VICTORIA. 25 9 



sort of climbing, doing it in exactly the same way, and being often 

 employed by my informant in collecting wild honey for him at 

 so much a nest. In the same way there are said to be Whites 

 who can throw the boomerang better than any Blacks. In fact, 

 a White man, when he brings his superior faculties to bear 

 on the matter, can always beat a savage in his own field, except 

 perhaps at tracking. 



We looked up into all the trees for a native bear (Phascolarctos 

 cinereus), and saw tracks of , Kangaroos, but not the animals 

 themselves. We stayed out only one night, and got back as we 

 arrived only at nightfall, after a protracted struggle with the 

 mud. The roads were mostly short cuts, and were what are 

 called "made, but not metalled." Making a road is simply 

 clearing of trees a line of ground of a certain breadth and 

 marking the bounds with a plough. In using such a road, 

 constant divergencies have to be successively made in order to 

 avoid deep mud and swampy bits, or occasionally fallen trees, 

 and the track gradually widens and straggles in the adjoining 

 bush. 



My next excursion was to Sandhurst, a rapidly grown mining 

 town, winch has arisen since 1851 at the site of the most paying 

 Victorian diggings. The railway for a long distance, as it nears 

 Sandhurst, passes through the midst of various sites of old 

 diggings. The surface of the ground on each side of the line for 

 miles at a stretch has been turned over, scooped out and heaped 

 up, and presents the appearance of an endless succession of 

 deserted gravel pits. Here and there a few solitary diggers, 

 mostly Chinamen, were rewashing the dirt, but nearly all was 

 waste and bare. The vast extent of the fields, and amount of 

 work done, astonished me. 



Sandhurst, or Bendigo, is a large town with a newly run-up 

 appearance, built amongst the openings of the shafts of the 

 numerous mines. The surface gold was long ago worked out, 

 and the rich quartz reefs below are now being mined by means 

 of shafts and drives. A new shaft was being sunk in the very 

 centre of the town, in front of the principal banks and the 

 verandah-covered pavements, which were crowded with share- 

 brokers, doing business in the open streets. The great winding 



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