Australian Town and Country Journal at KellyGang 12/3/1870 (3)
The climate gets drier and drier, and the feed more brown and thin as you descend the river, until you can scarcely credit your eyesight, the change from Tumberumba to Dora Dora is so startling! You have left a land of rich grass, and streams of rushing water, cool with the shade of lofty trees, and alive with birds, and find a wilderness of porphyritic rocks and naked earth; where the very flies occupy the shady side of the horse, and the stones you descend to examine scorch like a hot-poker. True the Murray is close by; so are snakes, rocks, and snags - besides, bathing in the sun is useless. I may as well mention that while sitting on a log, giving the horse a spell, the animals around forgot me altogether; jays came almost within arms' length, apparently watching something also, and conversing, inter sese, about it. I looked, and soon perceived a ripple in the little lagoon, and above the ripple a little head; presently the little head drew to land, diving under dead sticks, leaves, and timber, and drew after it a black body, four feet long, passing under the jays, who seemed in no amaze, but leisurely surveyed his snakeship as he passed under.
I thought it was my turn now, but seeing an enemy, stick in hand, he put on all steam, and entered the log I was sitting on, or rather near. I then amused myself with a cow, who couldn't make me out at all, but did nothing, for ten minutes, but stare and sometimes shake her head; at one of her most intent and abstracted moments, I slowly rose and extended my arms and legs in the form of a St. Andrew's cross; the cow became fearfully excited, rushed up and down between two trees, like a wild-beast in the zoological den, tail erect - whereupon, I mounted- and walked off. The flats of the river are crowded with cattle, in the ferns, under the trees, in the ooze, and in the water, and very picturesque they look, a landscape or animal painter might do a more idle thing than stroll up this river for sketches from Nature. In the lagoons below Welaregang ducks are abundant, and, of a horseman, nothing shy; they would be well got at behind the horse.
It is interesting to note the characteristic differences between the two rivers - the Murray and Murrumbidgee - their geological formations, their banks, soils, and vegetation. The Murrumbidgee, so fertile and so deep in soil; the Murray, so sandy and so light; the Murrumbidgee banks so deep, the Murray so accessible and easy, and the striking contrast of the dark swamp oaks of the Murrumbidgee, with the ferns and acacias of the Hume. Two causes, I venture to think, account for this; the boundary river flows mainly at right angles to the lay of the rocks beneath; the Murrumbidgee with, or along them ; and the latter river- travels over the limestones, without which no soils are permanent;
The river track joins the main southern road at Bowna (12-mile Creek), and in looking back one is apt to wonder why a road has not been made and a river front reserved from Albury upwards; the postal arrangements seem of the scantiest, there being none between Bowna and Jinjellac, a distance of sixty miles; the inhabitants crossing into Victoria for much of their correspondence.
Albury, February, 1870.
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