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[Page 29]
Gypos shifting a length of broad gauge, sleepers and all, is to have dispelled the mystery of their early buildings. Multiply the effort of a Gypo railway gang and the moving of the monoliths is easy.
During their periodical cleansings they offer a fine subject. Two or three hundred I have seen formed up in rather irregular fours, stark naked in the sun, their yellow pink bodies telling splendidly against the background of red Palestine earth, with green cactus, almond trees in blossom and flowers giving decorative properties.
But now having left the Canal behind I must hurry on in the attempt to overtake the Light Horse, for be it known I was considered a too luxurious branch of War Records to be sent out promptly and my work was sometimes merely that of a graveyard artist instead of being carried out or about the firing line. Moving on to Romani one is able to study the so called desert of Northern Sinai, which stretches from the Canal eastwards to the border of Palestine. It is called desert and we always referred to it as the Eastern desert, but when one comes to observe and know it one is struck by its fertility and cleanliness. The sand is a great cleanser; the sun burns up that which the incinerator leaves; small bushes, green in spring, brown, lavender, grey in summer, are dotted over the dunes in fascinating pattern like unto currants in plum duff, the so called spotted dog of the shearer's