286 
The Common Oak will yield water in another way : in a fork of the tree there will be a cavity that 
will give a full drink for two or three people, some more, some less such trees are perhaps as well known 
as are the small rock cups and as frequently visited; this cavity may be anywhere, perhaps just beyond 
the man's reach or higher. The blacks take a coarse straw of grass or spinifex and suck the water up ; 
these and other methods known to them will perhaps account for the fact that blacks are seen in the most 
arid and desolate parts of the desert in the heat of summer. So they move from one little water to another 
in small groups or families, and from what has been seen of them in their native habitat it appears they 
are never reduced to want except perhaps from their own indolence. Upon another occasion I have known 
water sufficient for five men to be obtained from Oak and plenty to spare, but have never heard of a white 
man who knew the secret, and have never known it to be found in the Desert Oak. I imagine this tree 
must send its roots deep down, for it is a handsome shapely tree with very thick rugged bark that protects 
the tree from the fires made by the blacks when burning spinifex. 
The following note is interesting in this connection : 
' We could procure no water except a few drops from the cut end of a climbing plant, which the 
natives call ' Kalobit ' and of which they sometimes form rough cordage, by rending it into long strips. 
The juice of the plant is intensely bitter, but the water which distilled itself slowly from the cut end was 
quite pure and tasteless." (Burbidge, " The Gardens of the Sun," p. 84.) 
PHOTOGRAPHIC ILLUSTRATION. 
Water Vine (Vitis) growing round a Hoop Pine Tree (Araucaria Cunninghamii), Dorrigo, N.S.W. 
(Photo, 8. W. Jackson.) 
No. 191. PartLII. 
Eucalyptus microtheca F.v.M. 
THE COOLABAH. 
(Family MYRTACE^E.) 
Timber. See also vol. vi, p. 21. ' Found in the drier north-west and largely 
used for fencing purposes. It rarely attains any size, and is so tough and interlocked 
as to make splitting practically impossible, for which reason it is used almost invariably 
in the round.' The trunks of the small and the branches of the larger trees are thus used, 
and to one used to the straight, neatly-erected split post fences of the more favoured 
timber districts, the effect of the line of crooked and even angular posts staggering across 
the plain is somewhat startling. The same is even more noticeable when, as is some- 
times the case, coolibah telephone posts are used, and the observer may be excused if 
he looks a second time to determine whether his eyes or the telephone poles are at fault, 
and he views the line stretching across some treeless plain, like nothing so much as a 
Bulletin cartoon of what a man sees after a ' Wee Scotch Nicht.' Coolibah, however, 
possesses the advantage of lasting well in the ground, and is often the only timber 
available to the settler, and the fence is at least serviceable, which after all is the chief 
desideratum " (Gordon Burrow). 
For a fuller botanical account of this species, see my Grit, Rev genus Eucalyptus, 
Pait xi. 
PHOTOGRAPHIC ILLUSTRATION. 
River Box group (E. microthcca). Locally called " Coolabali." Paddy's Lagoon, near Flinders Rive* , 
about 80 miles south of Normanton, North Queensland. (Photo, R. -H. Cambage.) 
