22 
MACNADE HOUSE 
CHAP. 
blossom, the beaumontia, with its beautiful large 
trumpet- shaped white flowers, the blue thunbergia, 
the scarlet Poinciana regia , and the blue jacaranda. 
Some of those pests, the flying -foxes, had stripped 
the trees of all the fruit, and Mr. R. spent his evening 
shooting them as they went by. Hundreds of parrots 
are now sucking the honey from the blossoms of the 
gums, and the shrill cry of cockatoos is everywhere 
to be heard. The laughing jackass here is a bright- 
plumaged bird, with beautiful blue in its wings and 
back, and many of the birds, which are sombre- 
coloured in the South, here put on brighter plumage. 
Macnade House. 
From Mackay I made another start on to Towns- 
ville. While waiting for the steamer, the pilot from 
Flat Top Island came off in his little boat and took 
me ashore. He had been all through the New Zealand 
war, and was one of those who helped to carry you 
after you had been wounded ; you may imagine how 
delighted he was to meet some one with whom he could 
go over the old fights again. His wife gave me a lunch, 
of beef-steak and “ apple-pie,” the latter made out of 
pumpkins, and afterwards some tea and cake, which 
lasted me till I got to the next port. They gave me 
also some seaweeds, corals, shells, and a carpet snake’s 
skin. They had killed snakes of this kind nine nights 
in succession as they came to eat the chickens. 
We had a splendid trip along the coast to Towns- 
ville, but unfortunately we passed Whitsunday Passage 
by moonlight. It was very beautiful even by night, 
and the coast scenery here is very grand, with high 
cliffs and many islands, rocky or covered with timber. 
The inevitable tender came to meet us at Townsville, 
and in twenty minutes we were in the town. Next day 
