwealth Series, page 2._
+
+=Sydney Morning Herald (N.S.W.):= "'The Poetical Works of Brunton
+Stephens' is a book which every Australian should have on his
+bookshelves, whether these bookshelves cover walls or are merely the
+small collection which the man of taste, however shrunken his purse, is
+bound to make. Brunton Stephens deserves his place in even the smallest
+of collections. The chief of Australian poets he has contributed to
+English literature work of distinguished merit. He is many-sided,
+embracing all sorts and conditions of men and things."
+
+=The Melbourne Argus:= "Mr. Brunton Stephens has for some years enjoyed
+an established reputation as one of the best among the small and select
+cluster of Australian poets.... Mr. Stephens is specially favoured, in
+that he not only has at command a vein of true pathos, but he has
+moments of real humour. In more than one poem, too, he has made good his
+right to be regarded as the poet of brotherhood and the prophet of
+federation."
+
+=The Melbourne Age:= "It is certainly one of the happiest of his
+efforts, and exhibits alike his copious vocabulary and his mastery of a
+most attractive form of metre.... A poet, both in thought and feeling."
+
+=Newcastle (N.S.W.) Morning Herald:= "Of the rapidly lengthening roll of
+Australian writers, none deserves a higher place than Brunton Stephens.
+For more than a generation he has charmed his countrymen with his
+exquisite verse."
+
+
+RHYMES FROM THE MINES AND OTHER LINES.
+
+     By EDWARD DYSON, Author of "A Golden Shanty."
+
+     Second Thousand. With photogravure portrait and vignette
+     title. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, gilt top, 5s. (_post free,
+     5s. 5d._).
+
+_Presentation edition, French Morocco, gilt edges, 9s._
+
+
+FOR THE TERM OF HIS NATURAL LIFE.
+
+     By MARCUS CLARKE.
+
+     With a Memoir of the Author, by A. B. PATERSON, Portrait
+     of the Author, Map of Eagle Hawk Neck and the vicinity,
+     and 14 full-page views of places mentioned in the book.
+     Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, gilt top, 3s. 6d. (_post free,
+     4s._)
+
+
+RIO GRANDE'S LAST RACE AND OTHER VERSES.
+
+     By A. B. PATERSON.
+
+     This is issued uniform with the Snowy River Series at 5s.
+     The contents are quite up to the standard of "The Man
+     from Snowy River," and as the demand is certain to be
+     very large we would ask the Trade to place their orders
+     at once.
+
+
+FLOOD-TIDE.
+
+     By SARAH P. McL. GREENE, Author of "Vesty of the Basins,"
+     &c.
+
+     Cloth, 3s. 6d.; paper, 2s. 6d.
+
+
+=The Argus= (ALBANY, N.Y.): "'Flood-Tide' is a strong dramatic story of
+primitive life in a hamlet coast town in Maine. It is a study of human
+nature set in primitive surroundings, and is full of the pathos and
+humour of life's little comedies. 'Flood-Tide' is full of 'characters.'
+There is Johnny Dinsmore, whose wayward humours and mischievous pranks
+keep his mother and the whole neighbourhood on thorns, and who is one of
+the most delightful young imps ever turned loose in fiction, not even
+excepting Sentimental Tommy. Captain Shale, with his scraps of rustic
+philosophy, is a quaint original, worthy of David Harum's companionship.
+His reflections on the subject of clothes are of a piece with those of
+Teufelsdrochk: 'The world's a-dyin' of clo's. So fur as I can see, the
+sons o' men is pretty much all a-strugglin' for one kind and another o'
+clo's; that's what it amounts to...."
+
+
+THE SPIRIT OF THE BUSH FIRE AND OTHER AUSTRALIAN FAIRY TALES. BY J. M.
+WHITFELD.
+
+     Second Thousand. With 32 illustrations by G. W. Lambert.
+     Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 2s. 6d. (_post free, 3s._).
+
+
+TEENS. A Story of Australian Schoolgirls.
+
+     BY LOUISE MACK.
+
+     Fourth Thousand. With 14 full-page illustrations by F. P.
+     Mahony. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 2s. 6d.
