THE WILDERNESS BY AMY ELEANOR MACK (Mrs. LAUNCELOT HARRISON) AUTHOR OF “A BUSH CALENDAR,” “BUSHLAND STORIES,” “SCRIBBLING SUE,” ETC. _Illustrated by John D. Moore_ AUSTRALIA: ANGUS & ROBERTSON LTD. 89 CASTLEREAGH STREET, SYDNEY _“The Wilderness” first appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald_ Wholly set up and printed in Australia by W. C. Penfold & Co., Ltd., 88 Pitt Street, Sydney. Registered by the Postmaster-General for transmission through the post as a book. 1922 TO SUSIE WHO LOVES ALL LIVING THINGS [Illustration: “_A soft mauve mist_”--_White Cedar_] _THE WILDERNESS_ Once, long ago, part of it was garden, and the clearing between the redgums and ironbarks was planted with fruit trees and roses; but the gardener went the way of all flesh, and those who came after him did not have the same love for the garden. Now the bush has reclaimed its own, and roses and fruit trees are half hidden by the tangle of wild things which have gradually crept over them. Each spring the fruit blossoms still shine out on the unpruned trees--all the lovelier for their disorder--and mingle with the gold of the wattles; myriads of undisturbed bulbs--ixias, freesias and sparaxis--send up their blooms among the long swordgrass, outrivalling the blooms in my own well-worked garden beds. Lovely as the bush-girt garden must have been in its orderly days, it now holds joys undreamed of then. With the creeping return of the wattles and tecoma, the mistletoe and hardenbergia, have come back many of the shy living creatures which had been driven away by the gardening; and now that there is no more digging and planting to disturb them they live as happily as if they were a hundred miles away from men and houses, instead of in the midst of a popular suburb. Fortunately the wilderness is not a desirable building allotment. The little creek which bisects it makes the site too damp for a house, and so no ruthless builder casts a speculative eye upon it. But the creek is an attraction for numberless creatures--birds, butterflies, bandicoots, frogs, and myriads of those tiny living things which we carelessly group together as “wogs.”