The bed of the river at this place is
deep and rather narrow; the water flows over sand and pebbles,
winding its way between clumps of melalema, and gum saplings. After
leaving the river, we kept our old course due north, crossing, at a
distance of one mile, three creeks with gum trees on their banks.
The soil of the flats through which they flow is a red loam of fair
quality and well grassed. Beyond the third creek is a large plain,
parts of which are very stony, and this is bounded towards the east
by a low stony rise, partly composed of decayed and honeycombed
quartz rock in situ, and partly of waterworn pebbles and other
alluvial deposits. At about two miles across this plain, we reached
the first of a series of small creeks with deep waterholes: these
creeks and holes have the characteristics peculiar to watercourses
which are found in flats formed from the alluvial deposits of
schistose rocks. The banks are on a level with the surrounding
ground, and are irregularly marked by small trees, or only by tufts
of long grass which overhang the channel and frequently hide it
from one's view, even when within a few yards. At about five miles
from where we crossed the river, we came to the main creek in these
flats, Patten's Creek; it flows along at the foot of a stony range,
and we had to trace it up nearly a mile in a north-north-easterly
direction before we could cross it; as it happened, we might almost
as well have followed its course up the flat, for at a little more
than two miles we came to it again.
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