+
+=Sydney Morning Herald:= "Ought to be welcome to all who feel the
+responsibility of choosing the reading books of the young ... its
+gaiety, impulsiveness, and youthfulness will charm them."
+
+=Sydney Daily Telegraph:= "Nothing could be more natural, more
+sympathetic."
+
+=The Australasian:= "'Teens' is a pleasantly-written story, very
+suitable for a present or a school prize."
+
+=Bulletin:= "It is written so well that it could not be written better."
+
+
+GIRLS TOGETHER.
+
+A Sequel to "Teens." BY LOUISE MACK.
+
+     Third Thousand. Illustrated by G. W. Lambert. Crown 8vo,
+     cloth gilt, 2s. 6d.
+
+=Sydney Morning Herald:= "'Girls Together' should be in the library of
+every girl who likes a pleasant story of real life.... Older people will
+read it for its bright touches of human nature."
+
+=Queenslander:= "A story told in a dainty style that makes it attractive
+to all. It is fresh, bright, and cheery, and well worth a place on any
+Australian bookshelf."
+
+
+THE ANNOTATED CONSTITUTION OF THE AUSTRALIAN COMMONWEALTH.
+
+     By Sir JOHN QUICK AND R. R. GARRAN, C.M.G. Royal 8vo,
+     cloth gilt, 21s.
+
+=The Times:= "The Annotated Constitution of the Australian Commonwealth
+is a monument of industry.... Dr. Quick and Mr. Garran have collected,
+with patience and enthusiasm, every sort of information, legal and
+historical, which can throw light on the new measure. The book has
+evidently been a labour of love."
+
+
+HISTORY OF AUSTRALIAN BUSHRANGING. BY CHARLES WHITE.
+
+     To be completed in two vols. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s.
+     6d. each.
+
+[_Vol. I. now ready. Vol. II. now ready_
+
+_For Cheaper Edition see Commonwealth Series, page 2._
+
+Press Notices of Volume I.
+
+=Year Book of Australia:= "There is 'romance' enough about it to make it
+of permanent interest as a peculiar and most remarkable stage in our
+social history."
+
+=Queenslander:= "Mr. White has supplied material enough for twenty such
+novels as 'Robbery Under Arms.'"
+
+
+THE GROWTH OF THE EMPIRE.
+
+A Handbook to the History of Greater Britain.
+
+     BY ARTHUR W. JOSE, Author of "A Short History of
+     Australasia."
+
+     Second Edition. With 14 Maps. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 5s.
+     (_post free, 5s. 6d._).
+
+=Morning Post:= "This book is published in Sydney, but it deserves to be
+circulated throughout the United Kingdom. The picture of the fashion in
+which British enterprise made its way from settlement to settlement has
+never been drawn more vividly than in these pages. Mr. Jose's style is
+crisp and pleasant, now and then even rising to eloquence on his grand
+theme. His book deserves wide popularity, and it has the rare merit of
+being so written as to be attractive alike to the young student and to
+the mature man of letters."
+
+=Literature:= "He has studied thoroughly, and writes vigorously....
+Admirably done.... We commend it to Britons the world over."
+
+=Saturday Review:= "He writes Imperially; he also often writes
+sympathetically.... We cannot close Mr. Jose's creditable account of our
+misdoings without a glow of national pride."
+
+=Yorkshire Post:= "A brighter short history we do not know, and this
+book deserves for the matter and the manner of it to be as well known as
+Mr. McCarthy's 'History of Our Own Times.'"
+
+=The Scotsman:= "This admirable work is a solid octavo of more than 400
+pages. It is a thoughtful, well written, and well-arranged history.
+There are fourteen excellent maps to illustrate the text."
+
+
+HISTORY OF AUSTRALASIA.
+
+From the Earliest Times to the Inauguration of the Commonwealth.
+
+     BY ARTHUR W. JOSE, Author of "The Growth of the Empire."
+     The chapter on Federation revised by R. R. Garran, C.M.G.
