The Never-Never Land 65 



of sour-tempered camels, the animals apparently 

 finding some distinction between the light skins 

 and dark in favour of the latter. Therefore the 

 man who cries "Hooshta" in the wilderness is 

 usually an alien, which is quite enough to make 

 the average Australian prejudiced against the 

 camel and all his surroundings. 



The introduction of the camel into Australia 

 was due to some of the more ambitious exploring 

 ventures in the middle of the last century, and the 

 finest and most serviceable camels to be seen are 

 the descendants from this stock. Their worth 

 was so fully proved during the early days of the 

 Western Australian goldfields that many animals 

 were imported with their drivers from India and 

 Afghanistan, but they have not proved so tract- 

 able and useful as the stock reared in Australia. 



In the Australian interior occur those salt lakes 

 that, for the greater part of the year, are lakes 

 only in name and appearance. Seen from a dis- 

 tance, they are vast sheets of shimmering water, 

 dotted with islands robed in the freshest green. 

 A closer examination shows them to be only lake 

 beds coated with a glittering saline incrustation, 

 while the fair prospect of island and green forest 

 disappears. Everywhere in this region, water 

 may be obtained by digging, but it is as salt as 

 the sea, or at least so brackish as to be quite un- 

 drinkable. Not very long ago, as time is counted 

 in the history of the universe, this land was the 

 ocean bed, and now when the rays of the sun light 



