26 A BUSH CALENDAR 



it is a scent that drags you willy-nilly out into the bush, 

 and as Monday was a whole free day, and the sun was bright, 

 I took my bag and billy, and went out to enjoy the delights. 

 And, oh, such a day I had ! Ten minutes after leaving the rail- 

 way line I was in bush as thick and real as if it were miles from 

 any city. A rough cart-track crawled white and dusty through 

 the scrub; but even in the ruts grew flowers blue dampiera, 

 yellow goodenia, and a tall brown orchid, almost indistinguish- 

 able from the grass around it. Along the sides of the track 

 stretched dwarf apple (with red velvety buds, which in a little 

 while will break into a mass of creamy blossoms), and stunted 

 gums and tea-trees. Beneath the shelter of the bushes gleamed 

 in rosy masses the paler boronia the deep pink one has entire- 

 ly vanished and the clumps of a pale mauve star-flower, philo- 

 theca. 



A little further on the apples and saplings gave way to taller 

 scribbly gums beneath whose shelter one of the dillwynias 

 raised golden spikes, while a pultenaea sent up great heads of 

 still deeper gold to outshine it in gorgeousness. Beyond the 

 gums stretched the marsh which a month ago was a carpet of 

 pink sprengelia, now snowy white with the tubular-flowered 

 epacris, sweetest of all the heaths, and the conospermum, whose 

 flower heads, mostly unfavourably known as the centre pieces 

 of stiff bunches, wave gracefully on long slender stems in their 

 natural surroundings. 



But it was where the track ran round the side of the hill 



