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Memoirs of the Queensland Museum | Culture Volume 7 Part 1 The Leichhardt diaries Early travels in Australia during 1842-1844 Edited by Thomas A. Darragh and Roderick J. Fensham © Queensland Museum PO Box 3300, South Brisbane 4101, Australia Phone: +61 (0) 7 3840 7555 Fax: +61 (0) 7 3846 1226 Web: qm.qld.gov.au National Library of Australia card number ISSN 1440-4788 NOTE Papers published in this volume and in all previous volumes of the Memoirs of the Queensland Museum may be reproduced for scientific research, individual study or other educational purposes. Properly acknowledged quotations may be made but queries regarding the republication of any papers should be addressed to the Editor in Chief. A Guide to Authors is displayed on the Queensland Museum website qm.qld.gov.au A Queensland Government Project 30 June 2013 The Leichhardt diaries. Early travels in Australia during 1842–1844 Diary No 4 23 November 1843 - March 1844 (Moreton Bay) [Inside front cover portion of one stanza from a poem Die Ideale, the ideals, by Friedrich Schiller] Employment, which never tires, That slowly forms, but never destroys That reaches just grain by grain To the construction of eternity Yet passes by the great fault of the times Minutes, days, years. Fr Schiller Memoirs of the Queensland Museum | Culture 7(1) 2013 | 363 Darragh and Fensham 23 November was extremely cold. Caladium is in full bloom, the white and blue Aneilema as well, at least Today I found a greyish caterpillar, which was eating the young shoots of the indian belonging to the family, both growing very corn. It is about 9’’’ long, greyish with two densely. The blue one covers the banks of the bunches of hairs on the back. Externally its shady streams, the white one more in shady presence in the fruit cylinder is not indicated scrub. The cork vine is abundant in the scrub by anything. Also the wheat is said to be of the banks on the other side of the bridge. attacked by a kind of fly. The weevil can fly Melons, pumpkins, water melons, very well; it has two shining brownish spots cucumbers, the native melon, Bryonia, in on the elytra. short all Cucurbitaceae, in full bloom and The manderoljan tree (kargar Brisb[ane]) development. The cucumbers are growing sheds the bark and appears quite white, rapidly. manarm sheds the bark and is spotted. Dambirri sheds the bark and is a pretty 29 November orange or red colour. The old bark, without life, exposed to the hot drying rays of the sun, From the scrub under the mountain towards cracks and the ends of the strips curl in or out. the north. The young bark is in full development and 1. A small tree with broad lanceolate does its part in splitting the old bark layers. leaves, flowers in axil racemes, corolla Indeed perhaps this is the sole cause of the superior, six leaflets, three outer, three fissures and their enlargement, whereas the inner, six filaments, opposite the corolla atmospheric influences serve to peel off the leaflets, six glands alternating on the old bark from the young. filaments. Inside this a circle of abortive The weather is very cold for the season, sky filaments and a simple-headed style. overcast, wind south-east. Two species, one with rough leaves, the other smooth. Cryptocarya R.Br. 24 November (glaucescens? & triplinervis). Nicki brought me berries that he called 2. Leaves opposite, elliptical lanceolate, balbaram. They are the berries of a mistletoe stipules, flowers in raceme-like umbels (Acmena?), whose flowers I collected when (ternate umbels), corolla superior we went up to the bunya scrub. The berries tubular, utricular, four teeth, four are black and seem to have two lateral filaments, one pistil, the style continued placenta and dry angular seeds. over the stigma. {Rubiacaeae}. 3. A species of Croton with long standing 27 November calyx leaflets. I found the kulu myrtle and another myrtle *wood 7. Cap of the Eucalyptus with shrub in bloom. The flower of the latter is many sessile Stigmata, enlarged much larger almost like a peach flower. filaments towards the centre, aromatic leaves and wood. {Eupomatia} 28 November wood 8. Fruit a berry, leaves and wood The weather cool, rainy, overcast, today 28 aromatic, a middlesized tree with hard November has cleared up and the morning wood growing near the creek.