Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/108

 scenery was surpassingly beautiful as the shades of evening crept over the landscape. The alluvial plains in the narrow valley were of a rich golden hue from the ripe maize, which formed a strong contrast to the dark green foliage of the lofty brush, and the glistening white trunks of the gigantic Flooded gum trees. Immediately beyond the brush, lightly wooded forest hills, verdant and grassy, rose in graceful waving contour; whilst looking up the valley, lofty mountains, covered with brush, and tinted with deep purple, from the reflected light of the glowing evening sky, closed the scene to the north-west. Having rode past some neat wooden cottages erected on the farms, along a good dray track, and having crossed to the right bank of the river, I passed the fine water-mills belonging to Messrs. Freeman and Gorum, and arrived just After dusk at Dr. Stacey's, where I stopped for the night.

As the alluvial plains of the Wilson are subject to occasional floods. Dr. Stacey has built his house in a very judicious manner, on strong wooden pillars, sufficiently high to be far beyond the reach of the highest floods. These pillars, being connected by weather boards, form underneath the house a sort of outhouse or store-room, which can be easily thrown open on the approach of floods, so as to offer no impediment to the water, whilst a covered wooden gallery, in the Swiss style, surrounds the upper portion of the building in which the family resides.