. This "billy" is a tin pot in which, later on, water will
be boiled over a little fire in the forest, and tea made. Food is packed
up--perhaps cold meats, perhaps chops or steaks which will be grilled in
the bush-fire. Always there are salads, cold fruit pies, home-made
cakes, fruit; possibly wine for the elders. But tea is never forgotten.
It would not be a picnic without tea.

Now a drag is driven around to the front gate by the one man-servant of
the house, who has harnessed up the horses and put food for them in the
drag. Some neighbours arrive; a picnic may be made up of just the
members of one family, but usually there is a mingling of families, and
that adds to the fun. The fathers of the families, as like as not, ride
saddle-horses and do not join the others in the drag; some of the elder
children, too, boys and girls, may ride their ponies, for in Australia
it is common for children to have ponies. The party starts with much
laughter, with inquiries as to the safety of the "billy" and the
whereabouts of the matches. It is a sad thing to go out in the Bush for
a picnic and find at the last moment that no one has any matches with
which to light a fire. The black fellows can start a flare by rubbing
two sticks together, but the white man has not mastered that art.

The picnic makes its way along a Bush road four or five miles through
pretty orchard country, given up mostly to growing peaches, grapes, and
oranges, the cultivated patches in their bright colours showing in vivid
contrast against the quiet grey-green of the gum-trees. It is spring,
and all the peach-trees are dressed in gay pink bloom, and belts of this
colour stretch into the forest for miles around.

The road leaves the cultivated area. The ground becomes rocky and
sterile. The gum-trees still grow sturdily, but there is no grass
beneath; instead a wild confusion of wiry heather-like brush, bearing
all sorts of curious flowers, white, pink, purple, blue, deep brown. One
flower called the flannel-daisy is like a great star, and its petals
seem to be cut of the softest white flannel. The boronia and the native
rose compel attention by their piercing, aromatic perfume, which is
strangely refreshing. The exhaling breath of the gum-trees, too, is keen
and exhilarating.

Now the path dips into a little hollow. What is that sudden blaze of
glowing yellow? It is a little clump of wattle-trees, about as big as
apple-trees, covered all over with soft flos