24 Barnard, Notes of a Visit to W.A. [y^ 



ict. Nat. 

 . XXXVI. 



NOTES OF A VISIT TO WESTERN AUSTRALIA. 

 By F. G. a. Barnard. 

 {Read before the Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria, loth March, 19 19.) 

 In August last, having persuaded myself that I needed a 

 holiday, the question arose. Where shall I go ? Then, re- 

 membering Mr. C. A. Topp's interesting paper, " Impressions 

 of the Wild-Flowers of South- Western Australia," read before 

 this Club just two years ago {Vid. Nat., xxxiv., p. 37, July, 

 1917), and that the best time of the year for wild-flowers was 

 fast approaching, I determined to try and arrange for a visit to 

 Western Australia. As time was a matter of importance, I 

 decided to make the journey by the recently-opened Trans- 

 Australian railway, having been informed that at that time 

 of the year the trip by rail would be quite pleasant. So, leaving 

 Melbourne on Wednesday afternoon, 28th August, by mid-day 

 on the following Sunday I had traversed some 2,168 miles, 

 and practically crossed the continent from east to west, with 

 nothing to regret in having adopted that route, and having 

 gained a lasting impression of the Nullabor Plain, said by Mr. 

 T. Dunbabin, in an article in the Argus of 3rd August last, to 

 be the greatest plain in Australia, covering about 100,000 square 

 miles — an area greater than the State of Victoria. 



Some little account of items interesting to the naturalist on 

 the overland journey may be worth while. In Victoria, owing 

 to the shortness of the daylight, little was to be seen. The 

 new lake in the Werribee Valley, near Melton, with its gaunt 

 skeletons of trees standing in fifty or sixty feet of water, had 

 anything but a picturesque appearance. My last glimpse of 

 the vegetation consisted of some golden wattles in full bloom 

 near Rowsley. When daylight broke next morning we had 

 almost traversed the so-called Ninety-Mile Desert, which is 

 really an ordinary piece of Mallee, with stunted gums, 

 Casuarinas, Hakeas, &c., but nothing definite could be recog- 

 nized. In South Austraha, about Mount Barker Junction and 

 right through the Mount Lofty Ranges, golden wattles were 

 everywhere in evidence, and presented a lovely sight ; by the 

 way, the South Australian form of Acacia pycnantha seems to 

 be more robust both as to flowers and leaves than the speci- 

 mens we are used to in Victoria. The Native Heath, Epacris 

 impressa, both pink and white, was still blooming freely all 

 through the hills, and with the yellow of the wattles made up 

 a picture worth travelling far to see. 



On leaving Adelaide for Port Augusta (260 miles) all was 

 new to me. The country was under wheat to so great an 

 extent that Uttle natural vegetation was to be seen. Along 

 the railway line the introduced Oxalis, 0. cernuta, grew in 



