422 The Australian Bush. 



feed in shallow water, he fetches the dead ones out himself, and he 

 may often have to sit for hours on a tussock of rushes, up to his 

 knees in water. Cording's india-rubber water-proofs are the best 

 I ever used for this work j they are warm, perfectly water-tight, 

 never want dressing, and, what is best of all, never get hard, and are 

 always easy to pull on and off. They are certainly too heavy forwalk- 

 ing much in, but for flight-shooting, boat-fishing, or any other work 

 where the wearer is not constantly in motion, I will back them 

 against any boots in the world. The American gutta-percha 

 overalls are not worth anything for work. At all other times except 

 flight-shooting, the best dress for the Australian duck-shooter is can- 

 vas or flannel trousers and low half-boots. The climate is so fine 

 here, that a man may wade in the swamps with impunity at all 

 seasons of the year, and the best clothes the shooter can wear are 

 those which dry the quickest. 



I do not believe any country in the world is better fitted by 

 nature as a home for waterfowl than Australia. Dreary swamps, 

 miles in extent, lagoons of immense size, where the bulrush and 

 reed vegetate in rank luxuriance, creeks and water-holes completely 

 hidden from view by dense masses of the tea-tree plant, afford un- 

 molested shelter and breeding-places for the birds ; and there must 

 be thousands of places up-country, in the solitude of whose morasses 

 and fens a gun is never heard, which literally swarm with wildfowl. 

 I shall say nothing here with regard to the practical part of the 

 shooting : all I have the space for is to inform the reader what sport 

 he can meet with, and if he has been a sportsman at home, the 

 tackle and experience that he brings out from the old country will 

 suffice for him in the new one. 



Duck-shooting is perhaps the most profitable kind of shooting 

 out here, if there is a market for the game ; and even on any 

 station or at any public-house up-country (but it is quite as well not 

 to be camped too near the latter), a pair or two of black ducks can 

 always be exchanged for provisions or sold outright. Of course 

 times have now altered, but when I first came into this country the 

 palmy days of the duck-shooting were in their zenith the fowls 



