Beadle, Forty years ago 
3 
mitchellii). Shortly before we reached Cobar we saw our first Mulga ( Acacia aneura ) 
and we saw, as well, around the town of Cobar, the devastation of the Mulga country 
through the activities of mining companies. Fortunately, these devastated stretches 
of red-brown soil (some of it shiny and impervious to water as a result of the removal 
by erosion of the A horizon) have been revegetated over the years, partly through 
better mine-management and partly by the exclusion or control of stock from the 
degenerate scrubs which formerly covered the town common. 
We left Cobar on a dirt highway (Figure 2), aiming to reach Wilcannia by 
nightfall. The distance to be travelled was 178 miles [285 km] and the road was 
uniformly bad all the way, rough and dusty, but now replaced by a magnificent 
2-4-lane speedway. We travelled through scrubs of Mulga and Belah with occasional 
patches of Leopard Tree ( Flindersia maculosa), except for the treeless expanses 
towards the west where the countryside was carpeted by everlasting daisies ( Helipterum 
polygalifolium and H. floribundum). 
We crossed the Darling at dusk (Figure 3) and spent an uncomfortable night at 
the hotel in Wilcannia. 
The road to Broken Hill was gravel and very dusty, carrying more traffic than 
the highway between Cobar and Wilcannia. We passed through many miles of 
Mulga scrub on gently undulating sandy country. The Dolo Hills (Figure 4) broke 
the monotony of the almost level terrain, but we soon plunged back into the Mulga 
where emus and kangaroos provided welcome diversions. A treeless tract of 
Perennial Saltbush (A triplex vesicaria) on flat clayey country presented another 
change in scenery and flora, as did also the woodland of River Red Gum ( Eucalyptus 
camaldulensis) edging Yancowinna Creek. 
We viewed more hills as we approached Broken Hill, located on the Barrier 
Range which was once “covered with dense low woodlands of Mulga” (so we were 
told by an old lady who had lived in the area since the ore was discovered last 
century). The range is a refuge for many rare plant species, as are most ranges of 
the inland. It was difficult to understand how such bareness could be caused by 
the continual removal of trees by the axe, the timber being in demand for the lead-zinc 
ore mines and as fuel for the inhabitants of the Silver City, with a population of 
c. 30,000 in 1939. 
This devastation of trees led to an erosion problem. The unstable red-brown 
sandy soil, being unprotected, was blown into the city to the irritation of the in¬ 
habitants. However, at the instigation of a professional metallurgist, the late 
Albert Morris, who was also an amateur botanist, fences were erected in 1937 on 
the western side of the city to exclude stock and to promote regeneration (see Morris, 
1939). Another illustrious name associated with the Mulga is that of Miss Marjorie 
Collins (later Mrs Shiels) who ventured to the far west in the early twenties and, with 
headquarters at Corona Station, which lies northwest of Broken Hill, surveyed 
botanically part of the Barrier Range (Collins, 1923). Later she did a similar survey 
of the Grey Range (Collins, 1924) which lies further north and which we were to 
visit during the following week. 
We left Broken Hill at noon for our adventure north. The bare hills of the 
Barrier Range lay to the west and the few Mulga trees on the ridges were the last 
remnants of the scrub. A camel team which had dragged a load of firewood some 
50 miles into the city provided evidence of the fuel shortage. We had planned to 
reach the Fowlers Gap hotel that night, a journey of about 70 miles [112 km] north 
of Broken Hill. The range with its scattered Mulga lay to our left, the gibber plains 
with saltbush to the east (Figure 5) and we collected plants copiously from the two 
communities. Drying the specimens became a major problem. All the plants 
were literally full of water and many had succulent leaves. We had not counted on 
this and had not taken enough drying paper with us. Being the junior botanist, it 
fell to my lot to dry the specimens and most of my time of an evening was spent 
desiccating newspaper in front of the fire in the hotels. 
