Walter Goodfellow—A Collector on Melville Island



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a flower during the whole of my stay. It was too early for the wattles.

I often wondered what the lories and other honey-eating birds found

to live on.


Flies were a terrible pest, especially during the wet season. They

seemed to come in millions and daily drove one to desperation. This

is a phase of Australian life we hear very little about, yet away from

the cities, I suppose there is no other such fly-ridden country in the

world. At any rate I have not yet met with it. As evening came on

they secreted themselves in hundreds among the bed clothes and dry

garments which were about, and even in the washing hanging out to

dry. The only thing to do was to put everything away in closed sacks,

and all blankets well tucked up under the mosquito net, otherwise

everything was stuck together with masses of eggs. They even got into

the sleeping boxes of the ducklings and covered them with lumps of eggs,

some of which hatched out into maggots before morning, until I started

to tie mosquito netting over them every night. I found some of the

Ducks a piteous sight in the morning. It was almost impossible to clean

the eggs off without hurting the birds, and please don’t think it was

because the Ducks were dirty. They were kept scrupulously clean, both

themselves and their night quarters. I cannot attempt to convey to

anyone the work and anxiety the plagues of flies caused. They were less

troublesome as the weather got drier.


At one side of the camp stood a very tall dead tree, and like all

others there, bleached quite white. At first I thought it unsightly but

soon changed my opinion for it gave me endless interest during the whole

of my stay there. As it stood higher than most of the other trees around,

it was the resting place for most birds passing by, great and small. One

of the first evenings I was there a flock of quite thirty Black-headed

Ibises settled there, and it was with difficulty I kept one of the fellows

in the next camp from firing at them. I told him he could not eat such

birds, but he said he “ only wanted to see what they looked like ” I

think now he might have eaten them, for he had gone quite

native like so many men in the Northern Territory, and I found later

they eat snakes, rats, lizards, bats, the large grubs from rotten wood,

and even dingo. As the tree was on my camp I considered it my property

and my right to protect its visitors. After a rest the Ibises flew off,



