Leave Fowlers Bay.
Camels and horses.
A great plain.
A black romance.
An oasis.
Youldeh.
Old Jimmy.
Cockata blacks.
In concealment.
Flies, ants, and heat.
A line of waters to the east.
Leave depot.
The camels.
Slow progress.
Lose a horse loaded with water.
Tinkle of a bell.
Chimpering.
Heavy sand-dunes.
Astray in the wilds.
Pylebung.
A native dam.
Inhuman mutilations.
Mowling and Whitegin.
The scrubs.
Wynbring.
A conspicuous mountain.
A native family.
March flies.
While at Fowler's Bay I had heard of a native watering-place called
Youldeh, that was known to one or two white people, and I found that
it lay about 130 miles inland, in a north-north-westerly direction; my
object now being to push across to Beltana to the eastwards and
endeavour to find a good travelling route by which I could bring my
projected large camel expedition back to the water at Youldeh, as a
starting depot for the west.
Leaving the bay on Saturday, the 13th of March, 1875, I had a strong
party with me as far as Youldeh. My second in command, Mr. Roberts,
Mr. Thomas Richards, police trooper--who, having previously visited
Youldeh, was going to show me its whereabouts--and Mr. George Murray;
I had with me also another white man, Peter Nicholls, who was my cook,
one old black fellow and two young ones. The old man and one young
fellow went on, one day in advance and led the two camels, the calf
running loose. We all rode horses, and had several pack-horses to
carry our provisions and camp necessaries. The weather was exceedingly
hot, although the previous summer months had been reasonably cool, the
heat having been tempered by southerly sea breezes. Nature now seemed
to intend to concentrate all the usual heat of an Australian summer
into the two remaining months that were left to her. The thermometer
usually stood for several hours of each day at 104, 105, and 106
degrees in the shade.
After leaving Colona, an out sheep station belonging to Fowler's Bay,
lying some thirty-five miles north-west from it, and where Mr. Murray
resided, we traversed a country alternating between belts of scrub and
grassy flats or small plains, until at twenty miles from Colona we
reached the edge of a plain that stretched away to the north, and was
evidently of a very great extent. The soil was loose and yielding, and
of a very poor quality. Although this plain was covered with
vegetation, there was no grass whatever upon it; but a growth of a
kind of broom, two to three feet high, waving in the heated breezes as
far as the eye could reach, which gave it a billowy and extraordinary
appearance. The botanical name of this plant is Eremophila scoparia.
At fifty miles from Colona and eighty-five from the bay, we reached a
salt lagoon, which, though several miles long, and perhaps a mile
wide, Mr. Murray's black boy informed us was the footmark or track of
a monstrous animal or snake, that used to haunt the neighbourhood of
this big plain, and that it had been driven by the Cockata blacks out
of the mountains to the north, the Musgrave Ranges of my last
expedition, and which are over 400 miles from the bay. He added that
the creature had crawled down to the coast, and now lived in the sea.
So here was reliable authority for the existence of a sea serpent. We
had often heard tales from the blacks, when sitting round our camp
fires at night, about this wonderful animal, and whenever any native
spoke about it, it was always in a mysterious undertone. What the name
of this monster was, I cannot now remember; but there were syllables
enough in it to make a word as long as the lagoon itself. The tales
that were told of it, the number of natives it had devoured, how such
and such a black fellow's father had encountered and speared it, and
how it had occasionally created floods all over the country when it
was angry, would have made an excellent novel, which might be produced
under the title of a "Black Romance." When we laughed at, or joked
this young black fellow who now accompanied us, on the absurdity of
his notions, he became very serious, for to him and his
co-religionists it was no laughing matter. Another thing was rather
strange, and that was, how these coast natives should know there were
any mountains to the north of them. I knew it, because I had been
there and found them; but that they should know it was curious, for
they have no intercourse with the tribes of natives in the country to
the north of them; indeed it required a good deal of persuasion to
induce the young blacks who accompanied us to go out to Youldeh; and
if it had not been that an old man called Jimmy had been induced by
Mr. Richards to go with the camels in advance, I am quite sure the
young ones would not have gone at all.
After crossing the salt lagoon or animals' track, and going five miles
farther, about north-north-east, we arrived at some granite rocks
amongst some low hills, which rose up out of the plain, where some
rock water-holes existed, and here we found the two blacks that had
preceded us, encamped with the camels. This pretty little place was
called Pidinga; the eye was charmed with flowering shrubs about the
rocks, and green grass. As the day was very hot, we erected tarpaulins
with sticks, this being the only shade to sit under. There were a few
hundred acres of good country round the rocks; the supply of water was
limited to perhaps a couple of thousand gallons. From Pidinga our
route to Youldeh lay about north-north-west, distant thirty-three
miles. For about twenty-five miles we traversed an entirely open
plain, similar to that just described, and mostly covered with the
waving broom bushes; but now upon our right hand, to the north, and
stretching also to the west, was a dark line of higher ground formed
of sandhills and fringed with low scrub, and timber of various kinds,
such as cypress pines (callitris), black oak (casuarinas) stunted
mallee (eucalyptus), and a kind of acacia called myal. This new
feature, of higher ground, formed the edge of the plain, and is the
southern bank of a vast bed of sandhill country that lies between us
and the Musgrave Ranges nearly 300 miles to the north.
