Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/278

 and vicissitudes by which Australia is distinguished. The expedition waits for rain to enable it to cross the "Desert." We have already gathered some experience of what all the country hereabouts may be reduced to when for a long time deprived of rain. Now the party are to see what are the effects of the rain, when it does at length pour down, upon even the most sterile parts—the stony plains and sand hills.

Heavy rains fall, which appear to be general over a large area, especially northwards in the line of the expedition's subsequent march. In a fortnight the capacious creek-beds, previously quite dry, or interspersed with only a few water-holes, are the channels of great bodies of water, rising momentarily in their level to overflow upon the plains, while the plains themselves are in some parts already shallow lakes. The most of these creeks seemed to have been dry for some time before. "The running of the creek" is quite an event in many parts of colonized Australia, where the creek is, perhaps, for nearly all the year, or for several years together, merely a chain of ponds or natural cisterns. The creek may not "run" at any particular station, after even weeks of pouring rain, because all the waters are being meantime absorbed in filling up the successive natural cisterns of its upper course. But with a roar they come at last, sweeping all before them with the