Preface
It is only natural that an author should say a few words about a republication of this kind. The story in its separate form has the advantage of being illustrated by an eminent artist, whose special qualifications are widely known and acknowledged; and it seemed to all concerned best that it should be left entirely untouched. The first two paragraphs and the last short one are simply added: no other liberty has been taken with it.
To avoid the trouble of those great plagues of literature, foot-notes, the author asks the reader to submit to a few very trifling explanations:
"Quantongs" are a bush fruit, of about the same quality as green gooseberries, but, like the last-named fruit, very much sought after by the native youth.
The Bunyip is the native river devil, or kelpie, evidently the crocodile of the Northern Australian rivers, whose recognition by the Southern natives in their legends shows, if nothing else did, that the centre of dispersion in Australia was from the North, as Doctor Laing told us years ago.
With regard to the habit which lost children have of aimless climbing, the author knew a child who, being lost by his father while out shooting on one of the flats bordering on the Eastern Pyrenees in Port Phillip on Sunday afternoon, was found the next Wednesday dead, at an elevation above the Avoca township of between two and three thousand feet.