4 oo AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. , 



rainy season, when its waters are swollen by those of the Murrumbidgee, the Billabong, 

 the Lachlan and the Darling, they overflow the low-lying country in various places, 

 filling up back-water creeks and forming extensive lagoons. Steamers freighted with wool 

 and other pastoral produce lend a character of unwonted animation to the great water- 

 way at such a time, and squatters occupying stations in the far interior of New South 

 Wales, hundreds of miles distant from the River's junction with its main affluents, gladly 

 avail themselves of the facilities afforded by the stream for the conveyance of their 

 products to port facilities which are apt to be interrupted by long and trying intervals, 

 during the too frequent periods of protracted drought. 



In the south-east of Victoria, the rivers which head from the northern slope bear 

 a strong general resemblance to each other. They take their rise in the mysterious 

 recesses of mountains, so thickly clothed with timber and so inaccessible that the 

 sanctuaries of Nature have remained for centuries unprofaned by human foot, but it is 

 almost impossible to indicate with any degree of accuracy the precise fountain-head of 

 either of these rivers. A score of little rills, issuing from moist crevices high up among 

 the hills, will trickle down their furrowed sides and mingle their waters in a runnel 

 that glides beneath a grove of tree-ferns in a narrow gorge impenetrable to the sunlight. 

 The stream will receive continual accessions in its course, and each will increase its 

 velocity until at the higher end of a ravine, the precipitous walls of which approach so 

 nearly that the trees which have found a precarious foothold in their clefts mingle their 

 foliage overhead, the water springs over a ledge of porphyritic or basaltic rock, and is 

 partly dissipated in foam before it reaches its sombre channel, one, two, or three 

 hundred feet below ; and then, as if it had gained impetuosity by its descent, it swirls 

 around the boulders which impede its on-rush to the distant plains, surging against the 

 trunks of the trees that have fallen across its path, undermining the roots of others, 

 and breathing a sense of refreshing coolness into the atmosphere which envelopes the 

 motionless verdure that tapestries its banks. Sometimes as in the case of the Genoa 

 and Snowy Rivers, the Tambo and the Mitchell these mountain-born streams are flanked 

 by sinuous ranges from their hidden birth-places until they come within a few miles of 

 the sea ; so that, for forty leagues or more, they disclose a succession of romantic 

 landscapes, having a certain correspondence in their broader features and more salient 

 characteristics, but presenting an endless variety of detail. 



The principal source of one of the rivers just named the Tambo is near Mount 

 Leinster, on the southern slope of the Bowen Mountains, and on the opposite side rises 

 the Limestone Creek, which some explorers suppose to be the real commencement of 

 the River Murray, flowing northward for something like 1 a hundred miles through 

 country not less romantic than that which has been described above. When the Tambo, 

 the Nicholson, the Mitchell and the Avon emerge from the fastnesses amidst which 

 they have pursued their devious course in a southerly direction, 



Round valleys like nests all ferny-lined, 

 Round hills with fluttering tree-tops feathered, 



their progress becomes more sedate and measured, as if they had exchanged the wild- 

 ness of youth for the seriousness of maturity. They no longer hasten seaward, but 

 expatiate leisurely with "many a winding bout," through alluvial plains of great fertility. 