* 364 | Memoirs of the Queensland Museum | Culture 7(1) 2013 The Leichhardt diaries. Early travels in Australia during 1842–1844 30 November newly grown, glands inside, simple style and stigma. Finally I have also to mention I investigated the trees of the scrub, which a small tree with small greenish leaflets and comes to the valley easterly from Archer’s hard heavy wood. Yesterday afternoon Mr along a stream from the mountain. The Charles Archer showed me several tall trees stream is flat and now without water. The with greyish bark and white wood, which trees are very diverse and the majority in have a round ½” in diameter fruit having a fruit or just getting flowers. On the outer sap colour with very irregular uneven and edge was a tree of of modest height in full furrowed embryo (dullum). {Elaeocarpus}. At bloom. The flowers white, tubular (the the same place I found a small Eucalyptus- corolla tubes somewhat bulbous, oblong), like tree {Eupomatia}, but with many fissile four teeth, four filaments, one style, the leaves scars, and an aromatic tree with tough white opposite, the wood dense, heavy, woolly on wood and reddish bark, which penetrates drying, the bark with small corky papillae, into the wood, and with small aromatic pipe- corresponding to the medullary rays. {No. like berries. A bush vine with yellow flowers 29}. Further in I found the tree belonging (corolla tubular, edge flat, four lobes, four to the Proteaceae Agnostus-Grevillea, with protruding filaments). Another bush vine long, stiff, green pinnately-lobed leaves, with edible bluish-black berries {Cissus}, but the wood reticulate like Grevillea robusta later burning somewhat in the throat. Finally and Casuarina. Here Grevillea robusta was an almost plant-like vine, the pistle with three seen many times with dry fruit capsules, styles and stigmas like Ricinus. In the scrub I of which some still contained seeds, then found a very tall tree with soft white wood the scrub Mimosa — soft white wood, fine and thick bark with similarly formed fruit. longitudinally fissured bark. Jindilli with Three trees have fruits with three capsules, apples; three other trees, two with epigenous each capsule monospermous, each seed with corollas, simple perianth, six filaments, six a more or less fleshy arillus {Sapindaceae}. alternating glands, three filaments and three One fruit (gnängä of the Blacks from oval filaments with simple style and stigma Nurrum Nurrum) is sour, edible and gives {Cryptocarya}. One tree has glossy, broad, a beautiful preserve. The second gurargum lanceolate leaves, the other has downy has a more membranous yellow arillus, but leaves with few clear protruding veins. Then with almost woody, at least hard, chambers. a tree with very glossy, broad, lanceolate The third has yellow membranous chamber leaves, whose flower I did not investigate walls, arillus attractive red, seeds black. and finally a tree, probably belonging to the Besides these there is another tree with three family of the Bignonia, one of the tallest of the capsule fruit, woolly outer skin surrounding scrub with elliptical, aciculate, broad leaves a woody inner one, the capsules completely and racemes of large personate flowers, sprung, septicidal and loculicidal and the five filaments, the halm purple-coloured. shiny seeds fallen out. The wood is very soft, the bark light green, weakly fissured. This tree is very abundant [Letter in English to Thomas Mitchell 11 December 1843. Aurousseau, 1968: 684.] in scrubs and at present the fallen flowers cover the ground everywhere. Another {There are two species of acorn trees, one very tall tree is monopetalous, the corolla with short-stalked umbelliferous fruit and just under the teeth, somewhat reduced, the other with long-stalked fruit on the short, and finally another aromatic tree has creek Tetranthera!} Also an acorn-like fruit large white flowers, the filaments are just was found with acorn cups, but the tree Memoirs of the Queensland Museum | Culture 7(1) 2013 | 365 Darragh and Fensham is still unknown. Further a broad-winged elliptical-lanceolate or oval-lanceolate, fruit, four one-seeded capsules, each with a without fruit and flowers, wood white. Bark wing-like broad process: barir (Paddy). The cross section green and white. wood of this tree is net-like Sterculeaceae {Tetranthera} No XI. The acorn tree. (Hildegardia?), the leaves ternate, silver and *Acorntree.* An impressive 70-80’ high tree. golden on the underside, green on the upper Bark grey with large layers[?], with fine side. I found the flowers previously. On transverse fissures. The layer under the old ripening the fruits fall from one another and bark whitish and reddish, the bark cross are eaten by the Blacks. They taste like the section yellowish, later changes to a more beech nut. A red fleshy berry, but whose tree reddish colour. The wood tolerably hard, I do not know yet. A small yellow tubular brittle, with pores. The leaves alternating, flower without the corresponding plant. oblong, blunt, narrowed towards the base, Of herbs a new scrub Lobelia and probably a light edge around the dark green rather new Hydrocotyle were found. stiff leaf. Acorns in umbels of 6-5 &c axile (?) green, colour changes to purple and they During the day I have been continually fall from the cups to the ground. Pericarp occupied with drying.