4 o6 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



to emulate the great country houses which lend such a charm to rural England. 



The Kumeralla serves as a natural drainage channel for a considerable body of 

 water which accumulates in Buckley's Swamp, about seven miles to the north-east of 

 Mount Napier. Thence it flows in a south-westerly direction through a thick forest of 

 eucalyptus ami banksia, with high land of trap formation on either side, until it reaches 

 the township of Macarthur, where it is joined by the Breakfast and Blackfellow Creeks, 

 and flows southerly from this point through a marshy country, which is in some places 

 s<-\cn miles wide; during a very rainy season the marshes become a series of 

 lagoons dotted with small islands. On approaching within a mile of the sea-coast, it 

 bends abruptly round to the east, and running parallel with the beach for something 

 like seven miles it discharges its waters into Lake Yambuk, which also receives those of 

 the Shaw, an unimportant stream rising near Harton Hills, twenty miles to the north- 

 ward in a straight line. 



The \\ annon flow-s from the eastern slopes of the northern extremity of the Serra 

 Range, and pursues a southerly course until it sweeps round the base of Mount Stur- 

 geon, when it doubles back in a north-westerly direction as far as the township of 

 Cavendish. There it is again .deflected to the southward, and augmented by many 

 tributaries, it reaches a ridge of rock about a mile from Redruth. Below the riclge 

 there is a sudden change in the country, and the River, leaping over a ledge, worn 

 smooth by the slow erosion of the waters during innumerable centuries, plunges in one 

 bright, broad, translucent sheet into a pool a hundred feet beneath, where it whirls and 

 eddies amidst the masses of rock which break it up into many foaming torrents, and 

 greatly add to the picturesqueness of the scene. Four or five miles from Redruth the 

 \\annon effects a junction with the Grange Burn, rising a little to the eastward of the 

 county boundaries of Villiers and Normanby, and thenceforward the course of the 

 combined streams is north-westerly until the Wannon merges its identity in the Glenelg, 

 the most westerly, and perhaps the most circuitous, of all Victorian rivers. 



This stream meanders for upwards of two hundred and fifty miles before it reaches 

 its outfall at Nelson. After emerging from the mountainous region, the Glenelg takes a 

 northerly direction through grassy flats, sprinkled with stunted timber and banksia heath 

 for about seven miles, and then makes a sudden bend to the south-west for upwards of 

 twenty miles, when, its course being obstructed by a low range, it describes a semicircle 

 to Balmoral, at which point it sweeps round to the north-east for a dozen miles or so, 

 and once more folds back upon itself and pursues a south-westerly path, with capricious 

 windings, through high banks, clothed for the most part with timber, until it absorbs 

 the waters of Power's Creek, flowing into it from the westward. Here it commences its 

 southward career, but still erratically, and augmented by the Stokes and the Crawford 

 and the Glenaulin Creek, it flows down to within a few miles of the ocean, starts off 

 in a westerly direction, and once more curves round to the east before emptying itself 

 into the sea at Discovery Bay. 



1 he Wimmera is the most westerly of those Victorian rivers which belong to its 

 northern water-shed, and may be grouped with the Avon and the Avoca on account of 

 their common characteristics, for each fails to find its way to the Murray, which is the 

 re M-rvoir of the whole of the streams to be spoken of hereafter. Taking its rise in the 



