THE BEACHCOMBER'S DOMAIN 9 



the complicated ranges of mountains away to the west, 

 participate in phenomenal rain. 



Opposite Dunk Island the coastal range recedes and is 

 of much lower elevation, and to these facts perhaps is to be 

 attributed our modified rainfall compared with the plethora 

 of the immediate North ; but we get our share, and when 

 people deplore the droughts which devastate Australia, let 

 it be remembered that Australia is huge, and the most 

 rigorous of Australian droughts merely partial. This 

 country has never known drought. During the partial 

 drought which ended with 1905, and which occasioned 

 great losses throughout the pastoral tracts of Queensland, 

 grass and herbage here were perennially green and 

 succulent — the creeks never ceased running. 



Within the tropics heat is inevitable, but our island 

 enjoys several climatic advantages. The temperature is 

 equable. Blow the wind whithersoever it listeth, and it 

 comes to us cooled by contact with the sea. Here may 

 we drink oft and deep at the never-failing font of pure, 

 soft, beneficent air. We have all the advantages which 

 residence at the happy mean from the Equator bestows, 

 and few of the drawbacks. By its fruits ye shall know the 

 fertility of the soil. 



Birds are numerous, from the " scrub fowl " which dwells 

 in the dim jungle and constructs of decaying leaves and 

 wood and light loam the most trustworthy of incubators, 

 and wastes no valuable time in the dead-and-alive duty of 

 sitting, to the tiny sun-bird of yellow and purple, which 

 flits all day among scarlet hibiscus blooms, sips nectar from 

 the flame-tree, and rifles the dull red studs of the umbrella- 

 tree of their sweetness. 



The stalled ox is not here, nor the fatted calf, nor any of 

 the mere advantages of the table ; but there is the varied 

 harvest of the sea, and all the freshness of an isle clean and 

 green. The heat, the clatter, the stuffy odours, the toilsome- 

 ness, the fatigue of town life are abandoned ; the careless 

 quiet, the calm, the refreshment of the whole air, the tonic 

 of the wide sea are gained. From the moment the sun 



