246 Jackson, In the Barron River Valley, N.Q. [ist^j 



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RETURN TO TINAROO SCRUBS. 



On the 28th October I again reached Atherton by train, 

 feehng much better for the change to the higher levels and cooler 

 air. Mr. Quirk (local Crown Land Ranger) called on me, and 

 made things easier by giving me the name of someone who 

 could help me with useful local knowledge of the scrubs during 

 my next tour of investigation. This was a Mr. E. D. Frizelle, 

 who, being engaged in the timber industry, and having a camp 

 about 12 miles away in the Tinaroo scrubs, would be the man 

 of all others to aid me in my work. The 29th, therefore, found 

 me, although still rather weak, at a place called Tolga, 

 arranging for buggy transport to Mr. Frizelle's camp at Tinaroo, 

 but I could not get under way until the next day. Tolga proved 

 to be worth a little attention. It is a small township on the 

 northern edge of the great sixty-mile belt of scrub, and is prin- 

 cipally supported by the timber industry, which has natural 

 resources of the richest character. I saw kauri pine logs here 

 cut from the local scrubs which measured 22 feet in circumference ; 

 some are so large that the saw-millers are obliged to use 

 explosives in order to blow them in halves and thus reduce their 

 size, so that they will fit the stands at the mill. The day of 

 enforced rest was, though unwelcome, perhaps the best for me ; 

 I felt better, but the call of the Tooth-bills, plainly heard at the 

 edge of the scrub close to the township, made me eager to be off. 

 I left for the Tinaroo scrubs on the 30th, and made an early and 

 reluctant acquaintance with the local dust on the roads. Dust ! 

 It is of the deep red volcanic brand, and as I passed along I 

 " saw red," and later in the day took on the same rich brick 

 colour myself. Birds and everything else, animate and inanimate, 

 were powdered over with the same fine, effective deposit. It 

 was in truth a case of " local colouration." Fortunately, in the 

 scrub there is no dust. The weather had been unusually dry, but 

 the wet season would set in soon. 



Mr. Frizelle met me on the bank of the Barron River, and, 

 aided by him, I bestowed all my boxes and belongings and 

 bush outfit in a tent, ready prepared for me, close to the 

 all-absorbing scrub, and in a spot of wild picturesqueness. I 

 did not take long to change into the light, strong wear which I 

 keep for scrub wanderings, and with the zest of a schoolboy on 

 a holiday I literally plunged into the heart of things — i.e., the 

 scrub. As I entered I came straight across three play-grounds 

 of the Tooth-billed Bower-Bird, all decorated and all in 

 possession of solitary occupants, as so often before described. 

 The latter were amusing themselves with an absolutely perfect 

 reproduction of the screeching notes of the Northern Blue-bellied 

 Lorikeet {TricJioglossus scptentrionalis), varying them with others 

 now and then, and winding up with the inevitable and inter- 

 mittent " chuck." I now noticed again that whenever these 



