Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/192

 Yarra meandered like a yellow ribbon threaded through the green, for its course was outlined by flowering wattle. Beyond, the gloomy and forbidding wall of the Great Divide went up to meet the low-hanging clouds.

At the foot of the Black Spur there is a sort of pleasure place, with villas, hotels, and a golf course. Immediately afterwards we began to ascend a very steep gradient. Here the Government have taken over a reserve large enough to provide a sufficient water supply for Melbourne. From time to time we had seen the aqueducts on our way. In the early part of the year there had been a great bush fire; it had raged for three weeks, and the smoke had hung about distant Melbourne like a fog. The after effects of the fire were curious and very interesting. In some places a whole gully had been burnt out, leaving only the immense white poles of the gums upstanding like the masts of ships. So wonderful is their vitality that in many cases the gum trees had begun to reclothe themselves with young green shoots as if with ivy. Great tree-ferns shot up too in the cleared spaces, repairing the havoc that the fire had wrought; bracken covered the ground, and some kind of pink heath was coming into flower. The fire had been curiously partial, sometimes leaping the road, sometimes