A CAMP OUT IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA.

Otago Witness, Issue 2130, 20 December 1894, Page 27

A CAMP OUT IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA.

(Specially written for the Wit.iess Christmas

Number of 1894 )

By M&.TII ON S. W. WHITE, M.A.

When Miisio and I proposed to spend a three-days' holiday under canvas, we were met with serious warnings about snake* ; but m I had never aeen a snake— except in a battle— and ai M*ifcie had seen hundreds without being any the worse, we were both williDg to risk it. We cajoled the boys (Maisie's brothers), whom even the New Woman could not afford to annihilate with carse3 if she wanted her tent pitched, and they promised to get everything ready for us at a certain spot near Currency creek, some 60 miles south of Adelaide, on the understanding that we were to provide them with unlimited cake (seed and cream preferred) during our stay. Maisie is

A TYPICAL SOUTH AUSTRALIAN GIBL, light-footed, light-hearted, light-voiced. From May to November she is very pretty. Her face is oval, softly outlined, and pale, but flushing an exquisite rose-leaf pink, scarcely seen under the damper skies of Maoriland. She has blue eyes, made brilliant by the dark aetting of brows and lashos Her carriage speak* of flat country and abundant exercise, ani altogether she excuses the judgment that the most beautiful women in Australia are to be found in Adelaide But from November to May all the bloom is gone. The Boft curves of her cheek harden, lines of endurance, like the lines of old age, app«ar round her mouth, her paleness turns yellow, she withers in tbe heat like the grass of her native land. However, it is spring just now, the grass is green as emerald, Maisie is unquestionably pretty, and Hallucination is pawing and stamping and snuffing the breezy wind with impatience to be gone. " Hallucination" ia an erratic, half-broken young quadruped whom nobody could possibly rid* ezoe&fc a bnah maiden. Bat

Maieiie was rocked to sleep as a baby, I am certain, on the back of a buck-jumper, and Hallucination suits her perfectly. I cling to the bridle of a pensive, careworn bush somnambulist named Theory. " Theory " sounds like a Derby winner, but be can't really go "as fast as you could kick your hat." His only virtue is that he takes me with him, which a faster horse wouldn't. All South Australian horses are named after aristocrats of their race, without regard to fitness, jußt as American babies are called George Washington and English ones Victoria. THBOUGH THE SOUTH AUSTRALIAN SCRUB.

We leave the city at 5 o'clock in the morning, and canter away through the scrub. At le»st Theory oanters. Hallucination goes on his hind legs Uke a kangaroo, or sideways like a crab, except when he shies at an early mosquito, and unequivocally bolts. The acrub, disrespectfully so-called, is monotonous, silent, tired looking. The erergreen, or rather ever-brown, eucalyptus and wattle look as if they had never been young. The gaunt skeletons of long-dead trees ar« weary of standing unburied and unburned. But the grass under foot is soft and springy, and the wild flowers are wonderful. All manner of orchids, imitating (lies and spiders, moths and butterflies, flutter over the ground. Fluaheß of crimsoa he*th and glories of white or lilac constantly greet our holiday eyes. The magpies exchange remarks in their liquid contralto, and the jackasses laugh with a " dissonant harsn bray " of sarcasm at Theory and me. QiliMwlra tha bush is strangely solitary. No emu stalks over the orchids, nor does a kangaroo Imp ia our walks ami gambol in our eyes. These native burghers of the country have moved into reiiwd corners before the invasion of the white fallow. The too-familiar rabbit of my native land is on his way over from Victoria, but he ha« not yet arrived iv force, and his brother the hare is still a comparative sti auger. The South Australian farmer has bin equivalent for these pests in the drought aud th i spanow, bo 'that he is never absolutely bankrupt of grievances. We pats

BUSH TOWNSHIPS — the store and post office, the i all way station (always half a mile away), the blacksmith*, and the dozen cottages, with their vine at the door and the blue smoke curling up from tboir wood fires. Stone cotUges and wood fireß are the order in South Australia, which does not own a single coal mine. Natunprobably thought that coal would be a superfluous luxury in a laud where you can he*t your kettle by standing ir in the sun. tftone is the universal building nmtttddl, being abundant, cool, and not liible to he charred through when the summer thermometer takes 'one of its alpine climbs to 120 in the shade.

We dine at a friendly farm, where a darkskinned, lightly-built young colonial shows us a road which he says will "tjkeuaa short wye " to

OUU CAM P.

