The train halted for the night at Toowoomba, in the heart of a wonderful agricultural region, which was found smiling under splendid crops. Here the countryside had long been preparing for the Prince's coming, and the celebrations were of the liveliest, everything, including decorations, gathering of returned men, civic banquet, and ball, being planned to create a record. The following morning the Prince recrossed the border, over a carpet woven of yellow wattle flowers. It was a pretty thought and offered him much. XXI THE JACKAROO AND OTHERS When the Prince left Queensland he had practically completed his official tour of the Australian States. There remained for him the improvised series of visits to the back-blocks of New South Wales, which took the place of the abandoned journey to New Guinea. Here he stayed in the houses of squatters, some of them controlling sheep-runs hundreds of thousands of acres in extent, and mingled in the most informal manner in country life and country pastimes. In the wonderful air of this region he regained much of the spring and energy he had lost in the preceding months of strenuous official touring. The Government officers on the Royal train meanwhile returned to Sydney. The route taken by the Prince after leaving Wallangarra for the interior lay through beautiful scenery across the famous Blue Mountains. One looked out, as the train climbed upwards, across vast stretches of green-forested gorges and grey crags of fluted limestone, with purple and aquamarine ridges on the far horizon--a land filled only with the colour and the form of wild nature. The Prince started on the foot-plate of the engine, which he drove himself up a one-in-thirty-three grade slope. Although his journey was now entirely unofficial, numbers of people assembled and cheered him at the principal stations. At Lawson he alighted and shook hands with returned men, including Private Duncan Allan, the oldest soldier in the Australian forces. Later on, crossing the open Bathurst sheep-downs, a halt was made at the wayside station of Kelso, where horses were in waiting and he took, in the rain, a brisk ride across country, rejoining the train that evening at Bathurst. [Illustration: THE BACKBLOCKS: AN UNOFFICIAL FIXTURE] [Illustration: HIS FAVOURITE MOUNT]