Having reached the northern edge of the plain we had been traversing,
we now entered the bed of sandhills and scrub which lay before us,
and, following the tracks of the two black fellows with the camels, as
there was no road to Youldeh, we came in five miles to a spot where,
without the slightest indication to point out such a thing, except
that we descended into lower ground, there existed a shallow native
well in the sandy ground of a small hollow between the red sandhills,
and this spot the blacks said was Youldeh. The whole region was
glowing with intense heat, and the sand was so hot, that neither the
camels nor the horses could endure to remain standing in the sun, but
so soon as they were unpacked and unsaddled, sought the shade of the
large and numerous leguminous bushes which grew all round the place.
As there were five whites and four blacks, we had plenty of hands to
set about the different tasks which had to be performed. In the first
place we had to dig out the old well; this some volunteered to do,
while others erected an awning with tarpaulins, got firewood, and
otherwise turned the wild and bushy spot into a locality suitable for
a white man's encampment. Water was easily procurable at a depth of
between three and four feet, and all the animals drank as much as they
desired, being watered with canvas buckets; the camels appeared as
though they never would be satisfied.
It was only their parching thirst that induced the horses to remain
anywhere near the camels, and immediately they got sufficient water,
they de-camped, though short-hobbled, at a gallop over the high red
sandhills from whence we had come; my riding-horse, Chester, the worst
of the mob, went nearly mad at the approach of the camels. There was
not a sign of a blade of grass, or anything else that horses could
eat, except a few yellow immortelles of a large coarse description,
and these they did not care very much for. The camels, on the
contrary, could take large and evidently agreeable mouthfuls of the
leaves of the great bushes of the Leguminosae, which abounded. The
conduct of the two kinds of animals was so distinctly different as to
arouse the curiosity of all of us; the camels fed in peaceful content
in the shade of the bushes from which they ate, and never went out of
sight, seeming to take great interest in all we did, and evidently
thoroughly enjoying themselves, while the horses were plunging about
in hobbles over the sandhills, snorting and fretting with fright and
exertion, and neither having or apparently desiring to get anything to
eat. Their sole desire was to get away as far as possible from the
camels. The supply of water here seemed to be unlimited, but the sandy
sides of the well kept falling in; therefore we got some stakes of
mallee, and saplings of the native poplar (Codonocarpus cotinifolius,
of the order of Phytolacceae), and thoroughly slabbed it, at least
sufficiently for our time. This place, as I said before, was
exceedingly hot, lying at the bottom of a hollow amongst the
sandhills, and all we could see from the tops of any of those near us
was a mass of higher, darker, and more forbidding undulations of a
similar kind. These undulations existed to the east, north, and west,
while to the south we could but dimly see the mirage upon the plain we
had recently traversed. The water here was fresh and sweet, and if the
temperature had not been quite so hot, we might have enjoyed our
encampment here; but there was no air, and we seemed to be at the
bottom of a funnel. The old black fellow, Jimmy, whom Mr. Richards had
obtained as a guide to show me some waters in the country to the
eastwards, informed us, through the interpretation of Mr. Murray, that
he knew of only one water in any direction towards the west, and this
he said was a small rock water-hole called Paring.
The following day Mr. Murray and I rode there with old Jimmy, and
found it to be a wretched little hole, lying nearly west-north-west
about fourteen miles away; it contained only a few gallons of water,
which was almost putrid from the number of dead and decaying birds,
rats, lizards, rotten leaves, and sticks that were in it; had it been
full it would have been of no earthly use to me. Old Jimmy was not
accustomed to riding, and got out of his latitude once or twice before
we reached the place. He was, however, proud of finding himself in the
novel position, albeit rather late in life, of riding upon horseback,
and if I remember rightly did not tumble off more than three or four
times during the whole day. Jimmy was a very agreeable old gentleman;
I could not keep up a conversation with him, as I knew so few words of
his language, and he knew only about twenty of mine. It was evident he
was a man of superior abilities to most of his race, and he looked
like a thoroughbred, and had always been known to Mr. Richards as a
proud and honourable old fellow. He was, moreover, the father of a
large family, namely five, which is probably an unprecedented number
amongst the aboriginal tribes of this part of Australia, all of whom
he had left behind, as well as his wife, to oblige me; and many a time
he regretted this before he saw them again, and after; not from any
unkindness on my part, for my readers will see we were the best of
friends the whole time we were together. On this little excursion it
was very amusing to watch old Jimmy on horseback, and to notice the
look of blank amazement on his face when he found himself at fault
amongst the sandhills; the way he excused himself for not going
straight to this little spot was also very ingenuous. In the first
place he said, "Not mine young fellow now; not mine like em pony"--the
name for all horses at Fowler's Bay--"not mine see 'em Paring long
time, only when I am boy." Whereby he intended to imply that some
allowance must be made for his not going perfectly straight to the
place. However, we got there all right, although I found it to be
useless. When asked concerning the country to the north, he declared
it was Cockata; the country to the west was also Cockata, the dreaded
name of Cockata appearing to carry a nameless undefined horror with
it. The term of Cockata blacks is applied by the Fowler's Bay natives
to all other tribes of aboriginals in the country inland from the
coast, and it seems, although when Fowler's Bay country was first
settled by the whites these natives attacked and killed several of the
invaders, they always lived in terror of their enemies to the north,
and any atrocity that was committed by themselves, either cannibalism,
theft, or murder, was always put down to the account of the Cockatas.
