Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/76

 to another. A rather severe drought affected New South Wales and the southern parts of Queensland in the season of 1861-2—the very season that proved so moist further to the south and west, and that covered Victoria with universal verdure. Again, the three years' drought of 1837-39—of terrible memory in New South Wales—did not extend into Victoria. What is still more encouraging, this intolerable scourge, whose effect now upon the extended and multiplied interests of the colony would be tenfold more destructive than before, has not since re-appeared.

The most sterile portions of this precarious interior region are not those which are far removed from the settled country, although this has been the common notion. The country that originates the hot wind really extends much nearer to the settlements than the colonists had supposed; they have, in fact, already, by means of their squatting outposts, penetrated in some directions far into its depths, and they are occupying and making available to their purposes even the least favourable parts of its ill-reputed area. Such is the hot, dry, salt-bush country to the northward of Adelaide described by Waterhouse, who accompanied Stuart, and such is the kind of country McKinlay passed through, 400 miles north of the same capital, and already occupied by squatting stations. At Blanchewater, the