Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/95

Rh even lost the art of making fire with the hard fruit of the banksia, "mungite" is the native name for it. "Never go before a black," they say in Western Australia; they can't be trusted, apparently, not so much from their malevolence as a sort of light-hearted instinct of destruction. For instance, seeing a man standing by the wall of a small shed at a little distance from the camp, one of the blacks playfully let fly at him with a boomerang. He fortunately missed the man's leg, but made a hole in the building.

We left the camp, for there appeared a pretty little English girl, who, having heard that there were visitors to the compound, had been sent by her mother to ask them to tea in the hospitable Australian fashion; so following a grassy track, we came to our great surprise upon a dignified old country house on a wooded promontory overlooking a higher reach of the Swan River. The owners of this beautiful estate belonged to one of the "Seven Families" of Western Australia; that is, they were descended from Australian grandparents on both sides. In Australia one says, "My grandmother came over in 1830," as we should say in England, we came over with the Conqueror; for 1830 is in the West, at all events, the beginning of Australian civilised history, and those early