Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/293

must be enormous quantities of wild turkeys there; at any rate, they are always succulent. We also always had very good and elaborate trifles, and very weak tea, and, on this occasion, strawberries and cream and pineapple. After lunch there was a long interval, while we sat on a fence, and watched another ruminative cow eating sugar cane. We were waiting for the "loco." We were not very clear what it was, and when it arrived, it turned out to be a little engine drawing some trucks, across which rough planks had been thrown for seats, like those at Big Brook; but whereas the engine on that occasion was stoked with logs, and gave out a fragrant aromatic smoke, this dilatory "loco" burnt some kind of soft coal, and had a very short chimney, so that we were deluged with large and solid smuts, in comparison with which the molasses were the merest trifle. However, the country through which it took us was so beautiful and enchanting that nothing else mattered. It was our first experience of tropical bush. Elsewhere there had been little undergrowth, the tall gums soared upwards unimpeded. Here the vast white eucalyptus trees were festooned with thickly interlacing creepers hanging in great ropes. High up on the trees grew masses of staghorn ferns and orchids. Far out of reach the graceful, delicate