Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/295

 bull frog that clucks like a hen. Here and there was a clearing with a homestead with high verandahs. They made one long to spend a month in that lovely place, and feel day by day the great peace of the forest, with only the frogs and the trickle of a stream over its smooth, brown rocks to break the stillness.

We passed occasionally a little camp with a rough cooking place, but there was never anyone in them. As we emerged from that charmed country into the more prosaic, cultivated land, where pineapples were growing, and bananas with their great purple bells, we saw a beautiful brown bird with a long tail, silent and stately as the bush itself. It looked down on us from the high fork of a gum tree, but did not condescend to fly away. Hospitable Nambour had prepared tea for us on our return; not what we mean by tea at home, but the Australian tea, a meal calculated to stand a traveller in good stead till breakfast next morning. Of all our sunny Australian days that walk in the bush was one of the most charming episodes.