As Luck Would Have It by Edward Dyson

FOR the first three or four miles their journey ran between fences of rail and wire, enclosing paddocks of rung timber, the dead trees standing, with their skeleton limbs spread in pitiful expostulation, their stark nakedness awakening a sense of compunction for the ruthlessness of man. The murmur of innumerable sheep was in the air. This, with the pulsing, ringing whirr of the locusts, formed a background of sound so monotonous, so familiar, it became a sort of silence against which the shrill cry of a flight of blue mountains, shooting across the line of vision like a splendid meteor, or the glorious morning call of a magpie struck with shrill resonance. At length fences that had seemed endless ceased, and the road dwindled to a solitary wheel mark. Eventually that too disappeared, and they were travelling under flocking blue gums and hunched wild cherry, with occasional groves of wattle where the way dipped into a gully, with its trickle of water in a narrow, rocky bed, its banks a wavering streak of lush green meandering through the wilderness of crisp, dun-colored grass and red-brown bracken.

Here the air was heavy with the sweetness of honey-laden gum bloom, scattered by the hundreds of foraging parrots, filling the pendant boughs with glowing color, and making a continuous gluttonous murmuring as they gorged themselves at the bunched blossom dripping nectar. A male magpie drove at them from the heights, clipping his keen beak at Higginson's ear with a startling clap. Twice he repeated the dive, and Higgie went for his gun; but Bob's hand was on his arm.