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"The way's one and the end's one,

and it's far to the ends of the Earth."

Every man to his taste! If I could fall in with a jolly young god in creative mood, just about to open a branch of the Paternal business, what a world we could make for walkers! He would seat me on Kosciusko and give me vision, and I would select the purple patches from our Australian landscape which he would bring together as a mechanic assembles the parts of a machine. It might be only a baby world which would result, but how choice a child!

Seas there would be, of course; enough ocean to give colour and movement, changing blues and greens and purples and flashes of foaming white, which contrast and combine so finely with the skyline when seen from a long curved strip of cool grey sand. Always and ever must a lady swell lift the live water into waves of jade or ultramarine. With what irresistible might they advance; how tremendous is the thunder of their ruin! From the crash and roar a fury of hissing bubbles runs to your feet, and slides back smoothly as the next comber curls over in mile-long confusion.

Mountains, too, there must be, and lesser hills by the score, each distinguished in its appropriate way, a river or two, many creeks, creeping shyly through a tangle of green or racing like children down steep places, at least one lake, and a little snow-plain that is hidden high on a peak in Victoria.

How hard it is to choose as the moving pictures of memory show on the mental screen. One sage has said, "It is all good when you're out in it." Even the "perishes" he has done seem pleasant to the walker in retrospect. I find myself handing to the god for inclusion that long stretch of soft sand from Cape Everard to the mouth of the Snowy River, remembering only the joy of conquest and not the salt rivers, the thirst, the shrieking angry gale, the flying sand, the weight of the swag. "You never know what pleasure is until you've tasted woe!" The tiny spring that joins the sea

...where the lobster spawns

In cool Cape Conran's weed,"

most obviously had been spilt by Hebe as she served her nectar to the immortals, and the parched and weary swagmen made suitable oblation.

Of the choice things of heaven and earth the first to be taken must be the view from Sublime Point, above the Bulli Pass. Keep the top road, only interesting because of its flora, turn down the narrow forest way with no hint of the wonder to come, and as that panorama of perfection takes your sight you will want to remove your shoes, as one standing on holy ground, or to disrobe like the worshipper in Klinger's To the Beautiful in Nature. No detail may be omitted: the sheer rocky drop to the tropical jungle, the massed growths of palm and fig and turpentine tree and supple-jack and the rest, the dolls' houses that form the settlements, curving sands and jutting headlands, and, holding all together, the restless blue of the sea, cunningly relieved by its snowy edging of surf.

A few national parks may be added. New South Wales shall yield the pattern of her delicious combination of wild woodland and well-ordered ways, Victoria, the greater part of her secluded sanctuary known as Wilson's Promontory. Particularly would I rape the Promontory of its Oberon Bay, where assuredly the sponsor watched fairy revels in the moonlight, of its forest of banksias at South West Corner, of that cheeriest of torrents, Roaring Meg, and, above all, of the proud, stern rock which holds aloft the lighthouse and vainly seeks to glimpse again its lost Tasmania.

I have said there must be mountains, and mountains there shall be. Kosciusko because he dominates all; Sydney's Blue Mountains because there is nothing else like them; the mighty Bogong standing savagely aloof from all others; Wellington the benign guardian of Hobart; Cobbler the Hunchback, for the outlook his strange semi-detached peak affords and the frantic waterfall which issues from his worn sides; that range of fantasy, the Grampians of Victoria, made up, it would seem, of the frames of monsters who lived in the nightmare days before the Flood and from whose decomposition has sprung a unique flora; the Buffalo because it is the Buffalo. They compel admiration, these giants, without caring whether that crawling insect, Man, regards them or not. It is the smaller hills who are friendly—

The high hills are haughty,

They stand against the blue

An count themselves a cut above

The likes of me and you.

But the little hills lean down to us

And pass the time o' day,

An tell the gossip of the tracks

And give their views away.

There is Mount Lofty, for instance, and its range of sister hills at the back of Adelaide, full of an intimate, pleasant charm, with no disturbing grandeur. Even the railway which has climbed up from the Murray level shall be included—this in gratitude for those morning peeps down terraced slopes to deep valleys and the sea beyond which the Melbourne express connives at. And Arthur's Seat must not be missed, if only for the charm of its Wonga Paddock, any more than its humbler neighbour, Mount Martha. Both have missions to fulfil: no one who has climbed their slopes will ever again malign Port Phillip Bay.

Port Phillip Bay!—yes, it is down for reproduction no less than Port Jackson, the harbour of Auckland, and those attractive waters which wash the feet of Wellington at Hobart. To one the charm of wide expanses lifted like a shield, edged with indescribable tones of pink and green, to another the glory of a mountain background, to a third the surprises of winding channels searching into a rocky coast, a never-closing feast of detail. Ecclesiastes has noted that "all the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full." I would have those river mouths, whether sweet to the very high-water mark, or losing themselves in the salt long before, or sheltered behind bars of sand which only now and then they get strength to break. Seldom is a river's final stage, that point at which it "runs somewhere safe to sea," without interest. That the walker may have to devise ways and means to get across these mouths but adds interest to a journey. And good as they may be in exit, all rivers should improve as one tramps nearer to their source until it stands revealed in a nook of the ranges. A river or two, did I say? I could name a score whose claims may not be denied. Water is the Great Essential of the swagman: let them all go in.

But it is creeks, baby rivers, that intrigue me most. Little Dinner Creek in Croajingolong, tiniest and most grateful of running streams; numberless Stockyard and Stony and Sandy Creeks, even a Dry Creek, libellously so-called,—I would miss none. Some for their names, if for no other virtue, shall sing through the scheme as a scarlet thread shines in a green fabric. Araluen, full of soft lights and tender tones; the Dandongadale, like a peal of bells; and how many more that chime in the chambers of the mind. The wooded ranges with their towering timber and alluring pads that glance back invitingly as they vanish into the green shade, the fern and musk and beech gullies which nurse the springs of these creeks, the fish and all creatures which use the waters—nothing must be lost.

The greater lakes I would class with caves; they do not hold me. A lake, like a jewel, requires a setting. That is what makes the charm of Tarli Karngo Nigothuruk, the hidden tarn of Mount Wellington in Gippsland. Climb 5,000 feet and you stand on the edge of the basin, slip down 2,000 feet on the inside and you reach the margin of the waters. Solitude abides there; it is the home of ancient Peace. Swim in its quiet depths and you shall feel the Bunyip stir beneath you; sleep on its tiny beach and all the fairy tales of your youth become true. Not that lake only, but that lake certainly, shall be part of my new world.

But so much has been missed. Well, that can be made good. Eternity knows no haste, and the time of a god is eternity. Rest assured that all shall be as the walker would have it. There shall be wood and water and the wherewithal to fill the body with strength and the soul with content. And night shall come and the underleaves of the gums shall light up in the glow of the camp-fire; and stars shall be hung in the tops, and a cricket shall call and a mopoke moan as you snuggle your tired limbs into your bed of leaves. What more would you have?