The Confessions of a Beachcomber | Page 7

one slide might take you from the cool

mountain-top to the cooler sea. The highest peak, which presents a
buttressed face to the north, and overlooks our peaceful bay, is crowned
with a forest of bloodwoods, upon which the jungle steadily encroaches.
The swaying fronds of aspiring palms, adorned in due season with
masses of straw-coloured inflorescence, to be succeeded by loose
bunches of red, bead-like berries, shoot out from the pall of leafage. In
the gloomy gullies are slender-shafted palms and tree-ferns, while ferns
and mosses cover the soil with living tapestry, and strange, snake-like
epiphytes cling in sinuous curves to the larger trees. The trail of the
lawyer vine (CALAMUS OBSTRUENS), with its leaf sheath and long
tentacles bristling with incurved hooks, is over it all. Huge cables of
vines trail from tree to tree, hanging in loops and knots and festoons,
the largest (ENTADA SCANDENS) bearing pods 4 feet long and 4
inches broad, containing a dozen or so brown hard beans used for
match-boxes. Along the edge of the jungle, the climbing fern
(LYNGODIUM) grows in tangled masses sending its slender wire-like
lengths up among the trees--the most attractive of all the ferns, and
glorified by some with the title of "the Fern of God," so surpassing its
grace and beauty.
September is the prime month of the year in tropical Queensland. Many
of the trees are then in blossom and most of the orchids. Nocturnal
showers occur fairly regularly in normal seasons, and every sort of
vegetable is rampant with the lust of life. It was September when our
isolation began. And what a plenteous realisation it all was that the
artificial emotions of the town had been, haply, abandoned! The blood
tingled with keen appreciation of the crispness, the cleanliness of the
air. We had won disregard of all the bother and contradictions, the
vanities and absurdities of the toilful, wayward, human world, and had
acquired a glorious sense of irresponsibleness and independence.
This--this was our life we were beginning to live--our very own life;
not life hampered and restricted by the wills, wishes and whims of
others; unencumbered by the domineering wisdom, unembarrassed by
the formal courtesies of the crowd.
September and the gin-gee, the quaint, grey-barked, soft-wooded tree

with broad, rough, sage-green leaves, and florets massed in clumps to
resemble sunflowers, was in all its pride, attracting relays of
honey-imbibing birds during the day, and at night dozens of squeaking
flying-foxes. Within a few yards of high-water stands a flame-tree
(ERYTHRINA INDICA) the "bingum" of the blacks. Devoid of leaves
in this leafy month, the bingum arrays itself in a robe of royal red. All
birds and manner of birds, and butterflies and bees and beetles, which
have regard for colour and sweetness come hither to feast.
Sulphur-crested cockatoos sail down upon the red raiment of the tree,
and tear from it shreds until all the grass is ruddy with refuse, and their
snowy breasts stained as though their feast was of blood instead of
colourless nectar. For many days here is a scene of a perpetual
banquet--a noisy, cheerful, frolicsome revel. Cockatoos scream with
excitement and gladness; honey-eaters whistle and call; drongos chatter
and scold the rest of the banqueters; the tiny sun-bird twitters feeble
protests; bees and beetles maintain a murmurous soothful sound, a
drowsy blending of hum and buzz from the rising of the sun until the
going down thereof.
The dark compactness of the jungle, the steadfast but disorderly array
of the forest, the blotches of verdant grass, the fringe of
yellow-flowered hibiscus and the sapful native cabbage, give way in
turn to the greys and yellows of the sand in alternate bands. The
slowly-heaving sea trailing the narrowest flounce of lace on the beach,
the dainty form of Purtaboi, and the varying tones of great Australia
beyond combine to complete the scene, and to confirm the thought that
here is the ideal spot, the freest spot, the spot where dreams may harden
into realities, where unvexed peace may smile.
There is naught to remind of the foetidness, the blare and glare of the
streets. None of
"The weariness, the fever and the fret, There, where men sit and hear
each other groan."
You may follow up the creeks until they become miniature ravines, or
broaden out into pockets with precipitous sides, where twilight reigns
perpetually, and where sweet soft gases are generated by innumerable

plants, and distilled from the warm moist soil. How grateful and
revivifying! Among the half-lit crowded groves might not another
Medea gather enchanted herbs such as "did renew old Aeson."
Past the rocky horn of Brammo Bay, another crescent indents the base
of the hill. Exposed to the north-east breeze, the turmoil of innumerable
gales has torn tons upon tons of coral from the out-lying reef,