The morning after our arrival at Wulongong, and our first acquaintance with the natives, we made an excursion, under the tutelage of Mr. White, to Balgonie Farm, to hunt kangaroo in the forests of the neighbourhood. It was not, however, the large species (_Macropus Major_) we were to hunt, which sometimes attains a height of six feet, or even more, but a smaller kind known as the Wallaby (_Halmaturus ualabatus_). The kangaroo proper have long since retreated before civilization, and are now only found in the recesses of the forest, hundreds of miles inland. The various participators in the hunt were posted at certain distances in one of the splendid forests, stretching between the Bellambi-Keira and Kemla ranges of hills, while the blacks who accompanied us set forth to drive the game towards us, assisted by their Dingoes, a kind of dog usually supposed to be originally of European race. The blacks use the term "Dingo" promiscuously for every description of dog, whereas the regular wild dog, or rather the dog that runs wild in Australia, is called in the native tongue "Warrigul," and is of no particular breed, but seems rather a mongrel descendant of the sheep dog. The hunt was not very successful, and of some ten or twelve started by the "beaters," only two were killed. Although one can discern the Wallaby at some distance by its plashing tramp, so that it seems but to need a glance of the eye to bring it down as it flies past on its hind legs, followed close by the dogs, it yet needs great activity and precision of aim to hit the nimble animal as it hops swiftly past. Yet though we were rewarded with such poor sport, our stay among the splendid woods of the Keira range sufficiently repaid us. The most varied and luxuriant forms of vegetation, changing at every step, almost transcend the wanderer's power of description by their marvellous and enrapturing beauty. Some portions of the forest landscape, where splendid tree-ferns and gigantic gum trees, enveloped in the folds of the Liana, from which in its turn depended exquisite parasitic plants, reminded us of the brilliant profusion of the tropics. Not less peculiar and uncommon than the vegetation were the sounds that struck our ear from amid the semi-obscure green covert, without our eyes being able to distinguish the singers. And so deceptive are some of these, that one almost involuntarily starts as the loud crack resounds close to his ear of the _Phsophodes crepitans_, known to colonists as the "Coachman's whip," or the _Myzantha Garrula_, or bell-bird, sounds its bell-like note.