+
+     With 6 maps and 64 portraits and illustrations. Crown
+     8vo, cloth, 1s. 6d. (_post free 1s. 10d._). _For Cheaper
+     Edition see Commonwealth Series, page 2._
+
+=The Book Lover:= "The ignorance of the average Australian youth about
+the brief history of his native land is often deplorable.... 'A Short
+History of Australasia,' by Arthur W. Jose, just provides the thing
+wanted. Mr. Jose's previous historical work was most favourably received
+in England, and this story of our land is capitally done. It is not too
+long, and it is brightly written. Its value is considerably enhanced by
+the useful maps and interesting illustrations. A very good book to give
+to a boy."
+
+=Victorian Education Gazette:= "The language is graphic and simple, and
+there is much evidence of careful work and acquaintance with original
+documents, which give the reader confidence in the accuracy of the
+details. The low price of the book leaves young Australia no excuse for
+remaining in ignorance of the history of their native land."
+
+=Town and Country Journal:= "His language is graphic and simple, and he
+has maintained the unity and continuity of the story of events despite
+the necessity of following the subject along the seven branches
+corresponding with the seven separate colonies."
+
+
+THE GEOLOGY OF SYDNEY AND THE BLUE MOUNTAINS.
+
+A Popular Introduction to the Study of Australian Geology.
+
+     BY REV. J. MILNE CURRAN, Lecturer in Chemistry and
+     Geology, Technical College, Sydney.
+
+     Second Edition. With a Glossary of Scientific terms, a
+     Reference List of commonly-occurring Fossils, 2 coloured
+     maps, and 83 illustrations. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 6s.
+     (_post free, 6s. 6d._)
+
+=Nature:= "This is, strictly speaking, an elementary manual of geology.
+The general plan of the work is good; the book is well printed and
+illustrated with maps, photographic pictures of rock structure and
+scenery, and figures of fossils and rock sections."
+
+=Saturday Review:= "His style is animated and inspiring, or clear and
+precise, as occasion demands. The people of Sydney are to be
+congratulated on the existence of such a guide to their beautiful
+country."
+
+=Literary World:= "We can heartily recommend the book as a very
+interesting one, written in a much more readable style than is usual in
+works of this kind."
+
+=South Australian Register:= "Mr. Curran has extracted a charming
+narrative of the earth's history out of the prosaic stone. Though he has
+selected Sydney rocks for his text, his discourse is interestingly
+Australian."
+
+
+SIMPLE TESTS FOR MINERALS; Or, Every Man his Own Analyst.
+
+     BY JOSEPH CAMPBELL, M.A., F.G.S., M.I.M.E.
+
+     Fourth Edition, revised and enlarged (completing the
+     ninth thousand). With illustrations. Cloth, round
+     corners, 3s. 6d. (_post free 3s. 9d._).
+
+
+THE KINGSWOOD COOKERY BOOK.
+
+     BY MRS. WICKEN, M.C.A., Late Teacher of Cookery,
+     Technical College, Sydney.
+
+     Fifth edition, revised, completing the Nineteenth
+     Thousand. 382 pages, crown 8vo, paper cover, 1s; cloth,
+     1s. 6d. (_postage 4d._).
+
+
+ANSWERS TO TAYLOR'S METRIC SYSTEM. 6d. (_post free 7d._).
+
+
+PRESBYTERIAN WOMEN'S MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION COOKERY BOOK.
+
+     Seventh Edition, enlarged, completing the 45th Thousand.
+     Crown 8vo, cloth, 1s. (_post free 1s. 2d._).
+
+
+THE METRIC SYSTEM OF WEIGHTS AND MEASURES, AND DECIMAL COINAGE.
+
+     BY J. M. TAYLOR, M.A., LL.B.
+
+     With Introductory Notes on the nature of Decimals, and
+     contracted methods for the Multiplication and Division of
+     Decimals. Crown 8vo, 6d. (_post free 7d._).
+
+=N.S.W. Educational Gazette:= "A masterly and elaborate treatise for the
+use of schools on a subject of world-wide interest and importance.... In
+commercial life a knowledge of the metric system has been for some years
+essential, and it is, therefore, fitting that its underlying principles
+should be taught in our schools concurrently with reduction, and
+practised systematically in the more advanced grades. For this purpose
+the book is unquestionably the best we have seen."
