Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/162

 are all in good health here at the depôt camp, Lake Buchanan, and we hope that our absent men are as well and hearty. They ought to be with us now with the extra rations. To-day we had nothing to do but the usual routine, seeing all the animals right and safe. The weather cool and fine, the thermometer only 84° in the shade.

25th. Fine cool breeze from south-south-east. All hands mending boots, clothes, etc. Some one or two went out with McKinlay after ducks, and shot a few—a great treat, as we had lived on mutton only so long. Anything for a change. After dinner we turned into washerwomen—a transformation none of us like.

26th. There is not much doing in a camp like this. Unless the niggers attack us, or some other game of the same harmless nature occurs, there is hardly anything to put down in a journal; in fact, in McKinlay' s there is nothing save the state of the weather and the range of the thermometer. The wind from south-east and beautifully cool, which, as you may imagine, dear reader, is a luxury in an Australian summer. Highest range of thermometer to-day, 120°.

27th. McKinlay gone out to-day to the eastward on horseback; passed a lake with not much water in it; passed a dry one, "Pal-coor-a-ganny," with very fine feed in it, consisting of clover and various grasses. There is a well here dug by the