Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/285

This page needs to be proofread.
CHAPTER XVIII

A DAY IN THE QUEENSLAND BUSH


This was one of the most delightful of all the many crowded days we spent in Australia, for it revealed to us the wonder and the beauty of the Queensland Bush.

We started early for the station through the streets that leave on one's mind, looking back, an impression of sharply defined black and white, from the contrasting sunlight and shadow in that brilliant atmosphere. The three hours' journey to Nambour, where we were to see a sugar manufactory, was full of interest. The line passes quite near the curious peaks, which Captain Cook called the Glass House mountains. The origin of the name is conjectural, but it is supposed that the conical shape of some of them resembled the glass-blowing factories in the England of his boyish days. These bare, isolated peaks push themselves up sharply and precipitately from the plain. They are formed of trachyte or some kindred igneous rock, and geologists are not agreed as to their origin among the surrounding