+
+
+A NEW BOOK OF SONGS FOR SCHOOLS AND SINGING CLASSES.
+
+     BY HUGO ALPEN, Superintendent of Music Department of
+     Public Instruction, New South Wales.
+
+     8vo, paper cover. 1s. (_post free 1s. 2d._).
+
+
+THE ELEMENTS OF EUCLID.
+
+With Historical Introduction, Notes, Appendices and Miscellaneous
+Examples.
+
+     BY J. D. ST. CLAIR MACLARDY, M.A., Lecturer at the
+     Training Colleges and Examiner for the New South Wales
+     Department of Public Instruction.
+
+     Books I.-IV. Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. (_post free 3s.
+     10d._). Book I., separately, cloth, 1s. 6d. (_post free
+     1s. 9d._).
+
+     Books V.-VI. Cloth, 1s. 6d. (_post free 1s. 9d._).
+
+=N.S.W. Educational Gazette:= "The most complete and logical discussion
+of this part of the works of the great geometer that we have seen. An
+unusual amount of care has been bestowed on the initiatory stages, the
+definitions, axioms, and postulates being treated with commendable
+fulness.... The brevity, simplicity, and perspicuity of his methods will
+appeal forcibly to students.... Mr. Maclardy adheres to the plan of
+simplifying the proofs and reducing the verbiage to a minimum, and has
+added a contribution to mathematical literature which we regard as
+indispensable."
+
+=Victorian Educational Gazette:= "Among the legion of editions of
+Euclid, Mr. Maclardy's takes an honourable place. There are many
+features that are the result of the author's long experience as a
+lecturer and examiner in mathematics. He has evidently taken a pride in
+making his work as perfect as possible."
+
+
+ENGLISH GRAMMAR, COMPOSITION, AND PRECIS WRITING.
+
+For Use by Candidates for University and Public Service Exams.
+
+     BY JAMES CONWAY, Headmaster at Cleveland-street Superior
+     Public School, Sydney.
+
+     Prescribed by the Department of Public Instruction,
+     N.S.W., for First and Second Class Teachers' Certificate
+     Examinations. New edition, revised and enlarged. Crown
+     8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. (_post free 3s. 10d._).
+
+=Sydney Morning Herald:= "To its concise and admirable arrangement of
+rules and definitions, which holds good wherever the English language is
+spoken or written, is added special treatment of special difficulties.
+Mr. Conway adopts the excellent plan of taking certain papers, and of
+answering the questions in detail.... Should be in the hands of every
+teacher."
+
+=Victorian Educational News:= "A book which we can heartily recommend as
+the most suitable we have yet met with to place in the hands of students
+for our intermediate examinations, and also for matriculation, pupil
+teachers' and certificate of competency examinations. We should be glad
+to see the work set down in the syllabus of the Department so that it
+would reach the hands of all the students and teachers engaged in
+studying the subject in our State schools."
+
+
+A SMALLER ENGLISH GRAMMAR, COMPOSITION, AND PRECIS WRITING.
+
+     BY JAMES CONWAY.
+
+     Prescribed by the Department of Public Instruction,
+     N.S.W., for Third Class and Pupil Teachers' Examinations.
+     New edition, revised and enlarged. Crown 8vo, cloth, 1s.
+     6d. (_post free 1s. 9d._).
+
+     =N.S.W. Educational Gazette:= "The abridgment is very
+     well done. One recognises the hand of a man who has had
+     long experience of the difficulties of this subject."
+
+
+GEOGRAPHY OF NEW SOUTH WALES. BY J. M. TAYLOR, M.A., LL.B.
+
+     New Edition, revised. With 37 illustrations and 6 folding
+     maps. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. (_post free 3s.
+     10d._).
+
+=Sydney Morning Herald:= "Something more than a school book; it is an
+approach to an ideal geography."
+
+=Review of Reviews:= "It makes a very attractive handbook. Its geography
+is up to date; it is not overburdened with details, and it is richly
+illustrated with geological diagrams and photographs of scenery
+reproduced with happy skill."
+
+
+CAUSERIES FAMILIERES; OR, FRIENDLY CHATS. A Simple and Deductive French
+Course. BY MRS. S. C. BOYD.
