n8 AUSTRALIAN PICTURES. 



the greater part flowing by a network of channels through the thirsty sands 

 which lie to the north of the lakes, or more properly the huge swamps of 

 South Australia. In the coast country the rainfall in ordinary seasons is 

 sufficient in quantity and sufficiently spread over the year to permit of 

 agriculture. The rivers and creeks generally contain running streams of 

 water, and the air is moist enough to permit the fall of dew at night. In 

 the interior the rivers are watercourses that seldom contain running streams, 

 being during the greater part of the year merely chains of pools, or ' water 

 holes,' as they are locally called. Rain falls at long and uncertain intervals : 

 the annual total is small ; night-dews are not common, and agriculture is 

 virtually impossible unless assisted by irrigation. To this general description 

 there is, however, one important exception. In the southern part of the 

 colony the table-land approaches to within seventy or eighty miles of the sea- 

 board, and therefore enjoys a comparatively moist climate. The district so 

 situated, known as the Darling Downs, lies immediately to the west of 

 Brisbane, and is the seat of the most important agricultural settlement of the 

 colony. The moister climate of the Darling Downs changes almost im- 

 perceptibly as they stretch to the westward, and it is difficult to fix on the 

 point where agriculture, carried on in the usual way, without irrigation, may 

 be regarded as a hopeless task. 



The occupation of the territory now included in Queensland began 

 almost simultaneously at two points. Pioneer squatters, pushing northward 

 from the interior of New South Wales, discovered the fertile plains of the 

 Darling Downs, and the Sydney authorities determined to form a convict 

 station on the shores of the remote almost unexplored sheet of land-locked 

 water known as Moreton Bay. The convict station was founded in 1826, and 

 in the first instance on the coast at a place since known as Humpy Bong, 

 meaning, in the language of the blacks, ' dead huts or houses.' This settle- 

 ment was soon abandoned, as the water-supply was precarious, and there 

 was insufficient shelter for shipping. A site was subsequently chosen about 

 twenty miles up the channel of the principal river emptying into Moreton 

 Bay, which had been named after Sir Thomas Brisbane ; and ' The Settle- 

 ment,' as it was at first called, soon came to be known by the name of the 

 river, and the decaying buildings of the first attempted lodgment caused the 

 wandering blacks to give the locality the name it now bears. 



At first, of course, there were nothing but the necessary buildings for the 

 convicts — dangerous characters who had been convicted for fresh crimes in 

 the land of their exile, and were therefore relegated to what was then the 

 safe isolation of Moreton Bay — and for the warders and others in charge of 

 the prisoners. Meanwhile, as we have said, pioneer squatters had spied out 

 the pastoral wealth of the Darling Downs, and some bold adventurers had 

 pushed overland with their flocks to occupy it. These pioneers at first kept 

 up communication by bush trails with far distant Sydney, but, hearing that a 



