64 AUSTRALIAN PICTURES. 



and once there you can appreciate the description which Mr. Julian Thomas, 

 the most popular descriptive writer of the Australian press, gives of the 

 scene : — 



' This lake country of Victoria,' says Mr. Thomas, ' possesses distinct 

 features, distinct beauties, as yet unsung and unheard of except by the few. 

 As I sit on a fragment of igneous rock and look around me, I indeed feel 

 that " the singer is less than his themes." I feel that I cannot do justice to 

 this magnificent view, I cannot describe all the pleasure it gives me. My 

 readers must come and judge for themselves. We are on the edge of the 

 extinct crater of an enormous volcano. Below us a number of lakes. Fresh 

 and salt, some fifteen can be counted from this spot. They vary in size from 

 the little mountain tarn filling up one of the mouths of the crater to the great 

 dead sea, Corangamite, more than 90 miles round, and covering 49,000 acres. 

 This lake is Salter than the sea — no fish will live in its waters. From the 

 Stony Rises on the south to Foxhow on the north its shores are outlined 

 with jutting promontories — quaint and picturesque rocky curves, which give 

 it additional beauty. Corangamite Lake is studded with islands, which 

 increase its attractions by the variety of their form. On these, I am told, 

 the pelicans, so numerous here, build their nests. Light and shadow are 

 depicted in the reflections of passing clouds. The shores are white with 

 accumulations of salt. Away in the north-west the dim, blue line of the 

 Grampians. All around, hills and mountains — the Otway Ranges, Noorat, 

 Leura, Porndon — are clearly defined. The park-like plains stretching away 

 to the horizon are dotted with trees, under which thousands of cattle and 

 sheep are sheltering from the rays of the noonday sun. Here and there 

 pleasant homesteads, green cultivation patches, and fields of golden grain. 

 But the especial glory of the scene is in the variety and number of the 

 smaller lakes filling the craters below us. The yellow tints of the bracken 

 covering the slopes are varied with green glints from the foliage of choice 

 ferns on the steep banks, other colours being supplied by the mosses on the 

 rocks. We have here light and shade, form, outline, colour — everything 

 which makes up beauty in a landscape. And beyond that there is the 

 wonderful interest in thinking of the past. Of the age when the numerous 

 volcanoes in the west blazed forth their liquid fire over the land. Of the 

 succeeding ages, when the craters, cooled and filled by springs, for century 

 after century, shone in all their glory of lake and tarn under the actinic rays 

 of the morning sun, which darkened the skin of the few black fellows camped 

 on their banks. Now Coc Coc Coine, last King of the Warrions, has gone. 

 We possess the land, with none to dispute our right to this earthly paradise. 

 But the track of the serpent is even here. The enemy of mankind has now 

 taken the form of the rabbit, which swarms around the Red Rock by the 

 thousand. 



' A strange feature in the lakes here is that they are alternately fresh 



