108 A NATURALIST IN TASMANIA ch. 



and is surrounded inland with gum forests and 

 open sedgy plains ; a fine jetty and a boat-house 

 remain on the beach as a remnant of the days 

 when the tin ore used to be shipped here from 

 the mining districts eastward, before the railway 

 from Scotsdale into Launceston was built. Besides 

 a fisherman's cottage and one or two small farms 

 in the neighbourhood, the country along the coast 

 is pretty well unoccupied. There are two little 

 creeks in the near neighbourhood ; the Brid, 

 which flowed quite near the settler's house into 

 the bay, and Muddy Creek a tiny little rivulet 

 about two miles to the east. In these two 

 creeks we used to fish for Black-fish and for 

 Crayfish, or Freshwater Lobsters ^ as the settlers 

 call them. The Black-fish does not begin biting 

 till close on sundown, so that we generally 

 set out through the forest late in the afternoon 

 and walked a mile or so down the river. As 

 we went along we dropped lighted matches 

 among dry patches of Bracken and scrub in the 

 hope of starting fires, a practice which the in- 

 habitants of this district always perform in the 

 dry weather, as there is nothing to damage, the 

 fire does not spread dangerously owing to the 

 comparative thinness of the bush, and on the 

 charred clearing caused by these fires a certain 

 amount of coarse grass springs up which serves 



^ In Tasmania the term Crayfisli is applied to the marine 

 Rock Lobster (Panulirus), the term Lobster to the Freshwater 

 Crayfish (Astacopsis). 



