Volume 1

Three expeditions into the interior of Eastern Australia, with descriptions of the recently explored region of Australia Felix, and of the present colony of New South Wales / By Major T. L. Mitchell.

  • Mitchell, T. L. (Thomas Livingstone), 1792-1855.
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Three expeditions into the interior of Eastern Australia, with descriptions of the recently explored region of Australia Felix, and of the present colony of New South Wales / By Major T. L. Mitchell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    45/428 (page 11)
    Stringy bark which served for torches, and setting fire to the grass trees {xantJioi'hcBa) to light my way. This can scarcely be considered a digression from my narrative of this day’s jonrney, for Warrawolong was the only object visible, beyond the woody horizon. We had passed No-Grass Valley, the Devil’s Backbone, and were a})proaching Hungry Flat, when Mr. Simpson produced a grilled fowl, and a feed for our horses—and we alighted most willingly for half an hour, to partake of this timely refreshment, near a spring. On re-mounting, I bade Mr. Simpson farewell, after ex- jn’essing my satisfaction with his clever arrangements for opening this mountain road, a work which he had accom¬ plished with small means, in nine months. It was cpiite dark on the evening of the 26th before I reached the inn near the head of the little valley of the Wollombi, a tributary stream to the river Hunter. Here at length we again find some soil fit for cultivation, and the whole of it taken up in farms. But the pasturage afforded by the numerous vallies on this side of the mountains, here called “cattle runs,” are more profitable to the owners of the farms, than the farms they actually possess, of which the ])roduce by cultivation is only available to them at present, as the means of supporting grazing establishments. 1 should here observe that in a climate so dry as that of Australia, the selection of farm land depends solely on the direction of streams, for it is only in the beds of water-courses that any ponds can be found during dry seasons. The for¬ mation of reservoirs has not yet been resorted to, although the accidental largeness of ponds left in such channels has frequently determined settlers in their choice of a home¬ stead, when by a little labour, a pond equally good might have been made in other parts, which few would select from the want of water. In the rocky gullies that I had passed in tlies(‘, mountains, there was, probal)ly, no want of water, but then there was no land fit for tlie purposes of fai’ining. In