90 NOTES OF TRAVEL 1859-60 



I (lid not for a time notice that my horse had taken a track 

 which brought me on to the Castlereagh River, in consequence 

 of which I had to ride five miles across the country to reach the 

 road I ought to have followed. Bree I carefully avoided, and 

 camped, without food, at a spot where once there had been a 

 hut, rather than face the army of fleas which had tortured me a 

 few nights before. I took a day's rest at Shannon's, and com- 

 pleted in fourteen days the four hundred miles I had travelled 

 for one letter, an average of nearly twenty-nine miles daily. 



Shortly after my return from Walgett there arrived at 

 Prinibougyra, where I was for a time time staying, George 

 Perry, well known as the " Overlander," because of the large 

 numbers of stock he bought in the Northern districts of New 

 South Wales and sold in Riverina and Victoria. This over- 

 landing business had been overdone and Perry had purchased 

 the Tooralle Station and also an unstocked run adjoining it on 

 the river. By these purchases he became the owner of 60 

 miles frontage to the Darling in addition to the half 

 interest he held with Dowliug in Prinibougyra. He 

 therefore controlled 90 miles frontage in one long stretch on the 

 right or western side of the river. The letter Perry brought me 

 from my principal in Melbourne asked me to help to take 

 delivery for Perry, a request which he repeated, and also to 

 inspect and report on the unoccupied country below Tooralle. 

 I was glad to consent to this, nothwithstanding the trying 

 conditions of the climate and the flies and other abominations 

 which it seemed to suit so remarkably well. William Sly, who 

 afterwards came to Queensland, was employed as overseer at 

 Tooralle at that time, and he and I rode over the whole of the 

 run and counted over the sheep. As for the unoccupied run 

 lower down the river, I had to inspect it all by myself. 

 The inspection of country which consists almost wholly 

 of plains with a river frontage is a comparatively easy 

 matter where the character of the whole is similar. The 

 scorching heat, the myriads of extremely familiar flies, the 

 whirlwinds with their accompanying dust, and the general dry- 

 ness of the country--these never failed, and they combined to 

 make life less agreeable than it might, under other circumstances, 

 have been. The Warrego River empties into the Darling below 

 Tooralle, and as I proceeded with my work of inspection I 

 crossed a dry, narrow water-channel about nine miles from 

 that station ; this was the Warrego. Tooralle head station I 

 believe was afterwards removed from its original site on to the 