Occasionally a mob of these wilder aboriginals would make a descent
upon the quieter coast-blacks, and after a fight would carry off women
and other spoils, such as opossum rugs, spears, shields,
coolamins--vessels of wood or bark, like small canoes, for carrying
water--and they usually killed several of the men of the conquered
race. After remaining at this Paring for about an hour, we remounted
our horses and returned to the camp at Youldeh. The party remained
there for a few days, hoping for a change in the weather, as the heat
was now very great and the country in the neighbourhood of the most
forbidding and formidable nature to penetrate. It consisted of very
high and scrubby red sandhills, and it was altogether so unpleasing a
locality that I abandoned the idea of pushing to the north, to
discover whether any other waters could be found in that direction,
for the present, and postponed the attempt until I should return to
this depot en route for Perth, with the whole of my new
expedition--deciding to make my way now to the eastwards in order to
reach Beltana by a route previously untravelled.
Upon the morning after my return from Paring, all the horses were
away--indeed, as I have said before, there was nothing for them to eat
at this place, and they always rambled as far as they could possibly
go from the camp to get away from the camels, although those more
sensible animals were, so to say, in clover. We had three young black
fellows and old Jimmy, and it was the young ones' duty to look after
and get the horses, while old Jimmy had the easier employment of
taking care of the camels. This morning, two of the young blacks were
sent out very early for the horses, whilst the other and old Jimmy
remained to do anything that might be required at the camp. The
morning was hot and oppressive, we sat as comfortably as we could in
the shade of our awning; by twelve o'clock no signs of black boys or
horses had made their appearance. At one o'clock we had dinner, and
gave old Jimmy and his mate theirs. I noticed that the younger black
left the camp with a bit of a bundle under his shirt and a canvas
water-bag; I and some of the others watched whither he went, and to
our surprise we found that he was taking food and water to the other
two boys, who should have been away after the horses, but were quietly
encamped under a big bush within a quarter of a mile of us and had
never been after the horses at all. Of course we were very indignant,
and were going to punish them with a good thrashing, when one of them
informed us that it was no use our hammering them, for they could not
go for the horses because they were too much afraid of the Cockata
blacks, and unless we sent old Jimmy or a white man they would not go
out of sight of the camp. This showed the state of superstition and
fear in which these people live. Indeed, I believe if the whole
Fowler's Bay tribes were all encamped together in one mob round their
own fires, in their own country, and any one ran into the camp and
shouted "Cockata," it would cause a stampede among them immediately.
It was very annoying to think that the horses had got so many hours'
start away from the camp, and the only thing I could do was to send a
white man, and Jimmy, with these boys to find the absent animals. Mr.
Roberts volunteered, and had to camp away from water, not returning
until late the following day, with only about a third of the mob. The
next day all were found but three--one was a police horse of Mr.
Richards's, which was never seen after, and two colts of mine which
found their way back to, and were eventually recovered at, Fowler's
Bay by Mr. Roberts. While encamped here we found Youldeh to be a
fearful place, the ants, flies, and heat being each intolerable. We
were at the bottom of a sandy funnel, into which the fiery beams of
the sun were poured in burning rays, and the radiation of heat from
the sandy country around made it all the hotter. Not a breath of air
could be had as we lay or sat panting in the shade we had erected with
our tarpaulins. There was no view for more than a hundred yards
anywhere, unless one climbed to the top of a sandhill, and then other
sandhills all round only were to be seen. The position of this place I
found to be in latitude 30 degrees 24' 10" and approximate longitude
131 degrees 46'. On the 23rd of March Mr. Murray, Jimmy, and I, went
to the top of a sandhill overlooking the camp and had a long
confabulation with Jimmy--at least Mr. Murray had, and he interpreted
the old fellow's remarks to me. It appeared that he knew the country,
and some watering-places in it, for some distance to the eastward, and
on making a kind of map on the sand, he put down several marks, which
he called by the following names, namely, Chimpering, Pylebung,
Mowling, Whitegin, and Wynbring; of these he said Pylebung and
Wynbring were the best waters. By his account they all lay due east
from hence, and they appeared to be the most wonderful places in the
world. He said he had not visited any of these places since he was a
little boy with his mother, and it appeared his mother was a widow and
that these places belonged to her country, but that she had
subsequently become the wife of a Fowler's Bay native, who had taken
her and her little Jimmy away out of that part of the country,
therefore he had not been there since. He said that Pylebung was a
water that stood up high, and that Cockata black fellows had made it
with wooden shovels. This account certainly excited my curiosity, as I
had never seen anything which could approximate to Jimmy's
description; he also said it was mucka pickaninny, only big one, which
meant that it was by no means a small water. Chimpering and Whitegin,
he said, were rock-holes, but Wynbring, the farthest water he knew,
according to his account was something astounding. He said it was a
mountain, a waterhole, a lake, a spring, and a well, all in one, and
that it was distant about six sleeps from Youldeh; this, according to
our rendering, as Jimmy declared also that it was mucka close up, only
long way, we considered to be about 120 miles. Beyond Wynbring Jimmy
knew nothing whatever of the country, and I think he had a latent idea
in his mind that there really was nothing beyond it. The result of our
interview was, that I determined to send all the party back to
Fowler's Bay, except one white man and old Jimmy, also all the horses
except three, and to start with this small party and the camels to the
eastward on the following day. I selected Peter Nicholls to accompany
me. I found the boiling-point of water at the camp was 211 degrees
making its altitude above the sea 509 feet. The sandhills were about
100 feet high on the average.
