Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/69

Rh jarrah, the still harder kind of eucalyptus that we had only seen in the form of piles; the trunks were reddish instead of white like the karri.

We saw also for the first time a common feature of the Western Australian bush, the curious "Black Boys," called in Queensland "grass trees." They look like a knotted dead trunk with bulrushes growing on the top in thick bunches. Sometimes the trunk is forked, and there are a pair of odd bushy heads on one black misshapen trunk.

The bush in this part of Australia has little diversity. The keen air of the early morning had made us very hungry, in spite of so substantial a breakfast, and we were not sorry to reach Jarraduck, the settlement in the forest where lunch was waiting in another large wooden hall. The long tables were decorated with masses of golden wattle and purple kennedya. Lunches of this kind, and we sampled very many, are always just alike, varying only with the resources of the neighbourhoods,—lots of flowers and a warm welcome, plates of assorted cold meats, of which turkey is an almost inevitable ingredient; elaborate sweets, of which one is always an excellent trifle, and fruit of the district, in this case the small, sweet, thick-skinned local orange.