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The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888

E >> Ernest Favenc >> The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888




On getting his party together again, which was a work of some difficulty,
a start was effected in the direction of the Ord River, and on the road
home the unfortunate occurrence happened that resulted in the death of
two of the men, entirely the consequence of their own headstrong conduct.
The account had better be given in the words of the leader. Speaking of
one of the two men, he says:--


"He eats very heartily, and so does Ashton, and both have strong, lusty
voices, but seem to have lost all heart, and the rest of the party are
getting discouraged at the many and serious delays they are causing us. I
have used every means to induce them to rally and pluck up heart, but it
seems all to be totally lost upon them. It is a very trying situation for
me, and I trust God will guide me, and help me to do what is right and
just to all I have in my charge. Mulcahy acknowledged riding horses in
depôt out kangarooing, also to taking apples, biscuits, jam, flour and
peas, and to be unworthy of forgiveness or to remain one of the party. We
all forgave him the wrong he had done us freely and truly.

"December 17 (Wednesday). Fine morning after very cool night. Thermometer
at daylight, 60 deg. Mulcahy and Ashton both looking better, but both
came to me, and said if I would allow them they would take three weeks'
rations and camp for a spell on the river, and perhaps I would send help
after them. I tried all in my power to induce them to struggle on a
little further, if only as far as the Wilson River, but could not alter
their determination. Called the rest of the party together, and as they
one and all thought it was best under the circumstances, I had to
consent, so, with Mr. Ricketson's assistance, measured out to them twenty
pannikins of flour, ten of white sugar, ten of peas, fifteen of dried
apples, four pounds of tea, and a tin of preserved meat. Left them two
double-barrel guns, etc., with about one hundred and fifty cartridges,
fish-hooks, and lines, and camped on the Laurence River. We then packed
up the remainder, and with sad hearts bade them good-bye, and firmly
advised them to get either fish or game, as game is fairly plentiful
around them. Ashton and Mulcahy both expressed a desire to write a few
lines in my diary, and, in the presence of all hands, I allowed them.
Ashton also forwarded by me a note to his aunt in England, but Mulcahy,
although I earnestly desired him to, would not write to either wife or
parents, all he would say being, 'They will see you at no loss, old man.'

"It is a dreadful state of affairs, the two biggest and strongest of our
party collapsing like this, and has had a very depressing effect on me,
though I must not show it, for fear of causing a despondent feeling in
the others. I do hope we shall now have fair travelling, and reach Panton
and Osman's station, and send back horses and relief to those left
behind. They have had any amount of provisions, meat excepted sometimes
five meals a day, and never less than three."


The two men were never found, although every endeavour was made to do so.

Stockdale, not finding Panton and Osman's station, had to leave some of
his men in camp, and, after a hard struggle, reached the telegraph line
with one companion, and sent back relief to the others, which duly
reached them.




CHAPTER XIV.



The exploration of the Continent by land almost completed--Minor
expeditions--The Macarthur and other rivers running into Carpentaria
traced--Good country discovered and opened up--Sir Edward Pellew Group
revisited--Lindsay sent out by the S.A. Government to explore Arnheim's
Land--Rough country and great loss of horses--O'Donnell makes an
expedition to the Kimberley district--Sturt and Mitchell's different
experiences with the blacks--Difference in the East and West Coasts--Use
of camels--Opinions about them--The future of the water supply--
Adaptability of the country for irrigation--The great springs of
the Continent--Some peculiarities of them--Hot springs and mound springs.


The whole of the continent being now known, and the mystery of the
interior solved, there remained little more for the explorers of later
years to do, but follow up the course of some tributary, stream or river,
the origin of which, though, perhaps, guessed at, had never been finally
settled, nor had the country drained by them been mapped or defined.