The two camels and the calf, were sent to me by Sir Thomas Elder, from
Adelaide, while I was at Fowler's Bay, by an Afghan named Saleh
Mahomet, who returned to, and met me at, Beltana, by the ordinary way
of travellers. There was only a riding-saddle for the cow, the bull
having come bare-backed; I therefore had to invent a pack- or
baggage-saddle for him, and I venture to assert that 999,999 people
out of every million would rather be excused the task. In this work I
was ably seconded by Mr. Richards, who did most of the sewing and
pad-making, but Mr. Armstrong, one of the owners and manager of the
Fowler's Bay Station, though he supplied me in profusion with every
other requisite, would not let me have the size of iron I wished, and
I had to take what I could get, he thinking it the right size; and
unfortunately that which I got for the saddle-trees was not stout
enough, and, although in other respects the saddle was a brilliant
success, though made upon a totally different principle from that of
an Afghan's saddle, when the animal was loaded, the weakness of the
iron made it continually widen, and in consequence the iron pressed
down on the much-enduring creature's body and hurt him severely.
We frequently had to stop, take his load and saddle off and bend the
iron closer together again, so as to preserve some semblance of an
arch or rather two arches over his back, one before and one behind his
hump. Every time Nicholls and I went through this operation we were
afraid the iron would give, and snap in half with our pressure, and so
it would have done but that the fiery rays of the sun kept it almost
at a glowing heat. This and the nose ropes and buttons getting so
often broken, together with making new buttons from pieces of stick,
caused us many harassing delays.
On the 24th of March, 1875, we bade good-bye to the friends that had
accompanied us to this place, and who all started to return to the bay
the same day. With Peter Nicholls, old Jimmy as guide, the two camels
and calf, and three horses, I turned my back upon the Youldeh camp,
somewhat late in the day. Nicholls rode the old cow, Jimmy and I
riding a horse each, the third horse carrying a load of water. Two of
these horses were the pick of the whole mob I had; they were still
terribly frightened at the camels, and it was almost impossible to sit
my horse Chester when the camels came near him behind; the horse
carrying the water followed the two riding-horses, but towards dusk he
got frightened and bolted away into the scrubs, load of water and all.
We had only come seven miles that afternoon, and it was our first
practical acquaintance with camels; Jimmy and I had continually to
wait till Nicholls and the camels, made their appearance, and whenever
Nicholls came up he was in a fearful rage with them. The old cow that
he was riding would scarcely budge for him at all. If he beat her she
would lie down, yell, squall, spit, and roll over on her saddle, and
behave in such a manner that, neither of us knowing anything about
camels, we thought she was going to die. The sandhills were
oppressively steep, and the old wretch perspired to such a degree, and
altogether became such an unmanageable nuisance, that I began to think
camels could not be half the wonderful animals I had fondly imagined.
The bull, Mustara, behaved much better. He was a most affectionate
creature, and would kiss people all day long; but the Lord help any
one who would try to kiss the old cow, for she would cover them all
over with--well, we will call it spittle, but it is worse than that.
The calf would kiss also when caught, but did not care to be caught
too often. Mustara had a good heavy load--he followed the cow without
being fastened; the calf, with great cunning, not relishing the idea
of leaving Youldeh, would persistently stay behind and try and induce
his mother not to go on; in this he partially succeeded, for by dusk,
just as I found I had lost the pack-horse with the water, and was
waiting till Nicholls, who was following our horse tracks, came up to
us, we had travelled at no better speed than a mile an hour since we
left the camp. The two remaining horses were so restless that I was
compelled to stand and hold them while waiting, old Jimmy being away
in the darkness to endeavour to find the missing one. By the time
Nicholls arrived with the camels, guided now by the glare of a large
fire of a Mus conditor's nest which old Jimmy ignited, the horse had
been gone about two hours; thus our first night's bivouac was not a
pleasant one. There was nothing that the horses would eat, and if they
had been let go, even in hobbles, in all probability we should never
have seen them again. Old Jimmy returned after a fruitless search for
the absent horse. The camels would not feed, but lay down in a sulky
fit, the two horses continually snorting and endeavouring to break
away; and thus the night was passing away, when we heard the tinkle of
a bell--the horse we had lost having a bell on his neck--and Jimmy and
Nicholls went away through the darkness and scrubs in the direction it
proceeded from. I kept up a large fire to guide them, not that old
Jimmy required such artificial aid, but to save time; in about an hour
they returned with the missing horse. When this animal took it into
his head to bolt off he was out of earshot in no time, but it seems he
must have thought better of his proceedings, and returned of his own
accord to where he had left his mates. We were glad enough to secure
him again, and the water he carried.