It may ba a short wy»s tv> M-ii>>ie and Hallucination, but to me and my low-'.piriied steed it si-erai uncommonly lorg Theory goos to sleep and bumps his head ugainst trees and stumbles over logs and moves a-; if his legti were getting pemfiari. We In It for vn> twlf«, last, wiih the la-tt glimmer i>f -.wil ght, somethirg while a;>pe irs iv thw distanc. A dog barks, Hallucination shier, The ry pricks up his eara, and the boys gr»t" us vtfiiN cheerful yolla. They have coffee ready in no tira°, and after the horses have been a'tnnde 1 to witn jealous devolion, we sit round the door of our tent aud watch the ttars coming our, above the trees. Then the boys depart for r.heir camp in a neighbouring gully, leaving Don, the dog, to guard our slumbers. Don is three parts a dingo, but he always pratendß to be a Scotch collie. He watches the boy*' departure with his canning dingo eye, thinking of 'possums, but he daren't for his r^puUtion refuse to stay with us, bo he veil* hi* feelings in an affectation of faith-fnlnes-s unto death, arid pretends that he is musing on oit c?ikoß aid haggis. After cofr\e, Maialepropoaealightinga fine old skeleton gum tree, and celebratiug our safe arrival with a war dance. A 60-mile ride " ain't a circumstance " to this daughter of the long-diatance continent, and for the honour of New Zealand I drag myself down to the skeleton standing in a clear grassy space in front of our camp. It is not th*> reason of Lu«h fire»s *nd the burning of these cumberers of the ground is always counted unto the burnor for righteousness, if it can be done safely. Our tree is hollow as a chimney and dry as a bone. Up comes the £Ume> through the top, and up fly the sparks, blotting out the utars and turoing the apace* of the bush left and Tight to inky blackness. But bßforn it ife half burnt out, we are wrapped in mosquito nets and rugs and Bleeping profoundly Hallucination and Theory have the illumina'ion all to themselves, unless indeed it, matter of speculation to the frogs, for ever playing on the bones down at the Bwaoipy creek. Australian frogs do not croak— at least they do not utter a melancholy sound, foreboding ruin and disaster. They talk iucessantly, but, so far as I can juHge, always in a hopeful strain. They certainly do " need oiling," but if they were once oiled they would discourse music The crickets, who seem to be frogs with wing-*, anower them from the bashes, in sprightly, earnest, well-meaning converse.and the effect has a fasomation of its own which the nightingale might envy. Not that I lay awake listening to the frogs, or even to those other active children of darknoßs, the •• skeeters," whom Don's pretended vigilance could not keep out. Our moßqulto netting, however, was invulnerable, and though the bloodsuckers sang to us aH night we slept and defied them. We discovered a means of vengeance during the week, in the shape of < A JPLESH HATING PLANT— a drosera, apparently— which grew abundantly in the bush. Every leaf of this valuable vegetable was a separate moßquito trap, armed with a ring of wiry hairs, each ending in a drop of glue. If once an insect placed a careless leg or wing in that drop he was lost. The droaera sucked him into its embrace like an octopus, cu-led round him on every side, dissolved him, ate him up, and got ready for more. The temptation to " catch things " vkh A drosera is almost irresistible so we

compounded with our oonsoiencea not to eat this vegetable anarchist on anything except mopquitog, which are tbe enemies of tho human race. Many an exnltant insect hays we caught in the midst of his crime by merely touching him with ourdrosera, and we watched him wriggle without a pang. We weilt

'PUSSUMINU

our second evening with Don and the boys. Don found the 'possums, chased them into a tree if they were not there already, and stood barking at the foot until the boys arrived. If the 'possum has a hole to hide in he is safe ; but if not, the moonlight betrays him, there is a crack, and he tumbles to the ground— a mere twopence worth of fur. Tbe moon was too young to show us many victims, and we were glad, for 'possums are not like mosquitos, and they carry their little ones about on their backs in a lovable way. It was

WATTLE- BARKING SEASON

in the south, and on our second day Theory gloomily conveyed me in the real of the ever-prancing and erratic Hallucination to a bu9h farm to see the operation. The bark of the black wattle -the "sheoak " of Australian novels — is the most valuable, and consequently not the most abundant ; for wattle trees once barked never recover, but die on the spot. All the trees that we saw barked were quite young, and the only tool ÜBed was a tomahawk. The bark was cut round with two or three strokes half way up the trunk, t-'ißo stripped off up and down, aud left lyii.g on the ground to dry. In better days it was jw.^r'b £9 or £10 per ton, but £4 or £5 is all It now brings.