These explorations, useful though they have been in opening up fresh
tracts of country for the pastoralist, have not the same amount of
interest attaching to them possessed by the earlier travels. Much of the
exploration of the past few years naturally centres round the northern
portion of Australia; there, as the pioneer pushed out, the unknown parts
had to yield up their secret, and the tracks of Macdowall Stuart were
gradually elaborated. The South Australian Government had made many
attempts to reach the Queensland border from their overland line, but
without success. In 1778, they had dispatched two surveyors--Messrs.
Barclay and Weinnecke--to proceed in that direction, starting from the
neighbourhood of Alice Springs. Barclay had much dry country to contend
with, and managed to reach close to Scarr's furthest point when he was
making west in the same year, but failed to connect with the settlements
of Queensland. He made no important discoveries, being amongst the
country common to the central districts of Australia--alternate desert,
and pastoral land, with few and insignificant watercourses. It being a
matter of moment to settle the position of the border line between the
two colonies, surveyor Weinnecke was again dispatched in 1880 to make
another attempt. By following Scarr's route, via Buchanan's Creek, he
succeeded in reaching the border. He travelled entirely over the country
explored by Queensland parties. In 1883 Favenc traced the heads of the
rivers running into the Gulf of Carpentaria, near the Queensland border,
and in the following year undertook a more lengthened expedition from the
tableland across the coast range to the mouth of the Macarthur River. The
party left the Queensland border and crossed to the overland telegraph
line, traversing mostly open downs country the whole of the way.

From the northern end of Newcastle Waters a fresh departure was as made,
and the watercourse that supplies these lagoons followed up for some
fifty miles. From there an easterly course was kept, and after some
privation from want of water, reached a creek, which was christened
Relief Creek, and which proved to be one of the head waters of the
Macarthur. A large extent of valuable pastoral country was found in the
basin drained by this river, and many fine permanent springs discovered.
The party followed the river down to salt water, and returned by another
route to Daly Waters telegraph station.

The South Australian Government soon after sent a survey steamer to the
group called Sir Edward Pellew's Islands, which had not been visited
since the days of Flinders. The mouth of the Macarthur was found and
sounded, and shortly afterwards a township was formed at the head of
navigation. The explorations conducted on this river led to a good road
being formed from the interior tableland to the coast and the settlement
of much new country.

The whole of the territory east of the overland line was now rapidly
becoming settled, and the explorations made by Mr. Macphee east of Daly
Waters may be said to have concluded the list of expeditions between the
overland line and the Queensland border.

In 1883 the South Australian Government determined to complete the
exploration of Arnheim's Land, and Mr. David Lindsay was dispatched on
the mission. He left Palmerston on the 4th June, and proceeded, by way of
the Katherine, to the country north of the Roper River. From there they
proceeded to Blue Mud Bay, and, on the way, had a narrow escape from
being massacred by the natives, who speared four horses, and made an
attempt to surprise the camp. Lindsay got entangled in the broken
tableland that caused such trouble to Leichhardt, and, with one
misfortune and another, lost a great number of his horses-in fact, at one
time, he anticipated having to abandon them all, and make his way into
the telegraph station on foot. On the whole, the country passed over was
favourable for settlement; in fact, the flats on some portions of his
course were first-class sugar country.

Another journey was undertaken about this time by Messrs. O'Donnell and
Carr Boyd into Western Australia, starting from the same place as
Lindsay, namely, the Katherine telegraph station. The expedition
succeeded in finding a large amount of pastoral country, but no new
geographical discoveries of any importance were made.

Meantime, the discovery of gold in the Kimberley district of Western
Australia led to that province being searched by small prospecting
parties, and every creek and watercourse becoming known. This has left
but little of the coastal lands still unexplored in Australia, and there
is scant chance of anything noticeable being found in the interior beyond
what we can fairly conjecture. The utmost an explorer can now hope to
find there is some permanent lagoon or spring, affording a stand-by for
the pastoralist. No such streams as the Murray or Darling will ever again
gladden the eyes of the traveller in the interior,

The greater part of the territory still left to explore is situated in
one colony--that of Western Australia, and, although the interior has
been successively crossed by so many different men, there yet remains a
large area which may be called unknown. Of what the end will be it is
hard to say. Shall we find it bear out the gloomy predictions of
Warburton and Giles? or the more hopeful one of Forest? One thing we do
know--that, year after year, use is being found for the most repellent
country. When we look back at the verdict pronounced against the interior
of Australia by the early explorers, and how it has been falsified by
time there is ground for hoping that even the most despised portions of
our continent will yet be found available for something.