The next morning we were under weigh very early, and, following the
old guide Jimmy, we went in a south-east direction towards the first
watering place that he knew, and which he said was called Chimpering.
Many times before we reached this place the old fellow seemed very
uncertain of his whereabouts, but by dodging about amongst the
sandhills--the country being all rolling hummocks of red sand covered
with dense scrubs and the universal spinifex--he managed to drop down
upon it, after we had travelled about thirty miles from Youldeh.
Chimpering consisted of a small acacia, or as we say a mulga, hollow,
the mulga being the Acacia aneura; here a few bare red granite rocks
were exposed to view. In a crevice between two of these Jimmy showed
us a small orifice, which we found, upon baling out, to contain only
three buckets of a filthy black fluid that old Jimmy declared was
water. We annoyed him fearfully by pretending we did not know what it
was. Poor old chap, he couldn't explain how angry he was, but he
managed to stammer out, "White fellow--fool; pony drink 'em." The day
was excessively hot, the thermometer stood at 106 degrees in the
shade. The horses or ponies, as universally called at Fowler's Bay,
drank the dirty water with avidity. It was early in the day when we
arrived, and so soon as the water was taken, we pushed on towards the
next place, Pylebung. At Youldeh our guide had so excited my curiosity
about this place, that I was most anxious to reach it. Jimmy said it
was not very far off.
On the night of the 26th March, just as it was getting dark and having
left Chimpering twenty-five miles behind us, we entered a piece of
bushy mulga country, the bushes being so thick that we had great
difficulty in forcing our way through it in the dark. Our guide seemed
very much in the dark also; his movements were exceedingly uncertain,
and I could see by the stars that we were winding about to all points
of the compass. At last old Jimmy stopped and said we had reached the
place where Pylebung ought to be, but it was not; and here, he said,
pointing to the ground, was to be our wurley, or camp, for the night.
When I questioned him, and asked where the water was, he only replied,
which way? This question I was altogether unable to answer, and I was
not in a very amiable frame of mind, for we had been traversing
frightful country of dense scrubs all day in parching thirst and
broiling heat. So I told Nicholls to unpack the camels while I
unsaddled the horses. All the animals seemed over-powered with
lassitude and exhaustion; the camels immediately lay down, and the
horses stood disconsolately close to them, now no longer terrified at
their proximity.
Nicholls and I extended our rugs upon the ground and lay down, and
then we discovered that old Jimmy had left the camp, and thought he
had given us the slip in the dark. We had been lying down some time
when the old fellow returned, and in the most voluble and excited
language told us he had found the water; it was, he said, "big one,
watta, mucka, pickaninny;" and in his delight at his success he began
to describe it, or try to do so, in the firelight, on the ground; he
kept saying, "big one, watta--big one, watta--watta go that way, watta
go this way, and watta go that way, and watta go this way," turning
himself round and round, so that I thought it must be a lake or swamp
he was trying to describe. However, we got the camels and horses
resaddled and packed, and took them where old Jimmy led us. The moon
had now risen above the high sandhills that surrounded us, and we soon
emerged upon a piece of open ground where there was a large white
clay-pan, or bare patch of white clay soil, glistening in the moon's
rays, and upon this there appeared an astonishing object--something
like the wall of an old house or a ruined chimney. On arriving, we saw
that it was a circular wall or dam of clay, nearly five feet high,
with a segment open to the south to admit and retain the rain-water
that occasionally flows over the flat into this artificial receptacle.
In spite of old Jimmy's asseverations, there was only sufficient water
to last one or two days, and what there was, was very thick and
whitish-coloured. The six animals being excessively thirsty, the
volume of the fluid gradually diminished in the moonlight before our
eyes; the camels and horses' legs and noses were all pushing against
one another while they drank.
This wall, or dam, constructed by the aboriginals, is the first piece
of work of art or usefulness that I had ever seen in all my travels in
Australia; and if I had only heard of it, I should seriously have
reflected upon the credibility of my informant, because no attempts of
skill, or ingenuity, on the part of Australian natives, applied to
building, or the storage of water, have previously been met with, and
I was very much astonished at beholding one now. This piece of work
was two feet thick on the top of the wall, twenty yards in the length
of its sweep, and at the bottom, where the water lodged, the
embankment was nearly five feet thick. The clay of which this dam was
composed had been dug out of the hole in which the water lay, with
small native wooden shovels, and piled up to its present dimensions.
Immediately around this singular monument of native industry, there
are a few hundred acres of very pretty country, beautifully grassed
and ornamented with a few mulga (acacia) trees, standing picturesquely
apart. The spot lies in a basin or hollow, and is surrounded in all
directions by scrubs and rolling sandhills. How we got to it I can
scarcely tell, as our guide kept constantly changing his course, so
that the compass was of little or no use, and it was only by the
sextant I could discover our whereabouts; by it I found we had come
fifty-eight miles from Youldeh on a bearing of south 68 degrees east,
we being now in latitude 30 degrees 43' and longitude 132 degrees 44'.
