22 8 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



permits warm lights in the foreground, with soft and mellow distances (even before the 

 eye is brought to rest on the spurs of the Liverpool Range)- and a sky of all manner 

 of cloud-shapes, from the faintest, fairest forms of cirrus to the dense strata through 

 which the setting sun scarce breaks, and the rolling masses of cmiin/i with their lustres 

 and lights of silver and gold. 



At Maitland are the water-works for the district. The water is pumped from the 

 Creek, filtered in large beds and delivered by gravitation. One feature of the scheme is 

 a great artificial lake to be filled whenever the Creek is clear, so that in flood or fresh 

 the supply may be had from this reserve store, instead of from the turbid stream. 



From Maitland it is but an easy two hours' journey to the Paterson River and 

 the pretty village of Paterson, passing on the way the healthy little settlement of Hinton, 

 lying on the south bank of the Hunter, opposite the junction with the Paterson. In 

 very early days settlers took up the land on the river-banks, and within a few years 

 must have set the willow twigs which show such luxurious beauty of form, and yield in 

 summer time such delightful shade. The fruit-trees and English oaks on the clearings 

 of the upland have an equal date with the willows, and many an old resident can 

 remember the time when Sydney seemed a month's journey away, and to travel to 

 Newcastle was to incur unknown risks. Folk live long about the Paterson perhaps because 

 they live well. Everything favours them ; the climate is genial, the soil is rich, Nature as 

 beautiful as she is bountiful, and there are no signs of hurry or bustle anywhere. Sunday 

 is a busy day in the little town, for the Paterson people are fond of their church, or it 

 may be of the pleasant church-going, which to the country settlers is not a dreary pilgrim- 

 age along an uncomfortable road, or a walk stifi-starched through city-streets, but a drive 

 or a gallop of an hour along the bush-roads or the river-banks, bordered with the 

 fragrant wattles or the shadowy willows. Bright girls and stalwart lads, from the orangeries, 

 the vineyards and the farms, may be seen on Sunday afternoon cantering down the 

 village street, tying their horses up to the fence, and, with all the reverence that can 



be associated with 

 riding -habits and 

 spurs, entering the 

 little church. 



Northward from 

 Maitland the rail- 

 way proceeds along 

 the narrowing val- 

 ley of the Hunter 



THE SINGLETON AGRICULTURAL SHOW-GROUND. '\er, 



country well fitted 



to the vine the vineyards at Lochinvar and Branxton being especially celebrated. Just 

 before the first great bridge of the line is reached stands Singleton, fifty miles from the 

 coast as the rail runs. Singleton dates as a settlement from 1825, and the town has much 

 of the substantial if not the venerable aspect of age. The rich alluvial flats known as 

 Patrick's Plains will grow maize, tobacco and grapes as long as people are found to till 

 them, and the coal industry established at Rix's Creek, three miles away, shows signs of a 