+
+     Prescribed for use in schools by the Department of Public
+     Instruction, New South Wales. Pupils' Edition, containing
+     all that need be in the hands of the learner. Crown 8vo,
+     cloth, limp, 1s. 6d. (_post free 1s. 8d._). Teachers'
+     Edition, containing grammatical summaries, exercises, a
+     full treatise on pronunciation, French-English and
+     English-French Vocabulary, and other matter for the use
+     of the teacher or of a student without a master. Crown
+     8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. (_post free, 3s. 10d._).
+
+=The London Spectator:= "A most excellent and practical little volume,
+evidently the work of a trained teacher. It combines admirably and in an
+entertaining form the advantages of the conversational with those of the
+grammatical method of learning a language."
+
+
+THE AUSTRALIAN OBJECT LESSON BOOK.
+
+     Part I.--For Infant and Junior Classes. With 43
+     illustrations. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d.; paper
+     cover, 2s. 6d. (_postage, 4d._).
+
+=N.S.W. Educational Gazette:= "Mr. Wiley has wisely adopted the plan of
+utilising the services of specialists. The series is remarkably
+complete, and includes almost everything with which the little learners
+ought to be made familiar. Throughout the whole series the lessons have
+been selected with judgment and with a due appreciation of the capacity
+of the pupils for whose use they are intended."
+
+
+AUSTRALIAN SONGS FOR AUSTRALIAN CHILDREN.
+
+     BY MRS. MAYBANKE ANDERSON.
+
+     All the songs are set to music, while to some of them
+     appropriate calisthenic exercises are given. Demy 4to,
+     picture cover, 1s.
+
+=Sydney Morning Herald:= "This is a prettily got up little book, in
+which the music of old songs or old melodies has been set to verses
+having reference to this country. The verses are in every case simple
+and good, suited to children and to the illustration by action for which
+directions are given in a foot note. 'Australia Fair,' to a melody by
+Gluck, is the tune which the late Carl Formes and Signor Foli made
+popular as 'The Mill Wheel.' 'The Gum Tree,' to the tune of 'Banker's
+Wallet,' is a capital song for little children, and 'The Bonnie Orange
+Tree,' to the tune of 'Come, Landlord, Fill your Flowing Bowl,' has
+really charming verses. 'The Little Grey Bandicoot,' again, has
+first-rate verse. The publication as a whole should prove popular."
+
+
+THE AUSTRALIAN LETTERING BOOK.
+
+     Containing the Alphabets most useful in Mapping, Exercise
+     Headings, &c., with practical applications, Easy Scrolls,
+     Flourishes, Borders, Corners, Rulings, &c. Second
+     Edition. New Edition, revised and enlarged, cloth limp,
+     6d. (_post free 7d._).
+
+
+THE AUSTRALIAN OBJECT LESSON BOOK.
+
+     Part II.--For advanced classes. With 113 illustrations.
+     Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d.; paper cover, 2s. 6d.
+     (_postage 4d._).
+
+=Victorian Education Gazette:= "Mr. Wiley and his colleagues have
+provided a storehouse of useful information on a great number of topics
+that can be taken up in any Australian school."
+
+=N.S.W. Educational Gazette:= "The Australian Object Lesson Book is
+evidently the result of infinite patience and deep research on the part
+of its compiler, who is also to be commended for the admirable
+arrangement of his matter."
+
+
+THE AUSTRALIAN PROGRESSIVE SONGSTER.
+
+     By S. MCBURNEY, Mus. Doc., Fellow T.S.F. College.
+
+     Containing graded Songs, Rounds and Exercises in Staff
+     Notation, Tonic Sol-fa and Numerals, with Musical Theory.
+     Price, 6d. each part; combined, 1s. (_postage 1d. each
+     part_).
+
+     =No. 1.=--For Junior Classes.
+
+     =No. 2.=--For Senior Classes.
+
+
+GEOGRAPHY OF AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND.
+
+With Definitions of Geographical Terms.
+
+     Second Edition, with 8 maps and 19 illustrations. 64
+     pages. 6d. (_post free 7d._).
+
+
+GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE, ASIA AND AMERICA.
