What a beautiful sight it was!  Nestling in the hollow between two great white blows of quartz, this little pool of crystal-clear water, filled evidently by a little gully falling over a steep ledge of quartz beyond, presented no doubt a pretty picture after the rains.  A soakage it must be, for no open rock-hole could hold water in such terrible heat; and its clearness would suggest the possibility of an underlying spring.  A popular drinking-place this, frequented by birds of all kinds, crows, hawks, pigeons, galahs, wee-jugglers, and the ubiquitous diamond-sparrows.  During the night we could hear wallabies hopping along, but were too worn out to sit up to shoot them.  Though our sufferings had not been great, we had had a “bit of a doing.”

One day’s rest, occupied in various mendings of clothes, boots, and saddles, and we were off again to the north, cutting the track as expected, and presently found ourselves at the newly established mining camp of Lawlers, prettily situated on the banks of a gum-creek, with a copious supply of water in wells sunk in its bed.  A great advantage that the northern fields have over those further south is the occurrence of numerous creeks, sometimes traceable for over thirty miles, in all of which an abundance of fresh water can be obtained by sinking at depths varying from fifteen to fifty feet.

Towards the end of their course the well-defined channels, with banks sometimes ten feet high, disappear, giving place to a grassy avenue through the scrub, lightly timbered with cork-bark, and other small trees.  It is on such flats as these that the wells are sunk.  All creeks find their way into the lakes, though seldom by a discernible channel, breaking and making, as the expression is, until a narrow arm of the lake stretches to meet them.  At the most these creeks run “a banker” three times during the year, the water flowing for perhaps three days; after which pools of various sizes remain, to be in their turn dried up by evaporation and soakage.  In the dry weather the creeks afford a weird spectacle.  Stately white gums (the only timber of any size in these districts), with their silvery bark hanging in dishevelled shreds around the branchless stems, bend ghost-like over an undulating bed of gravel; gravel made up of ironstone pebbles, quartz fragments, and other water-worn debris washed down from the hills at the head of the creeks.

What a marvellous transformation the winter rains cause!  It is then that the expert, or journalist, takes his walks abroad; it is then that we read such glowing accounts of rich grass lands, watered by countless creeks, only awaiting the coming of an agriculturist to be turned into smiling farms and fertile fields.