visitors from
Charters Towers, and as he wanted to give them something additional to
the usual fare of beef and mutton, in the way of fish and game, he asked
us to join him for a day's fishing in the Burdekin River.

The station was right on the bank of the river, but at a spot where
neither game nor fish were at all plentiful; so long before sunrise on
the following morning, under a bright moon and clear sky, we started,
accompanied by a black boy, leading a pack horse, for the junction of
the Kirk River with the Burdekin, where there was excellent fishing, and
where also we were sure of getting teal and wood-duck.

A two hours' easy ride along the grassy, open timbered high banks of the
great river brought us to the junction. The Kirk, when running along its
course, is a wide, sandy-bottomed stream, with here and there deep
rocky pools, and its whole course is fringed with the everlasting and
ever-green sheoaks. We unsaddled in a delightfully picturesque spot,
near the meeting of the waters, and in a few minutes, whilst the billy
was boiling for tea, C------and I were looking to our short bamboo rods
and lines, and our guns. Then, after hobbling out the horses, and eating
a breakfast of cold beef and damper, we started to walk through the
high, dew-soaked grass to a deep, boulder-margined pool in which the
waters of both rivers mingled.

The black boy who was leading when we emerged on the water side of
the fringe of sheoaks, suddenly halted and silently pointed ahead--a
magnificent specimen of the "gigantic" crane was stalking sedately
through a shallow pool--his brilliant black and orange plumage and
scarlet legs glistening in the rays of the early sun as he scanned the
sandy bottom for fish. We had no desire to shoot such a noble creature;
and let him take flight in his slow, laboured manner. And, for our
reward, the next moment "Peter," the black boy, brought down two out of
three black duck, which came flying right for his gun from across the
river.

Both rivers had long been low, and although the streams were running
in the centre of the beds of each, there were countless isolated
pools covered with blue-flowered water-lilies, in which teal and other
water-birds were feeding. But for the time we gave them no heed.

From one of the pools we took our bait--small fish the size of
white-bait, with big, staring eyes, and bodies of a transparent pink
with silvery scales. They were easily caught by running one's