+
+     Second Edition, with 14 relief and other maps, and 18
+     illustrations of transcontinental views, distribution of
+     animals, &c. 84 pages. 6d. (_post free 7d._).
+
+
+GEOGRAPHY OF NEW SOUTH WALES.
+
+     With five folding maps. 48 pages. 6d. (_post free 7d._).
+
+
+GEOGRAPHY OF AFRICA.
+
+     With five maps in relief, &c. 64 pages. 6d. (_post free
+     7d._).
+
+
+AUSTRALIAN SCHOOL SERIES.
+
+    =Grammar and Derivation Book.= 64 pages. 2d.
+
+    =Test Exercises in Grammar for 3rd Class, 1st Year.= 64
+    pages. 2d.
+
+    =Test Exercises in Grammar for 3rd Class, 2nd Year.= 64
+    pages. 2d.
+
+    =Table Book and Mental Arithmetic.= 48 pages. 1d.
+
+    =Chief Events and Dates in English History.= Part I. From
+    55 B.C. to 1485 A.D. 50 pages. 2d.
+
+    =Chief Events and Dates in English History.= Part II. From
+    Henry VII. (1486) to Victoria (1900). 64 pages. 2d.
+
+    =History of Australia.= 80 pages. 4d. Illustrated.
+
+    =Geography.= Part I. Australasia and Polynesia. 64 pages.
+    2d.
+
+    =Geography.= Part II. Europe, Asia, America, and Africa.
+    66 pages. 2d.
+
+    =Euclid.= Book I. With Definitions, Postulates, Axioms,
+    &c. 64 pages. 2d.
+
+    =Euclid.= Book II. With Definitions and Exercises on Books
+    I. and II. 32 pages. 2d.
+
+    =Euclid.= Book III. With University "Junior" Papers
+    1891-1897. 60 pages. 2d.
+
+    =Arithmetic--Exercises for Class II.= 49 pages. 2d.
+    Answers, 2d.
+
+    =Arithmetic--Exercises for Class III.= 66 pages. 2d.
+    Answers, 2d.
+
+    =Arithmetic--Exercises for Class IV.= 65 pages. 2d.
+    Answers, 2d.
+
+    =Arithmetic and Mensuration--Exercises for Class V.= With
+    the Arithmetic Papers set at the Sydney University Junior,
+    the Public Service, the Sydney Chamber of Commerce, and
+    the Bankers' Institute Examinations to 1900, &c. 112
+    pages. 4d. Answers, 4d.
+
+    =Algebra.= Part I. 49 pages. 2d. Answers, 2d.
+
+    =Algebra.= Part II. To Quadratic Equations. Contains over
+    twelve hundred Exercises, including the University Junior,
+    the Public Service, the Sydney Chamber of Commerce, and
+    the Bankers' Institute Examination Papers to 1900, &c. 112
+    pages. 4d. Answers, 4d.
+
+    =Full Solutions of all Algebra Papers= set at 1st and 2nd
+    Class Teachers' Examinations from 1894 to 1901
+    (inclusive), by W. L. Atkins, B.A. (_Post free 5s._).
+
+    =Full Solution of all Arithmetic Papers= set at 1st, 2nd
+    and 3rd Class Teachers' Examinations from 1894 to 1901
+    (inclusive), by J. M. Taylor, M.A., LL.B. (_Post free 2s.
+    6d._)
+
+=N.S.W. Educational Gazette:= "Messrs. Angus and Robertson forward us
+'Solutions of the First, Second and Third Class Teachers' Arithmetic
+Papers,' and 'Solutions of the First and Second Class Teachers' Algebra
+Papers.' Both may be at once pronounced indispensable to teachers
+preparing for any of these grades. The solutions throughout are neat,
+clear, and concise, and will show intending candidates not only how to
+obtain the desired results, but how to do so in a manner calculated to
+secure full marks from the examiners."
+
+
+THE AUSTRALASIAN CATHOLIC SCHOOL SERIES.
+
+    =History of Australia and New Zealand for Catholic
+    Schools=, 128 pages. 4d.
+
+    =Pupil's Companion to the Australian Catholic First
+    Reader=, 32 pages. 1d.