There was so little water here that I was unable to remain more than
one day, during which the thermometer indicated 104 degrees in the
shade.
To the eastward of this dam there was a sandhill with a few black oaks
(casuarinas) growing upon it, about a quarter of a mile away. A number
of stones of a calcareous nature were scattered about on it; on going
up this hill the day we rested the animals here, I was surprised to
find a broad path had been cleared amongst the stones for some dozens
of yards, an oak-tree at each end being the terminal points. At the
foot of each tree at the end of the path the largest stones were
heaped; the path was indented with the tramplings of many natives'
feet, and I felt sure that it was one of those places where the men of
this region perform inhuman mutilations upon the youths and maidens of
their tribe. I questioned old Jimmy about these matters, but he was
like all others of his race, who, while admitting the facts, protest
that they, individually, have never officiated at such doings.
Upon leaving Pylebung Jimmy informed me that Mowling was the next
watering-place, and said it lay nearly east from here; but I found we
went nearly north-east to reach it; this we did in seventeen miles,
the country through which we passed being, as usual, all sandhills and
scrub. Mowling consisted of a small acacia hollow, where there were a
few boulders of granite; in these were two small holes, both as dry as
the surface of the rocks in their vicinity. On our route from
Pylebung, we had seen the tracks of a single bullock; he also had
found his way to Mowling, and probably left it howling; but it must
have been some time since his visit.
From hence old Jimmy led us a good deal south of east, and we arrived
at another exposure of granite rocks in the dense scrubs. This place
Jimmy called Whitegin. It was ten or eleven miles from Mowling. There
was a small crevice between the rounded boulders of rock, which held
barely sufficient water for the three horses, the camels getting none,
though they persisted in bothering us all the afternoon, and appeared
very thirsty. They kept coming up to the camp perpetually, pulling our
canvas bucket and tin utensils about with their lips, and I found the
cunning of a camel in endeavouring to get water at the camp far
exceeded that of any horse.
There were a few dozen acres of pretty ground here with good grass and
herbage on it. We had a great deal of trouble to-day in getting the
camels along; the foal or calf belonging to the old riding-cow got
itself entangled in its mother's nose-rope, and as we did not then
understand the management of camels, and how their nose-ropes should
be adjusted, we could not prevent the little brute from tearing the
button clean through the cartilage of the poor old cow's nose; this
not only caused the animal frightful pain, but made her more obstinate
and stubborn and harder to get along than before. The agony the poor
creature suffered from flies must have been excruciating, as after
this accident they entered her nostrils in such numbers that she often
hung back, and would cough and snort until she had ejected a great
quantity of blood and flies from her nose.
For the last few miles we had not been annoyed by quite so much
spinifex as usual, but the vast amount of dead wood and underbrush was
very detrimental to the progress of the camels, who are not usually in
the habit of lifting their feet very high, though having the power,
they learn it in time, but not before their toes got constantly
entangled with the dead sticks, which made them very sore.
The scrub here and all the way we had come consisted mostly of mallee
(Eucalyptus dumosa) mulga, prickly bushes (hakea), some
grevillea-trees, and a few oaks (casuarinas). This place, Whitegin,
was eighty-five miles straight from Youldeh; we had, however,
travelled about 100 miles to reach it, as Jimmy kept turning and
twisting about in the scrubs in all directions. On leaving Whitegin we
travelled several degrees to north of east, the thermometer in the
shade while we rested there going up to 103 degrees. Jimmy said the
next place we should get water at was Wynbring, and from what we could
make out of his jargon, he seemed to imply that Wynbring was a large
watercourse descending from a mountain and having a stony bed; he also
said we were now close up, and that it was only a pickaninny way.
However, the shades of night descended upon us once more in the scrubs
of this desert, and we were again compelled to encamp in a place
lonely, and without water, amidst the desolations of this
scrub-enthroned tract. Choking with thirst and sleepless with anxiety,
we pass the hours of night; no dews descend upon this heated place,
and though towards dawn a slightly cooler temperature is felt, the
reappearance of the sun is now so near, that there has been no time
for either earth or man to be benefited by it. Long before the sun
himself appears, those avant-couriers of his fiery might, heated glow,
and feverish breeze, came rustling through the foliage of the
mallee-trees, which give out the semblance of a mournful sigh, as
though they too suffered from the heat and thirst of this desolate
region, in which they are doomed by fate to dwell, and as though they
desired to let the wanderers passing amongst them know, that they also
felt, and were sorry for, our woes.
The morning of March 31st was exceedingly hot, the thermometer at dawn
standing at 86 degrees. We were up and after the camels and horses
long before daylight, tracking them by the light of burning torches of
great bunches and boughs of the mallee trees--these burn almost as
well green as dry, from the quantity of aromatic eucalyptic oil
contained in them--and enormous plots of spinifex which we lighted as
we passed.
