A Westralian Wilderness.

Evening Post, Volume LIX, Issue 11, 13 January 1900, Page 1 (Supplement)

A Westralian Wilderness.

(By Cameo.) In few parts of the world does there exist an inland solitude so profound and dismal as in tho far interior of Western Australia. The vast wilderness covers many degrees of latitude and longitude, and its only human inhabitants are f nomadic tribes of aborginals of the most barbarous type — fit denizens of a territory so parchctl and utterly wretched that animal life is almost entirely restricted to the most primitive forms, the individuals of which aro numerically so few that hundreds of miles might be traversed without sign of aught living save an occasional iguana or snake, a scanty flock of emus or a few parrots. Flies and white ants, are the chief features of the insect world. No feathered songster carols o'er the plain, for the country offers but small attraction to the winged tribes, and the strident screeching of the parrot kind which at rare intervals breaks the solemn silence serves but to intensify the dismalnesS of the surroundings. Vegetation, long struggling for mastery over hostile conditions of climate and soil, has become distorted and hideous in tho contest, and as though tired of the unequal strife, has assumed v fixed aspect of gruesome and forbidding sullenness. The treeless tracts, which become more frequent and extensive as tho coast lino recedes and tho rainfall diminishes, aro chiefly clothed with spiuifex, salt bush, mulga, and prickly scrubs. There is withal one season during which this otherwise arid waste possesses a loveliness unsurpassable — when the approach of springtime - metamorphoses the scraggy heaths antl scrubby horrors into a dazzling scene of beauty — evanescent, it is true, but all the more entrancing because of its very brevity. Every shrub is then transformed with a wealth of blossoms of multiform shapes and sweetest perfume, whilst flowers of exquisite mould and richest colouring arise iii myriads out of the unsightly sandy and rocky stretches, and hide for a space the unhandsome features of Mother Earth. 'Marvellous that such sweet forims should bo tho product of such dour parents ! Alas ! they die almost in, their infancy; how could they long .survive tho conditions of their birth ! By fairy hands their knell is rung, By fonm unseen their dirge is sung. And then once more Jbhe scorching rays of the torrid sun beats down for many successive months on. this shadowless land, wither ing into oha.ff all foliage except that of the pachydermatous eucalypt, whose glossy and pendant leaves crowning stunted and twisted trunks arc well night imperishable. Nature must have been in a perverse mood when she built up this sun-stricken plain of sand and rock. Here is a vast territory where rivers and creeks aro unknown ; a country of almost perpetual drought, where such mostuce as descends from tho Infrequent clouds speedily loses itself in the porous soil to reappear in shallow lakes salt and dense as tho Dead Sea ; where agriculture is an impossibility, and where Nature wears a soured aspect in nearly all her fealurss. True, she smiles here and there now and then, but it is as the smile of a deceitful jade that lures but to betray. Her floral carpeting is removed ere it is fairly spread ; sho visions oub mnjer;tic sheets of refreshing waters studded with island jems, cupea and sliimmering beeches. But it is all a chimera, delightful to the eye, but productive upon closer view of the bitterest disappointment. The mirage vanishes with contiguity, cud the wandering wayfarer, who has rejo'ceil at the prospect of quenching his thirst hi the qwrkUng liquid, finds but a driod-up crust ol earth, fro.sled Mith sill-jute and saline deposits; wlrlst the erstwhile verdant islands and cliff-, composed of tumbled and shattered, ironstone rocks (bearing upon their surfaca a/sombre ?ciub, stand, out in hideous contrast with their former fair seeming.