Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Volume 1: With Descriptions of the Recently Explored Region of Australia Felix, and of the Present Colony of New South WalesMitchell, T. L. (Thomas Livingstone)
History
Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Volume 1: With Descriptions of the Recently Explored Region of Australia Felix, and of the Present Colony of New South Wales
Mitchell, T. L. (Thomas Livingstone)
Australia -- Discovery and exploration; Mitchell, T. L. (Thomas Livingstone), 1792-1855
This morning Fahrenheit's thermometer stood at 23 degrees, and the pond
was frozen three-quarters of an inch thick. There was however so little
water left that only three of the bullocks could be supplied before
starting. The natives who had promised to go on with us nevertheless
remained behind; but we proceeded by our old route to Goobang creek, and
encamped on its left bank nearly a mile above where we had crossed it
formerly. Here the grass was superior to any we had seen lower down;
numerous fresh tracks of cattle were visible on the ground, and the water
lay deep and clear in ponds, surrounded by reeds. There were no reeds
about the waterholes of the Bogan; and we had in fact this day left that
river, and reached the sources of the Lachlan, to which stream the
Goobang must sometimes be an important tributary. The ground separating
these waters, which must travel towards the distant channels of such
spacious basins as those of the Lachlan and Darling, consists here only
of some low hills of trap-rock, connected with gently sloping ridges of
mica schist. The country on the Goobang or Lachlan side appears to be the
best; for the grass grows there much more abundantly, and the beds of the
streams appear to be much more retentive.
CHARACTER OF THE RIVER BOGAN.
All the water which we had used during five months belonged to the basin
of the Darling, but today we again tasted of that from channels which led
towards the Lachlan. The chief sources of the Bogan arise in Hervey's
range, and also in that much less elevated country situated between the
Lachlan and the Macquarie. The uniformity of the little river Bogan from
its spring to its junction with the Darling is very remarkable. In a
course of 250 miles no change is observable in the character of its
banks, or the breadth of its bed, neither are the ponds near its source
less numerous or of less magnitude than those near its junction with the
principal stream. Mr. Dixon estimated the velocity of the current at four
miles per hour where its course is most westerly. There are few or no
pebbles in its bed, and no reeds grow upon the banks, which are generally
sloping and of naked earth but marked with lines of flood similar to
those of the Darling. It has often second banks and, as near that river,
a belt of dwarf eucalypti, box, or rough gum encloses the more stately
flooded-gumtrees with the shining white bark which grow on the immediate
borders of the river. It has also its plains along the banks, some of
them being very extensive; but the soil of these is not only much firmer,
but is also clothed with grass and fringed with a finer variety of trees
and bushes than those of the Darling. Yet in the grasses there is not
such wonderful variety as I found in those on the banks of that river. Of
twenty-six different kinds gathered by me there I found only four on the
Bogan, and not more than four other varieties throughout the whole
course.
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