Having secured all the animals, we started early, and were moving
onwards before sunrise. From Whitegin I found we had come on a nearly
north-east course, and at twenty-eight miles from thence the scrubs
fell off a trifle in height and density. This morning our guide
travelled much straighter than was usual with him, and it was evident
he had now no doubt that he was going in the right direction. About
ten o'clock, after we had travelled thirteen or fourteen miles, Jimmy
uttered an exclamation, pointed out something to us, and declared that
it was Wynbring. Then I could at once perceive how excessively
inaccurate, the old gentleman's account of Wynbring had been, for
instead of its being a mountain, it was simply a round bare mass of
stone, standing in the centre of an open piece of country, surrounded
as usual by the scrubs. When we arrived at the rock, we found the
large creek channel, promised us had microscopicated itself down to a
mere rock-hole, whose dimensions were not very great. The rock itself
was a bare expanse of granite, an acre or two in extent, and was
perhaps fifty feet high, while the only receptacle for water about it
was a crevice forty feet long, by four feet wide, with a depth of six
feet in its deepest part. The hole was not full, but it held an ample
supply for all our present requirements.
There were a few low sandhills near, ornamented with occasional
mulga-trees, and they made the place very pretty and picturesque.
There were several old and new native gunyahs, or houses, if such a
term can be applied to these insignificant structures. Australian
aborigines are a race who do not live in houses at all, but still the
common instincts of humanity induce all men to try and secure some
spot of earth which, for a time at least, they may call home; and
though the nomadic inhabitants or owners of these Australian wilds, do
not remain for long in any one particular place, in consequence of the
game becoming too wild or destroyed, or water being used up or
evaporated, yet, wherever they are located, every man or head of a
family has his home and his house, to which he returns in after
seasons. The natives in this, as in most other parts of Australia,
seldom hunt without making perpetual grass or spinifex fires, and the
traveller in these wilds may be always sure that the natives are in
the neighbourhood when he can see the smokes, but it by no means
follows that because there are smokes there must be water. An
inversion of the terms would be far more correct, and you might safely
declare that because there is water there are sure to be smokes, and
because there are smokes there are sure to be fires and because there
are fires there are sure to be natives, the present case being no
exception to the rule, as several columns of smoke appeared in various
directions. Old Jimmy's native name was Nanthona; in consequence he
was generally called Anthony, but he liked neither; he preferred
Jimmy, and asked me always to call him so. When at Youldeh the old
fellow had mentioned this spot, Wynbring, as the farthest water he
knew to the eastwards, and now that we had arrived at it, he declared
that beyond it there was nothing; it was the ultima thule of all his
geographical ideas; he had never seen, heard, or thought of anything
beyond it. It was certainly a most agreeable little oasis, and an
excellent spot for an explorer to come to in such a frightful region.
Here were the three requisites that constitute an explorer's
happiness--that is to say, wood, water, and grass, there being
splendid green feed and herbage on the few thousand acres of open
ground around the rock. The old black guide had certainly brought us
to this romantic and secluded little spot, with, I suppose I may say,
unerring precision, albeit he wound about so much on the road, and
made the distance far greater than it should have been. I was,
however, struck with admiration at his having done so at all, and how
he or any other human being, not having the advantages of science at
his command to teach him, by the use of the heavenly bodies, how to
find the position of any locality, could possibly return to the places
we had visited in such a wilderness, especially as it was done by the
recollection of spots which, to a white man, have no special features
and no guiding points, was really marvellous. We had travelled at
least 120 miles eastward from Youldeh, and when there, this old fellow
had told us that he had not visited any of the places he was going to
take me to since his boyhood; this at the very least must have been
forty years ago, for he was certainly fifty, if not seventy, years
old. The knowledge possessed by these children of the desert is
preserved owing to the fact that their imaginations are untrammelled,
the denizens of the wilderness, having their mental faculties put to
but few uses, and all are concentrated on the object of obtaining food
for themselves and their offspring. Whatever ideas they possess, and
they are by no means dull or backward in learning new ones, are ever
keen and young, and Nature has endowed them with an undying mental
youth, until their career on earth is ended. As says a poet, speaking
of savages or men in a state of nature:--
"There the passions may revel unfettered,
And the heart never speak but in truth;
And the intellect, wholly unlettered,
Be bright with the freedom of youth."
Assuredly man in a savage state, is by no means the unhappiest of
mortals. Old Jimmy's faculties of memory were put to the test several
times during the eight days we were travelling from Youldeh to this
rock. Sometimes when leading us through the scrubs, and having
travelled for some miles nearly east, he would notice a tree or a
sandhill, or something that he remembered, and would turn suddenly
from that point in an entirely different direction, towards some high
and severe sandhill; here he would climb a tree. After a few minutes'
gazing about, he would descend, mount his horse, and go off on some
new line, and in the course of a mile or so he would stop at a tree,
and tell us that when a little boy he got a 'possum out of a hole
which existed in it. At another place he said his mother was bitten by
a wild dog, which she was digging out of a hole in the ground; and
thus we came to Wynbring at last.