That, in spite of the monotony of the Great Plain, it is strange to note
the fascination it has had for many of the most renowned explorers.
Sturt, after being reduced to semi-blindness, found himself compelled to
struggle with the desert once more. Eyre, left alone in the wilderness,
after his awful experience at the head of the Great Bight, still longed
to venture again, and accompanied his friend Sturt as far as ever his
duties permitted him. Leichhardt died in harness somewhere in Australia,
and Kennedy lost his life in his desire to emulate his former chief,
Mitchell. Even the very sterility of the great solitude seems to have
been, in its way, a lure to drag men back to encounter it once more.

Knowing now as much as we do of the interior, we can hardly help being
amused at the theories propounded in the old days by some of the earlier
travellers. Oxley was, we know, wedded to the idea of an inland sea.
Sturt, too, when he looked on the stony desert, saw in it but the dry
channel of some old ocean current; and Eyre was convinced that the
interior was nothing but a parched and and desert. One after another,
these fallacies were exploded, and now we find that human and animal life
can as easily be adapted to the central plain as elsewhere.

But the want of knowledge displayed by the natives of anything beyond
their immediate surroundings, was one great difficulty in the way of the
explorers. The blackfellow of Australia seemed to partake largely of the
country he lived in. His whole life was one fight for existence, and not
even the sudden advent of a strange race could do more than stir him to a
languid curiosity. Bounded, as he always had been, by his surroundings,
and never venturing beyond tribal limits, what information he was able to
impart was, as a rule, meagre and misleading, and without any good result
in the way of assistance to the explorer. True, we find exceptions to
this amongst them; two instances may be quoted as exemplifying two
different phases of the native character. One is a picture from Sturt's
journal, the other from Mitchell.

Sturt and his companions were returning to the depôt from one of their
northern efforts. Suddenly they came across a party of worn and thirsty
natives. What little water the whites had with them they gave them, but
it was only a mouthful a-piece, and the natives indicating by signs that
they were bound for some distant waterhole, disappeared at a smart trot
across the sandhills. They apparently expressed no surprise at the sudden
meeting in the desert, although they could not have had the slightest
conception of white men before. They seem to have accepted their presence
and the friendly drink of water as only a part of their strange
existence.

Far different was the conduct of the Darling River blacks, who so
resented Mitchell's appearance, that they travelled over some hundreds of
miles to attack him on his second visit. The ingenuity with which they
planned an attack on the party was a rather remarkable thing in the
annals of exploration. Thinking that the clothing of the whites rendered
them secure against spears, two men were told off for each member of the
party, one to hold the victim whilst the other clubbed him. Fortunately
the scheme was fathomed by one of the lubras with the party; but it
showed very deep-seated animosity and dislike.

The intercourse, then, that the travellers could expect from the natives
was either passive ignorance or violent hostility. On the few occasions
when their services were made use of it amounted only to finding some
scanty well. Again, the nature of the country was so persistently opposed
to all the pre conceived notions that the first arrivals brought to the
country. It would seem but rational to suppose that a river or creek
would ultimately lead to somewhere, a larger channel, or the sea; but the
rivers of the plain lived and died without any defined end, and to follow
their courses only resulted in disappointment. Add to all this a dry and
hot climate, and we cannot wonder at the slow progress made in the
advance of the first half of the century.

There is little doubt that had fortune turned the prows of the Dutch
vessels on to the north-east coast, instead of the rough and rugged
shores of the west, Australia would have seen settlement long before the
date of Phillip's landing. But the Dutch found no inducements whatever on
the west; their ships were wrecked, their crews attacked by the natives,
and they had great difficulty in finding fresh water; so that it was
little wonder that even their energy and adventurous spirit recognised
but nothing in TERRA AUSTRALIS to repay them for the trouble of taking
possession. The French, too, saw little in the unclaimed portion of the
country they visited to do more than threaten an occupation, which never
took place, and it is doubtful if the uninviting shores of Botany Bay
would have held out any hope to a body of free immigrants.

