The Wreck, 395 



and gum-trees, or belts of mangrove scrub. After passing Geelong, 

 Mount Elisa dimly rises in the background behind the Geelong 

 plains 3 Melbourne and Sandridge indistinctly loom in sight, while 

 the Dandenong ranges, rising proudly to the north, stand out in 

 bold relief against a cloudless southern sky — the whole scene form- 

 ing as bold a panorama of nature as the eye ever gazed upon. 



Should the vessel stand in towards the larboard shore, the long 

 flat beach from Geelong to Williamstown will be plainly seen — a 

 belt of stunted honeysuckles, faced by a dense wall of mangrove 

 scrub and banks of black, sun-dried seaweed, the accumulation of 

 ages, shutting out the interior landscape from the view. Behind 

 these honeysuckles is another belt of scattered gum-trees, extending 

 along the whole coast, perhaps a mile in breadth, having far more 

 the appearance of an English park than the primeval forests which 

 are met with on the Western-Port side of the bay j while the whole 

 country beyond is one vast arid, stony plain, over which the weary 

 traveller may plod for miles and miles without a tree to shelter him 

 from the fierce rays of the burning sun, his sole companions the 

 solitary wild turkey, or the little plover of the plains, whose long 

 melancholy cry — in perfect unison with the wild regions which it 

 frequents — is the only sound which breaks upon a solitude painful 

 in its intensity. 



Concealed in this nest of honeysuckles, a little south of Williams- 

 town, is a large swamp, in my day called Langhorne Swamp — a 

 rough, tussocky marsh of perhaps two thousand acres, covered with 

 rushes two feet high, and studded by lagoons of ditferent sizes, which, 

 affording capital breeding-ground, were the nightly resort of the 

 hundreds of wild-fowl of all descriptions, which by day rode leisurely 

 on the placid waters of the bay, or lined the banks of seaweed 

 which fringed the coast. 



This swamp was divided from the neighbouring station by a creek, 

 bearing the ominous but well-earned name of Skeleton Creek, 

 being filled with weather-bleached skeletons of cattle j for in 

 summer, when the burning sun had dried up all the water 

 on the plains, this, like most other Australian creeks, was 



