Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/90

62 miles off, a settlement of some antiquity compared to Perth. The way out into the country was crowded with innumerable buggies taking whole families for an airing, and a haze of red dust hung over the road.

We passed the race-course, as indispensable to an Australian town as the post office, and the football ground, where we paused for a moment to look on at a vigorous match between "the jockeys" and the "bread-carriers." Farther on people were playing on a newly laid-out golf-course, driving off from tees on which the unfailing kerosene tin did duty for sand-boxes, though one would hardly have thought it necessary to collect sand in boxes in Western Australia. Turning up a narrow, muddy road, we passed a lot of small nursery gardens, "Chinamen's gardens," with the Chinamen busy in them, but the activity of the Chinaman in Australia is hardly more popular than that of the white ant. We ploughed and splashed our ways along this side track, for the road was not made, till it ended abruptly in a gate. Now inured to the methods of the Australian motorist, we almost expected the car to take the gate in its stride, but having opened it, we ran up the side of a grassy bank on to a sort of plateau, girdled by the bush, with what looked like a very low-class