In all these halts on the way to colonization, Australia seems to have
borne but the aspect of her interior plains: formidable and repellent to
the intruder. Starting from the south, the first travellers had to face
all the loneliness and sterility of Lake Torrens and the other salt
lakes, and it was many years before it was found out that beyond existed
good habitable country. Eyre and Sturt both failed in their efforts to
penetrate north, and it was astonishing how easily it was afterwards
accomplished by two such comparatively inexperienced men as Burke and
Wills. From the west, nature was all against the explorer, and it was
only after the discovery of the Ashburton that Forest managed to reach
the overland line, that river having helped him well into the centre of
the colony. From the north, the penetration of the Great Plain was only
attempted once by A. C. Gregory, and then he was repulsed. From the
eastern shore, the steady progress, although not destined to finally
succeed, gradually brought nearly half the continent under the sway of
settlement, and the advance was mainly checked by the disappointment
resulting from Kennedy's examination of the Barcoo, and its final course
into a dreary desert. Of the many magnificent preparations made, it has
not always been the lot of the best equipped parties to attain the
greatest success, few men started with less outfit than did Macdowall
Stuart, when he reached to and beyond central Mount Stuart; no men ever
left better provided than did Burke and Wills, and their unfortunate
death by starvation is too well known. The equipment of the explorer,
especially as regards the use of camels, has been a matter of much
dispute. M'Kinlay speaks highly in praise of them, Warburton and Giles
both ascribe their safety to having them with them. But although they
have been the means of achieving long stages over dry country, they are
treacherous and dangerous animals to deal with. And should they make
their escape, it would be impossible to recover them with only horses at
command. Then, too, the possession of camels leads to hasty and hurried
examination of country, and the mere fact of being in command of such
means of locomotion entices a man to push on regardless of caution.
M'Kinlay reports that the camels seem to thrive well on everything, but
Warburton appeared to have great difficulty in obtaining feed for them in
the sandhill country. Be this as it may, they have done good service in
Australia, but it is not evident that they are always of equal good.

But the time will, without doubt, soon come when camels will no longer be
required, and the scenes of the forced and painful marches of some of our
explorers be watered by the springs now imprisoned hundreds of feet below
the surface. Since these pages were commenced, one of the strongest
outflows in the world has been struck near the foot of the range in
Queensland, some hundreds of miles back from the central coast, in a
place which witnessed the last expedition of Major Mitchell. This
discovery, added to the many that have preceded it, leads to much thought
as to the probability of future discoveries, and the wonderful springs
that are already known to exist.

"Water! water! everywhere, and not a drop to drink." Although not
absolutely true, in fact, or rather on the surface, this quotation might
be uttered with a strong measure of truth by many a poor wretch perishing
from thirst on a drought-blasted inland plain, whilst underneath him, at
a greater or less distance, run sunless seas.

Of the magnitude of our great subterranean reservoir who shall tell?
What craft will ever float on its dark surface, under domes of pendant
stalactites, rippling for the first time the ice-cold waters, and
disturbing the eyeless fish in their shadowy haunts? Only when here and
there we tap it, and the mighty pressure sends up a thin column of water
hundreds of feet in answer. Or when we notice the strong, constant
springs that at intervals break through the surface crust to gladden us;
or when the deeper internal fires burst forth, and hurl up its waters in
scathing steam and boiling mud, can we guess of the great hidden sea
beneath.

We have a problem given into our hands to solve; it is our heritage, and
we have only just commenced to try and find the answer. In our fair
continent there are thousands upon thousands of square miles of fertile
country that Nature herself has planned and mapped out into wide fields,
with gentle declivities and slopes, fit for the reception of the modest
channel that shall convey the living water over the great pasture lands;
and now we want the magician to come, and, with the wand of human skill,
bring the interior waters to the surface, and make the desert blossom.

Of the great supply that lies awaiting us deep down in the earth's
caverns we have incontestible proofs, and of the force latent in it to
lift it to the surface, to be our willing slave and bondsman, we, too,
have some dawning notion. Will years of study and observation give us the
power to wield the wand at will? We cannot but believe it. Our vast and
fertile downs were never destined to be idle and unproductive for months
and months, dependent only on the niggard clouds o'erhead.

