io Australian Life 



the ocean. Over all these wastes grows nothing 

 but the stiff spinifex grass, recognised as an unfail- 

 ing sign of barren land. That country is dreary and 

 monotonous beyond conception, but not so chilling 

 as the mysterious dead forests, where the trees 

 have long ago parted with every sign of leaf or 

 bark, and stand with white, palsied trunks and 

 gnarled limbs writhing into all fantastic imagery. 

 In the daytime, they are gaunt and forbidding, 

 but seen in the white light of an Australian moon, 

 when the wailing cry of the curlew is never silent, 

 they fill the soul with a profound melancholy. 



The broad Western plains are more cheerful, 

 with their clumps of drooping myalls, that glisten 

 like silver when the wind stirs their leaves. The 

 grey salt bush that covers the plain is not attrac- 

 tive to the eye, but it has the merit of being use- 

 ful. There are other plains, where neither tree, 

 bush, nor herb covers the nakedness of the red 

 soil, and where the wind comes heralded by a 

 cloud of dust that settles on everything, choking 

 the dry creek-beds, drifting over fences and even 

 buildings, and smothering the whole world with 

 its effacing redness. To the Australian, it is all 

 the bush. The mangrove swamps and dense 

 tropical forests of the North, the tracts of giant 

 timber in South-western Australia, the "scrub" 

 wastes of the interior where nothing can live, all 

 go to make up the bush . 



The occupation of the interior began early in 

 the nineteenth century, with the arrival of the 



