The spring and summer of 1841–2 wore away, and our home was progressing, but much too slowly for our wishes; for it may well be believed how eager we were to remove thither, and put an end to the weary daily travel to and fro, and my long lonely days away from all that interested me, save my children, for we had now two.

Sometimes I added to my little collection of portraits of the pretty native flowers, or improved myself in sketching gum-trees, which I found demanded far greater care in their delineation, even in my slight pencil sketches, than I had at first been disposed to accord them: a gaunt straggling tree, that will persist in showing all its twisted elbows, and bare Briarean arms, with only tufts of leaves at the fingers' ends, is quite a different affair from a round compact oak or elm, decently apparelled in a proper quantity of foliage. A kind of Eucalyptus, with long drooping leaves, called the “Weeping Gum,” is the most elegant of the family, and is generally very well dressed. A group of these, which gracefully drooped over and beside a blacksmith's forge, near us, always won my admiration as I passed them on my way to Spring Vale, where some of the Eucalyptus trees growing on the rich lowlands are really very beautiful, and would be deemed so even amidst the magnificent patriarchal oaks of an English park; large, lofty, with dense glossy foliage, and finely grown, they have more the character of a Portugal laurel grown into a forest tree, than anything else I remember at Home.