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Sydney Porter—Notes from Australia



rested and which turned to pink in the setting sun—where all was peace

and quietness and where one could forget the sordid life of the cities.

How seldom those dreams come true. Mine did. It was only a fleeting

vision, a few short weeks of peace and quietness, of vast deep green

forests with trees so huge that they seemed to pierce the very clouds

themselves, of the songs of many birds and the soothing sound of the

sighing wind in the tree-tops, and the house that was part of the forest

itself. The recollection of those Elysian realms will always be fresh in

the storehouse of memory and I shall live for the days when I can

return. It was in the home of the Lyrebirds in the great green forests

on the mountains of the Great Divide in the heart of Victoria that

I found the land of my heart’s desire. This spectacular and unique

bird is restricted to the dense mountain forests which cover the ranges

of mountains in the south-east of Australia, and it was for the purpose

of seeing this bird that I made my home for a short time at the remote

house set amid the virgin forests on the mountains of the Great Divide.

At first I explored the lower gullies where dense masses of tree-ferns

canopied the trickling mountain streams, but although I saw the

semblance of one bird, they were not to be found in these districts.

I made my way to the top of the ranges and there, in a setting of such

awe-inspiring grandeur as almost held one breathless, I found my

quarry. I had never liked the inevitable “ blue gums ” which one sees

in almost every tropical and sub-tropical country—poor ragged things

with scaling bark, lining dusty roads in some squalid African town . . .

planted as wind brakes on the veldt... on the pampas in South America

. . . along dusty roads in Algeria or around any ramshackle corrugated-

iron hut where no other trees would grow—but in their proper setting

they assumed a majesty unknown outside their native land. Here

these giant trees towered up to between two and three hundred feet

high with their tops literally in the clouds. Beneath these forest giants,

living in the dense and often impenetrable undergrowth, I found the

Lyrebird. He is as elusive as a phantom. One finds his scratchings

everywhere, for the Lyrebird gets his living by scratching in the forest

debris with his strong feet and thus procuring an abundance of small

Crustacea and grubs. Everywhere in the area where the birds five one

sees evidence of their work, but oh ! how seldom does one ever get but