+
+    =Pupil's Companion to the Australian Catholic Second
+    Reader=, 64 pages. 2d.
+
+    =Pupil's Companion to the Australian Catholic Third
+    Reader=, 112 pages. 3d.
+
+    =Pupil's Companion to the Australian Catholic Fourth
+    Reader=, 160 pages. 4d.
+
+
+THE AUSTRALIAN DRAWING BOOK.
+
+     By F. W. WOODHOUSE, Superintendent of Drawing, Department
+     of Public Instruction, New South Wales.
+
+     Approved by the Department of Public Instruction for use
+     in the Public Schools of New South Wales. Price, 3d.
+     each.
+
+    No. 1A--Elementary, Straight Lines, Curves and Simple
+    Figures.
+
+    Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4--Graduated Elementary Freehand, Regular
+    Forms, Simple Designs, &c.
+
+    Nos. 5 and 6--Foliage, Flowers, Ornaments, Vase Forms, &c.
+
+    No. 7--Book of Blank Pages.
+
+=N.S.W. Educational Gazette:= "This series of drawing books has been
+arranged by the Superintendent of Drawing for the purpose of enabling
+teachers and pupils to meet fully the requirements of the Public School
+Syllabus of 1899. It consists of seven numbers, designed for the third,
+fourth and fifth classes respectively, and there is also a book of blank
+pages (No. 7). Nos. 1 to 4 treat of elementary freehand, simple designs,
+pattern drawing, &c.; Nos. 5 and 6 of foliage, flowers and ornaments.
+The copies are excellently designed and executed, and carefully
+graduated, and the books are printed on superior drawing paper. 'The
+Australian Drawing Books' should be used in every public school in the
+colony, first on account of their intrinsic merit, and secondly because
+they are the only books that accurately fit our standard."
+
+
+THE AUSTRALIAN COPY BOOK.
+
+     Approved by the Departments of Public Instruction in New
+     South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania, by the Public
+     Service Board of New South Wales, and by the Chief
+     Inspector of Catholic Schools. Price, 2d. each.
+
+     No. 1, Initiatory, Short Letters, Short Words; 2,
+     Initiatory, Long Letters, Words; 3, Text, Capitals,
+     Longer Words; 4, Half-Text, Short Sentences; 5,
+     Intermediate, Australian and Geographical Sentences; 6,
+     Small Hand, Double Ruling, Australian and Geographical
+     Sentences, Prefixes and Examples; 6A, Text. Half-Text,
+     Intermediate, Small Hand; 7, Small Hand, Single Ruling,
+     Maxims, Quotations, Proverbs; 8, Advanced Small Hand,
+     Abbreviations and Contractions commonly met with; 9,
+     Commercial Terms and Forms, Addresses; 10, Commercial
+     Forms, Correspondence, Addresses; 11, Plain and
+     Ornamental Lettering, Mapping, Flourishes, &c.
+
+_Numerals are given in each number._
+
+
+THE AUSTRALIAN PUPIL TEACHERS' COPY BOOK.
+
+     A selection of pages from the Australian Copy Book,
+     arranged for use of Pupil Teachers. 48 pages. Price, 6d.
+
+
+ANGUS AND ROBERTSON'S PENCIL COPY BOOK.
+
+     Approved by the N.S.W. Department of Public Instruction.
+     In nine numbers. 1d. each.
+
+     No. 1, Initiatory lines, curves, letters, figures; 2 and
+     3, Short letters, easy combinations, figures; 4, Long
+     letters, short words, figures; 5, Long letters, words,
+     figures; 6, 7, and 8, Capitals, words, figures; 9, Short
+     sentences, figures.
+
+
+GUIDES TO THE NEW SOUTH WALES PUBLIC SERVICE EXAMINATIONS.
+
+     No. I.--Containing the Papers set in March, 1899 and Keys
+     thereto, together with the Regulations and Hints on
+     suitable Text-books. Cheaper edition. 8vo., paper cover,
+     1s. (_post free 1s. 1d._).
+
+     No. II.--Containing the Papers set in August, 1900 and
+     Keys thereto, together with the revised Regulations and
+     Hints on suitable Text-books, and the Papers set at the
+     examination held in December, 1899. Cheaper edition. 8vo,
+     paper cover, 1s. (_post free 1s. 1d._).