To make Australia the richest and most self-supporting country that sun
ever shone upon, wherein every man could follow out the old saying of
sitting under his own vine and fig tree, what is wanted? The answer to
this problem is to bring to our rich alluvial surface the waters under
the earth.

On the great inland plateau that occupies two-thirds of the entire
continent, we find the soil teeming with elements of surpassing
fertility. Even the grudging rainfall that comes so seldom has developed
a wealth of indigenous herbage, grasses, and fodder plants unequalled in
any other part of the globe. The earth seems to have put forth every
inherent vitalising power it possesses to render its creatures
independent of cruel seasons.

What traveller but has noticed the magical effect of rain upon the deep
friable soil, formed by the denuded limestone rock. Almost
instantaneously fresh life springs up. Within but a short time the dry
and withered stalks of grass assume a deep rich green, the soft broad
leaves and joints are replete with moisture. The bare ground is quickly
coated with trailing vines and creepers, bearing succulent seed pods,
grateful and moist. The rough-coated, staggering beast that could scarce
drag its feeble legs out of the muddy waterhole, becomes in a few weeks
strong and vigorous. What would not such a land be with a constant
fertilizing stream of water through, and about it?

In approaching the subject of our subterranean water supply, the peculiar
physical formation of Australia must be borne in mind. The great flat
tableland that stretches in almost unvarying monotony from shore to
shore, fringed round with its strip of coastal land, resembles--to use a
homely simile--nothing so much as a narrow brimmed, flat crowned hat. The
moisture-laden clouds that visit us, break on the sides of this hat,
giving the brim, or coast, the full benefit of their precipitation;
drifting over the plateau, or crown, with rapidly decreasing bulk. Thus,
the great plain, in size the greatest, and in soil the richest part of
us, is always labouring under the curse of irregular and inefficient
rainfall; and whatever good we may do in the way of water storage and we
may do so much-we have always the threat of many years of drought hanging
over, during which our treasury of water will be drained, and not
replenished.


Welling from the sides of the tableland we find large permanent springs,
in many cases the sources of fine strong-flowing rivers, the component
parts of whose waters now first see the light again after countless ages.
Storms and floods may come and go unheeded, their steady flow
is-maintained unchecked by summer or winter weather; for their birth is
deep down in the earth, where meteorological disturbances are unknown.
Like an old and battered tank, through whose cracked and leaky sides the
water it contains is escaping, so these springs find vent through
fissures in the mighty tableland, to flow down to the sea.

Up in the northern provinces where, perhaps, if anything, the contrast of
these flowing streams beneath the parched surroundings is more striking
than in the more temperate southern clime, there are some mighty leaks in
the sides of the tableland. The Gregory River, in the Burke district of
Queensland has one unvarying flow; a strong running stream, never
lessened by the longest drought, but gliding beneath cool masses of
tropical foliage and gurgling over rocky bars when all around is dry.
What a great heritage here runs to waste unheeded.

In the northern territory, from out another vent, springs the Flora
River, whose waters ripple over limestone bars in miniature cascades,
from pool to pool, like pigmy reproductions of the lost terraces of New
Zealand. Follow the edge of the great tableland around, and amongst the
deep seams and fissures of its abrupt descent coastward, we suddenly
come, midst rugged barreness and gloomy grandeur, upon these messengers
from the inner earth. Some enjoying the sunlight, but for a brief span,
disappearing again for ever as, suddenly as they were up-borne; others
finding their way down to the habitable lowlands and to the sea. But,
unfortunately, all these springs, some of great volume, find issue on the
outer edge of the range; the gradual descent that marks the inner slope
is not the scene of these outbursts. Here, and throughout the interior,
the waters from below rise in a way that seems to best befit the weird
solitude of the great plain.

At times, on a bare, baked mound elevated above the surface, there is a
dwarf crater filled with water that never overflows, and when tapped and
exhausted, rises once more to its former level. Again, canopied by giant
ti-trees amid the shrill shrieking of thousands of noisy parrots, the
traveller can pick his way along the treacherous paths that wind amongst
the hot springs. Or at the foot of a low range a scanty trickle fills a
rocky pool, and thence is lost.

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