n account of the death
of his father. And we were a very happy party, and although at times
I wearied of the bush and longed for a sight of the sea again, the
gold-fever had taken possession of me entirely and I was content.

Once a party of three of us were prospecting in the vicinity of Scarr's
(or Carr's) Creek, a tributary of the Upper Burdekin River. It was in
June, and the nights were very cold, and so we were pleased to come
across a well-sheltered little pocket, a few hundred yards from the
creek, which at this part of its course ran very swiftly between high,
broken walls of granite. Timber was abundant, and as we intended to
thoroughly prospect the creek up to its head, we decided to camp at
the pocket for two or three weeks, and put up a bark hut, instead of
shivering at night under a tent without a fire. The first day we spent
in stripping bark, piled it up, and then weighted it down heavily with
logs. During the next few days, whilst my mates were building the hut,
I had to scour the country in search of game, for our supply of meat
had run out, and although there were plenty of cattle running in the
vicinity, we did not care to shoot a beast, although we were pretty sure
that C------, the owner of the nearest cattle station, would cheerfully
have given us permission to do so had we been able to have communicated
with him. But as his station was forty miles away, and all our horses
were in poor condition from overwork, we had to content ourselves with
a chance kangaroo, rock wallaby, and such birds as we could shoot,
which latter were few and far between. The country was very rough, and
although the granite ranges and boulder-covered spurs held plenty of fat
rock wallabies, it was heart-breaking work to get within shot. Still, we
managed to turn in at nights feeling satisfied with our supper, for we
always managed to shoot something, and fortunately had plenty of flour,
tea, sugar, and tobacco, and were very hopeful that we should get on to
"something good" by careful prospecting.

On the day that we arrived at the pocket, I went down the steep bank of
the creek to get water, and was highly pleased to see that it contained
fish. At the foot of a waterfall there was a deep pool, and in it I saw
numbers of fish, very like grayling, in fact some Queenslanders call
them grayling. Hurrying back to the camp with the water, I got out my
fishing tackle (last used in the Burdekin River for bream), and then
arose th