May.j O'Donohue, Wanderings on the Murray Flood-Plain. i i 



Ascending what proved to be the last sand-dune on this 

 stage of the journey, we found it thickly overgrown with the 

 introduced Stinkwort, Inula graveolens, and Crownbeard, 

 Verbesina encelioides. Here the second pair of Emu noted on 

 the trip were descried on the side of a hill, leisurely plucking 

 the Tall Thickheads, Myriocephalus Stuartii. At dusk the 

 roof of the Kulkyne Station homestead was detected above 

 the tops of the Old Man Saltbush, Atriplex nummularia, that 

 here, strangely enough, forms large growths, and occupies, 

 with other salsolaceous plants, a somewhat restricted area. 

 Having presented our letter of introduction to the manager of 

 the station, Mr. Thompson, and reluctantly declined his 

 invitation to spend the night at the homestead, we drove off, 

 and proceeded some distance up the Murray. 



As the supply of daylight showed unmistakable signs of 

 giving out, we decided to construct our camp near the river, 

 and close to a pile of firewood estimated to contain over 500 

 tons. The timber-getter, who was camped in the vicinity of 

 this bulky and weighty evidence of his months of strenuous 

 labour, accorded us the usual hearty bush welcome, and at 

 once placed his fire and cooking utensils at our disposal. 

 When all had been made snug for the night, we gathered 

 around the wood-getter's camp fire, and were regaled with 

 many interesting incidents of the once large, but now extinct, 

 tribe of tall, muscular blacks that ranged the countryside 

 some sixty years ago. To the north, we were informed, was 

 a large sand-dune wherein, it was computed, thousands of 

 blacks had been interred, most of whom, it was believed, 

 had died of small-pox. Speaking in reference to the matter 

 subsequently, Mr. Thompson, the manager of Kulkyne Station, 

 ■-aid that when a lad he had been informed by a very aged 

 blackfellow, who was fright lull v scarred with pockmarks, that 

 all his tribe — a very numerous one — were buried in the sand- 

 dune. The old man graphically related to him how a strange 

 black came to the camp one day with the disconcerting 

 information that the " devil-devil " was coming down the 

 river and was killing all the blacks on either bank ; how a 

 dozen members of the tribe sickened that evening, and on the 

 following day died ; how he contracted the disease, and on his 

 recovery found that all, or nearly all. his tribe had perished : 

 how he tied into the remote recesses of the Mallee. where he 

 remained for two years, ami how. on returning to the site ol 

 the old (amp, he discovered the bleached remains »>t his 

 former comrades scattered aboul in the positions they had 

 been overtaken by death; how he remained there alone for 

 many months 1ill joined by other blacks, and how a I resh 

 tribe was gradually built up, to be in turn exterminated, but 



