, 70 . / 1 -.V TR. I L. \ SI. I ILL I 'STRA TED. 



black flats, broken up by occasional sand-ridges, traversed by the four creeks which 

 n-e.-ivr the waters of the Queensland Balonne and discharge into the Cato (a branch of 

 the Darling), and the Narran Lake. There are great possibilities in this country, but as 

 vet enterprise has been only primitively pastoral. The waters run to waste in floods, the 

 plains bake and burn in times of drought ; a few tanks indeed have been excavated, a few 

 dams made on the creeks, but nothing adequately to meet the terrible exigencies of a climate 

 whose fat and lean years come almost as regularly as those foretold by Joseph in Egypt. 

 The aspect of this great country is not wanting in the picturesque ; the mirage is 

 frequently seen in perfection trees inverted in phantom lakes, sheep in the distance 

 looming like advancing armies, swag-men taking on gigantic proportions, and seeming at 

 times to rise suddenly from the earth. Here also is seen that peculiar phenomenon of 

 the lifting or expanding horizon at sunrise and even. In the heat of day all around 

 seems bare, bald, plain ; the range of vision being limited by the refraction of heated 

 air, but just at dawn or evening the traveller, familiar only with the daylight aspect, is 

 astonished to see long lines of black timber by various lagoons and creeks, the serrated 

 crest of a pine-ridge, with the dark and tangled woods below, horses and bullocks an 

 hour's ride away, and emus and kangaroos making down to the water. All are swallowed 

 up, and with almost equal rapidity, in increasing light and darkness. Many varieties of 

 timber-trees also are found here quite foreign to dwellers on the high lands of the 

 coast. The ghostly brigalow grows in thorny clumps on the poorest ground, the gidya 

 bears a broad and shady crown with bunches of pale yellow blossoms malodorous in the 

 extreme ; the leopard-tree lifts its quaint spotted trunk, and here is found the beef-wood, 

 which shows on its cleavage a grain strongly resembling that of a broad-cut steak ; 

 mulga, myall and yarran are abundant, and as undergrowth there are all kinds of salt 

 and cotton bush, and an infinite variety of succulent herbs. 



Farther up the River is Walgett, the permanent head of the Darling navigation ; and 

 from Walgett there is a good coach-road to Coonamble and thence to Dubbo. Walgett 

 is an important town, and most favourably situated with respect to general convenience 

 of trade. It is accessible from the northern as well as from the western lines, and does 

 also a very considerable business with the country beyond the River. Both its rivers are 

 bridged, and an effort has been made to make both navigable, but the snags in the 

 Namoi proved too formidable even when covered by the highest flood. 



Coonamble, a hundred miles down the Castlereagh, and almost due south of 

 Walgett, touches again on the agricultural country. The future of the town depends on 

 the development of the agricultural resources, which are scarcely inferior to those of 

 Dubbo. Indeed the soil here, east, west, north and south, is adapted to tillage ; but 

 the alternating years of terrible floods and disastrous droughts are disheartening to any 

 but well sustained and strongly supported effort. 



A hundred and ten miles of coaching, through as fair a pastoral country as any 

 squatting prospector could desire, brings the traveller from Coonamble back to Dubbo. 

 'ks and rivers are frequent throughout the journey all that net-work of streams from 

 the Namoi to the Bogan which water some of the finest stations the colony knows a 

 glorious country in a rainy spring, a terrible scene of desolation in a dry summer. 

 Agriculture attacks its southern skirts, and supports such little townships as Warren and 