+
+
+CHAMBERS'S GOVERNMENT HAND COPY BOOKS.
+
+     Approved by Department of Public Instruction.
+
+     The Letters are continuously joined to each other, so
+     that the pupil need not lift the pen from the beginning
+     to the end of each word. The Spaces between the letters
+     are wide, each letter thus standing out boldly and
+     distinctly by itself. The Slope is gentle, but sufficient
+     to prevent the pupil from acquiring a back hand. The
+     Curves are well rounded, checking the tendency to too
+     great angularity. The Writing is not cramped and
+     confined, plenty of space being allowed for each word.
+     The Words are spaced by perpendicular lines, and the
+     lengths of the letters are indicated by horizontal lines
+     in the early numbers of the series. These books are now
+     printed in N.S.W. on paper which has been specially
+     manufactured for the series, and is of unusually good
+     quality. Price, 2d. each.
+
+     No. 1, Large Hand, Elements, Letters, and Short Words; 2,
+     Half-Text, Short Words without Capitals; 3, Half-Text,
+     Sentences with Capitals, Figures; 4, Half-Text, Proper
+     Names with Capitals; 5, Half-Text, Sentences with
+     Capitals, Figures; 6, Small Round--Double Ruling,
+     Figures; 7, Small, Double Ruling with Intermediate Lines;
+     8, Small, Double Ruling without Intermediate Lines; 9,
+     Small, Single Ruling--Historical; 10, Small, Single
+     Ruling--Geographical; 11, Small, with Partial
+     Ruling--Poetical; 12, Small, Commercial--Business Forms,
+     &c.; 13, For Pupil Teachers.
+
+
+CALENDAR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY.
+
+     8vo, linen, 2s. 6d.; paper cover, 1s. (_postage 8d._)
+
+
+MANUAL OF PUBLIC EXAMINATIONS HELD BY THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY.
+
+     8vo, paper cover, 1s. (_post free 1s. 3d._).
+
+
+QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS; Notes and Tables for the Use of Students.
+
+     BY REV. J. MILNE CURRAN, Lecturer in Chemistry and
+     Geology, Technical College, Sydney, Author of "The
+     Geology of Sydney and the Blue Mountains."
+
+     With illustrations. Demy 8vo, cloth gilt, 4s. 6d. (_post
+     free 5s._).
+
+
+THE POSSIBILITY OF A SCIENCE OF CASUISTRY.
+
+     By ERNEST NORTHCROFT MERRINGTON, B.A. Crown 8vo, cloth,
+     2s. 6d.
+
+
+A SHORT HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY.
+
+     By H. E. BARFF, M.A. Demy 8vo, cloth gilt, 7s. 6d. (_post
+     free, 8s._).
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    TRANSCRIBER NOTES:
+
+    Punctuation has been normalized.
+
+    Alternate and/or archaic spellings have been retained.
+
+    _x_ denotes italic script, =x= denotes bold print, and ^ denotes a
+    superscript.
+
+    Page 72: "horse's" changed to "horses'" (so hard on the
+    horses' feet).
+
+    Page 175: "resouces" changed to "resources" (for its
+    mineral resources.)
+
+    Page 177: "supples" changed to "supplies" (enabled the
+    early settlers to obtain supplies).
+
+    Page 193: "suppresssion" changed to "suppression" (wanton
+    impertinence that would require suppression.)
+
+    Page 195: "swagsmen" changed to "swagmen" (to ration the
+    swagmen as they pass along).
+
+    Page 241: "dessicated" changed to "desiccated" (the land
+    became desiccated, the lakes lost their freshness).
+
+    Page 254: "crystaline" changed to "crystalline" (the
+    auriferous area is confined to veins traversing a crystalline
+    diorite).
+
+    Page 257: duplicate "the" removed (would include all the
+    palaeozoic, metamorphic).
+
+    Advertisement Section:
+
+    Page 14: "setlement" changed to "settlement" (made its way
+    from settlement to settlement).
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Early Days in North Queensland, by Edward Palmer
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