Two hundred and fifty guests was the tally for that year, and earliest
among them came a telegraph operator, who as is the way with telegraphic
operators out-bush invited us to "ride across to the wire for a shake
hands with Outside"; and within an hour we came in sight of the telegraph
wire as our horses mounted the stony ridge that overlooks the Warloch
ponds, when the wire was forgotten for a moment in the kaleidoscope of
moving, ever-changing colour that met our eyes.
Two wide-spreading limpid ponds, the Warloch lay before us, veiled in a
glory of golden-flecked heliotrope and purple water-lilies, and floating
deep green leaves, with here and there gleaming little seas of water,
opening out among the lilies, and standing knee-deep in the margins a
rustling fringe of light reeds and giant bulrushes. All round the ponds
stood dark groves of pandanus palms, and among and beyond the palms tall
grasses and forest trees, with here and there a spreading colabar
festooned from summit to trunk with brilliant crimson strands of
mistletoe, and here and there a gaunt dead old giant of the forest, and
everywhere above and beyond the timber deep sunny blue and flooding
sunshine.
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