A conspicuous mountain--indeed the only object upon which the eye
could rest above the dense scrubs that surrounded us--bore south 52
degrees east from this rock, and I supposed it was Mount Finke. Our
advent disturbed a number of natives; their fresh footprints were
everywhere about the place, and our guide not being at ease in his
mind as to what sort of reception he might get from the owners of this
demesne, told me if I would let him have a gun, he would go and hunt
them up, and try to induce some of them to come to the camp. The old
chap had but limited experience of firearms, so I gave him an unloaded
gun, as he might have shot himself, or any other of the natives,
without intending to do any harm. Away he went, and returned with five
captives, an antiquated one-eyed old gentleman, with his three wives,
and one baby belonging to the second wife, who had been a woman of
considerable beauty. She was now rather past her prime. What the
oldest wife could ever have been like, it was impossible to guess, as
now she seemed more like an old she-monkey than anything else. The
youngest was in the first flush of youth and grace. The new old man
was very tall, and had been very big and powerful, but he was now
shrunken and grey with age. He ordered his wives to sit down in the
shade of a bush near our camp; this they did. I walked towards the old
man, when he immediately threw his aged arms round me, and clasped me
rapturously to his ebony breast. Then his most ancient wife followed
his example, clasping me in the same manner. The second wife was
rather incommoded in her embrace by the baby in her arms, and it
squalled horridly the nearer its mother put it to me. The third and
youngest wife, who was really very pretty, appeared enchantingly
bashful, but what was her bashfulness compared to mine, when compelled
for mere form's sake to enfold in my arms a beautiful and naked young
woman? It was really a distressing ordeal. She showed her appreciation
of our company by the glances of her black and flashing eyes, and the
exposure of two rows of beautifully even and pearly teeth.
However charming woman may look in a nude or native state, with all
her youthful graces about her, still the poetic line, that beauty
unadorned, adorned the most, is not entirely true. Woman never appears
so thoroughly charming as when her graces are enveloped in a becoming
dress. These natives all seemed anxious that I should give them names,
and I took upon myself the responsibility of christening them. The
young beauty I called Polly, the mother Mary, the baby Kitty, the
oldest woman Judy, and to the old man I gave the name of Wynbring
Tommy, as an easy one for him to remember and pronounce. There exists
amongst the natives of this part of the continent, an ancient and
Oriental custom which either compels or induces the wife or wives of a
man who is in any way disfigured in form or feature to show their
love, esteem, or obedience, by becoming similarly disfigured, on the
same principle that Sindbad the Sailor was buried with his wife. In
this case the two elder wives of this old man had each relinquished an
eye, and no doubt the time was soon approaching when the youngest
would also show her conjugal fidelity and love by similar mutilation,
unless the old heathen should happen to die shortly and she become
espoused to some other, rejoicing in the possession of a full
complement of eyes--a consummation devoutly to be wished.
The position of this rock and watering-place I found to be in latitude
30 degrees 32' and longitude 133 degrees 30'. The heat still continued
very great, the thermometer at its highest reading never indicating
less than 104 degrees in the shade while we were here. The flies at
this place, and indeed for weeks before we reached it, were terribly
numerous, and we were troubled also with myriads of the large March
flies, those horrid pests about twice the size of the blowfly, and
which bite men, horses, and camels, and all other animals
indiscriminately. These wretches would not allow either us or the
animals a moment's respite, from dawn to dusk; they almost ate the
poor creatures alive, and kept them in a state of perpetual motion in
their hobbles during daylight all the while we were here. In the
daytime it was only by continued use of our hands, in waving a
handkerchief or bough, that we kept them partially off ourselves, for
with all our efforts to drive them away, we were continually bitten
and stung almost to madness. I have often been troubled by these flies
in other parts of Australia, but I never experienced so much pain and
annoyance as at this place. The hideous droning noise which a
multitude of these insects make is quite enough to destroy one's
peace, but when their incessant bites are added, existence becomes a
burden.
Since we left Youldeh, and there also, the days had been frightfully
hot, and the nights close, cloudy, and sultry. The only currents of
air that ever stirred the foliage of the trees in the daytime were
like the breath from a furnace, while at night there was hardly any at
all. The 1st of April, the last day we remained here, was the hottest
day we had felt. Life was almost insupportable, and I determined to
leave the place upon the morrow. There had evidently been some rain at
this rock lately, as the grass and herbage were green and luxuriant,
and the flies so numerous. It was most fortunate for us, as my
subsequent narrative will show, that we had some one to guide us to
this spot, which I found by observation lay almost east of Youldeh,
and was distant from that depot 110 miles in a straight line. Old
Jimmy knew nothing whatever of the region which lay beyond, and though
I endeavoured to get him to ask the old man and his wives where any
other waters existed, all the information I could gather from these
persons was, that there was a big mountain and no water at it. The old
man at last found enough English to say, "Big fellow Poonta (stones,
hills, or mountains) and mucka carpee," which means no water. I gave
these poor people a little damper and some tea each, and Polly some
sugar, when they departed. Old Jimmy seemed very unwilling to go any
farther eastwards, giving me to understand that it was a far better
plan to return to Fowler's Bay, and that he would show me some new
watering-places if I would only follow him. To this, of course, I
turned a deaf ear.
The nearest water on the route I desired to travel, was at Sir Thomas
Elder's cattle station, at the Finniss Springs, under the Hermit Hill,
distant from this rock about 250 miles in a straight line; but as the
mountain to the south-east looked so conspicuous and inviting, I
determined to visit it, in spite of what the old black fellow had said
about there being no water, though it lay considerably out of the
straight road to where I wanted to go. It looked high and rugged, and
I thought to find water in some rock-hole or crevice about it.