On this day we aho beheld a model of industry and thrift such as Wordsworth would have loved to chruniole. This was a tiny bash farm owned and managed by two women, who kept it a» a home for their old father. They rented a few acres of bash land, enough to keep a horae and two cowe. They kept (owls and a pig, and stripped the bnvk witUin theit domain. But their chief source of ii come wa» the garden, in which weie vegetable*, fruit, and flowers in great abuudance. There were some 50 beehivesold boxes placed flat on the ground and covered with a turf — and behind each hive a grape vine, just beginning to dress its twisted black trunk in tender green. The two women, by constant woik, made everything flourish — bees, vines, roses, cows, tmd straw bomea, and derived from each source % little rivulst of income which kept thsJr Mrnall household in great content and cheer tulue«. I wished to discover that theae bra. ye spirits were children of the Bouthern Oros; bat they proved to be Highland women long ao.ciimatisHd. We miijiit hayi j had A THUILLING ADVKNTUBB WITU A tiNAfcj-, but for my thoi'g .tlessness. I was lying in the tent massacring raosquitos with my dronera, when a large black snake glided in at the door (everyone knows that h tent ba«,n'' got a door, but the word here aignifi>M the pUce wh-ire a door should oe), and looked at me critically If I had had the «ense to wj«it uuvil it fascinated me or until Maisie came in and startled it into ang«r, theru might have been eomething to tell ; but I addressed to it the simple and classical observation : " Get out of this 1 "

And it wonr, away like a lam"). Oar luck wi'h tarantulas and centepfcdts was nearly as commonplace. Instead of being besieged by them, we had to go and Icok for them when we wantffl excitement. M^i&ie ts fond of P'>kui!i tarantulas with sticks to ranßn tbeaa show fight, but I prefer to leuve them in peace. Inside of their bloated bodies they keep a spring like a Waterbury watch, and it is a very uopleasant sensation suddenly to aeo empty »p»cij where a tarantula was, and a tarantula where empty space wa«— on your sleeve or skirt. Oacts Maisie spent 20 minutes iv tickling and poking a vfllatnousIrtoking fellow, as large aa a mouße, and the guardian doity of tarantulas observed it. That evening wa were washing up our tea things by the half light, and Maisie, seeing what she took to he a dead leaf in the water, c>irfilesf»ly picked it out with her fingers. But uhe ihrew it away a good deal more suddenly thau «ho bad taken it up, for it was a tarantula, and it had bitten her haod, which bled as if i' had been cut with a knife. We sucked the wound and bathed it carefully, but for 24 hour" '.he pain and swelling kept us thoughtful Then it got b to tt? r, and Maiaie teased the next " trant " we found as much as ev«r. Sucn is haman nature 1

Centipedes are nearly as ugly as tarantulas, but they have the grace to be ashamed of it, and to stay mostly curled up stmUl in decaying wood, or behind half-p-,eied b*rk. The feature of a centipede is his legt», which are his glory. You may cut him up small, but bo long as each piece has a few leg* to si and upon, he will never say die. "We found a scorpion in our bre*d 'in once, and got him out on the end of a stick, all glowing from his rosy sleep, and ready to bite like a serpent and sting like an adder. These incidents and observations, though trivial, were

THE LANDMARKS OF OUR HOLIDAY. For Ihe reßi, we did nothing with blisefnl irresponsibility. We did not even studj Nature in her sequestered haunts, but ate, drank, scoured the bush on our respecive nags, made torches of convenient dry trees, and, for variety, took a surf bathe off tbe shore at Middleton, or gave the moreporka a free (and painful) concert with the aid of the boya. On our last evening we took farewell of the gossiping frogs and the frinky 'possums. The bush lay all round us in th© mooulight, dark and still, for the few night sounds we heard are not its sptech, but lonely breaches in its silence; a curlew uttered its significant, melancholy call; a morepork gave fcr hits two human byllables. To-morrow to our old tafck again, far from the greenwood tree.

— Spontaneous cotnbusti' n is resporss b!e for far more fires than is gonerally suspected. Woollen cloths packed in bundles, givasy th^b, shavings, new cloth— if not lh'>tough!y dried and cleansed -wet hay, oat t-lmw or w> cat s raw, an-! miny otht r suKshai.coH, In v<- b-> n k-own to t«ke fire of them eHei. lucre is al'-ajs danger in a pit- of lot'mi -»atf_oß greasy paper, and aisci.nmlhtions ul this kin* should never be Denuitted about a hovm*