124 
COCKATOOS. 
the watercourse, and immediately commenced a nar- 
row search for water, as I knew those birds did not fre- 
quently go far away from it : there was not, however, 
a drop to be found anywhere, nor the least sign of 
there having been any for a long time. What made 
the circumstance of finding cockatoos here so sur- 
prising and unusual was, that for the last two hun- 
dred miles we had never seen one at all. Where 
then had these four birds come from ? could it be 
that they had followed under Flinders range from 
the south, and had strayed so far away from all 
others of their kind, or had they come from some 
better country beyond the desert by which I was 
surrounded, or how was that country to be attained, 
supposing it to exist ? Time only may reply to 
these queries, but the occasion which prompted 
them was, to say the least, extraordinary. 
Towards night the sky became overcast with 
clouds, and as I saw that we should have rain, I set 
to work with the boy and made a house of boughs 
for our protection, but the man who accompanied us 
was too indolent to take the same precaution, think- 
ing probably that the rain would pass away as it had 
often done before. In this, however, he was disap- 
pointed, for the rain came down in torrents*' — in an 
* This will not appear surprising, when the great amount of 
rain which falls annually in some parts of Australia, is taken into 
account. The Count Strzelecki gives 62.68 inches, as the average 
annual fall for upwards of twenty years, at Port Macquarie. — 
At p. 193, that gentleman remarks: — “ The greatest fall of rain 
recorded in New South Wales, during 24 hours, amounted to 25 
inches, (Port Jackson).” 
