THE WILDERNESS 



ONCE, long ago, part of it was garden, and the clearing between 

 ' the redgums and ironbarks was planted with fruit trees and 

 roses ; but the gardener went the way of all flesh, and those 

 who came after him did not have the same love for the garden. 

 Now the bush has reclaimed its own, and roses and fruit trees are half 

 hidden by the tangle of wild things which have gradually crept over 

 them. Each spring the fruit blossoms still shine out on the unpruned 

 trees all the lovelier for their disorder and mingle with the gold of 

 the wattles ; myriads of undisturbed bulbs ixias, freesias and 

 sparaxis send up their blooms among the long swordgrass, outrivalling 

 the blooms in my own well-worked garden beds. 



Lovely as the bush-girt garden must have been in its orderly days, 

 it now holds joys undreamed of then. With the creeping return of 

 the wattles and tecoma, the mistletoe and hardenbergia, have come 

 back many of the shy living creatures which had been driven away by 

 the gardening ; and now that there is no more digging and planting 

 to disturb them they live as happily as if they were a hundred miles 

 away from men and houses, instead of in the midst of a popular suburb. 



Fortunately the wilderness is not a desirable building allotment. 

 The little creek which bisects it makes the site too damp for a house, 

 and so no ruthless builder casts a speculative eye upon it. But the 

 creek is an attraction for numberless creatures birds, butterflies, 

 bandicoots, frogs, and myriads of those tiny living things which we 

 carelessly group together as " wogs." 



