MISNAMED DESERTS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19250, 14 August 1924, Page 8

MISNAMED DESERTS.

MAP-MAKERS’ LIBELS. LOVELY MALLEE BUSH. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, August Y. The early map-makers of Australia when at a loss for detail, appear to , havo J' h held for ready expedient the repeal word “desert,” and once duly printed, peppered over the continent it has remained there. People hesitate to visit what the geographer in all seriousness informs them is desert land, thus country, like a dog, once given a bad name, seldom sheds it. Such approbnous reputation has long been borne by a stretch of country between Melbourne and Adelaide, and skirted by the railway, known as “the Ninety Milo Desert. Happily years ago the desert in question proved sufficiently alluring to an artisticallyminded child to implant in him a desire to tramp through it and explore its mysteries. Years have elapsed before that desire could be gratified, and in the meantime Mr Percy Grainger, musician and composer, has lived and won reputation in three continents. A mouth ago, however, the opportunity long awaited came. Mr Grainger took up . a swag and meandered by day and slept by night in the Ninety. Mile desert, which, if we are to believe his glowing description, is in truth no desert at all and, many another Australian “desert,” should in all justice have the libel ©razed from the map. “In my early childhood, my dear mother and I often crossed this desert country in the train while travelling to Adelaide from Melbourne, and vice verse,” said Mr Grainger. “I remember our waking early in the bright summer mornings and seeing the gently undulating sandy plains, clad with low bushy scrub, roll past our window, and my thinking it the most entrancing scenery l had seen Even at that early age I longed to walk through the ‘sandy desert’ and that yearning has never loft me, nor has the vividness of that impression of my Australian childhood ever been quite equalled by anything I have since seen in several continents. Indeed, I can recall nothing of equal loveliness or poetic charm elsewhere, unless it be the exquisitely coloured deserts of southern California, and the romantic heatherlands of Jutland, iu Denmark. It is really a misnomer lo call the country between Cooke’s Plains and Bordertown a ‘desert,’ since it abounds with a very great variety of shrubs, grasses and creepers. You see, the outstanding quality of this country is the variety of shapes, contours, and colours—they should appeal to the eye of a painter. This so-called ‘desert’ can really boost of a far wider range of contrasts than more heavily timbered country.” Mr Grainger preceded to describe colour effects—“ The prevailing growth is, of course, the malice,” he said. “It’s fresh green leaves grow on darkly scarlet stems, which become a brilliant wine-red towards the tips. Thus, the commonest bush of malice is in itself a thing of exquisite colouration and vivid contrasts. Quite otherwise in line and tint are the stunted shrubs of she-oak, that spring from the earth much as a narrow sheet of flame rises from a fire, narrow at first and flaring unevenly towards the middle and top; these are of a sage-green or sageyellow tone when alive, and bluey grey when dry or dead. Another brilliant colour contrast is afforded by ruddy creepers that trail with long arabezqued fingers along the whitish grey sand. Some sections abound in ‘honeysuckle trees, ample bushes upon which the numberless flowers and seeds show like yellow bottle brushes amid the light green foliage. Interspersed among all these other growths are plenty of yuccas, like all bulrushes throwing their black spears up above a man’s height. Among the smaller bushes are some rust red or russet brown, and there are many kinds of heath'. The impression of variety in this kind of landscape lies largely in the fact that the stunted growth of the bushes makes it possible for the wayfarer to see large areas in which shrub against shrub make delightful patterns, the fan-like outlines of grasses and rushes, and the flaring formation of she-oaks being silhouetted against the larger bushes in a kaleidoscopic mingling of colours. These desert scenes should have a special message for a painter of decorative tendencies. So, when one feasts ones eyes on the scroll work of this South Australian ‘desert,’ onv can hsrdly imagine the delicate and subtle school of Australian decorative art to which these native influences will give rise in due course. And the plant life is not one whit more lovely than the flowing lines of the earth itself, which rise and fall gently mile after mile with a soothing, billowy rhythm, never hilly enough to cut off vistas of wide expanses. Hcie you have the charm that desert and prairie lands, above all others, hold for dreamy and artistic natures.’’