Desert Spring Saved Giles's Party

Trekking Across Deserts Of The North

An emu's track half concealed in the scrub (that same scrub of mallee. she-oak and spinifex which had mocked them for over three hundred thirsty miles) was noticed by sharp eyed, 16-year-old, Tommie— and the fate of six brave men is decided.

The whole party is plodding on — camels and men are weary and thirsty and hope is dying . . . They pass slowly by, leaving a small bank of sandhills to the south. But Tommie has seen enough to make him break track. He is off on his camel to follow that illusory print of an emu's foot as it disappears beneath the clumps of callitris. He is away a long time; it is some hours before he catches up with the rest of the party, and yells them the glad tidings: 'Me find 'em plenty water!'

Water! At the very sound of the magic word every member of that little band is filled with new life and hope. Man and beast find their way back to —wonder of wonders — a spring of water held in a clayey hollow in the centre of a grassy flat surrounded by callitris pines! Is it any wonder that Giles wrote in his journal: —

'I have no Albert Nyanzas, no Tanganikas . . . like the great African travellers, to honor with Her Majesty's name, but the humble offering of little spring in a hideous desert.' He named this water Queen Victoria Springs.

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The recent death of Mr. Alexander Ross recalls this gallant trek of Ernest Giles and party in 1875-6 from Beltana to Perth. Although the practical results of this expedition were negative, the courage and doggedness shown by leader and men ranks it among the finest in the history of Australian exploration. Stuart had traversed the continent from south to north, Eyre from east to west along the coast; but much still remained to be learned of the hinterland when Giles came on the scene.

Born in the year of the founding of South Australia, Giles had been educated in England before joining his family in Victoria. Here he tried his luck on the diggings, took up a clerkship in Melbourne, but soon threw that up for a more open-air life.

Next he was up in new country west of the Darling, then exploring in Queensland before he returned to South Australia and began to open up unknown country north-west of Lake Eyre. He, like other explorers before him, found to his chagrin the change in the face of the countryside which the far back country takes on in a good season as against a bad one. On his earlier trips he was blessed with bountiful rains, running creeks and rock pools filled to brimming. Having once seen the country in such good heart, is it any wonder that he hoped against hope for a recurrence of such conditions?

Fourth Expedition

Giles's earlier trips were financed by Victorian capital, but now Mr. Thomas Elder came to the rescue to equip a fourth expedition with Giles as leader. Fortunate it was that, on Mr. Elder's suggestion, camels instead of horses were used. There were disadvantages in using the camel, but the advantages greatly outweighed these, and it is certain that the expedition would have perished on the inhospitable wastes of the inland plains had the camel not been used. It was the only animal able to negotiate the long, hundreds-of-miles stretches of the thirsty inland.

On May 6, 1875, the little band set out from Elder's station at Beltana. There was Giles himself, Tiekens as second in command, J. Young (who gathered specimens and planted seeds along the route), Alec Ross, Peter Nicholls (the cook), and Saleh, an Afghan camel driver. At Port Augusta they picked up stores and equipment provided by Mr. Elder, and Tommie. The latter was always smiling and altogether the most cheerful member of the whole party, according to Alec Ross. Even when the party was in such straits later from want of water, Tommie had no real understanding of the situation, for he asked Giles quite cheerfully. 'If we all die could I have the bag of trinkets?' (These were cheap necklaces and pocket knives which Giles had brought with him for the appeasement of any natives he might meet.)

So the string of 22 camels set out from Port Augusta, the last outpost of civilisation. At Wynbring they halted at 'a fertile little gem in a desolate waste,' then on to Youldeh, where a depot was formed in a spot where the red sandhills which had burnt them a few months before were encrusted with a sparkling coat of frost.

From Ooldabinna, Tiekens and Young went scouting northwards on the lookout for water, while Giles with Ross and Saleh pushed west in order to make a plant of water to help them on their way. Here they seemed to be in the desert in very truth, where there was nothing but sand and spinifex and 'the weird beauty of absolute sterility.' There was no trace of life, and 'the only sound the car could catch as hour after hour we slowly glided on was the passage of our noiseless-treading and spongy-footed 'ships' as they forced their way through the live and dead timber of the hideous scrubs.

One hundred and fifty-six miles from Ooldabinna there were the first signs of water in a native clay dam. Forty miles further on there was nothing better, so Giles returned to the others by a more southerly route in the hope of finding something better. There was nothing. At the camp Giles decided that their only hope of success depended on the slender chance that by the time they reached his dam again— Boundary Dam, near the boundary — rain would have fallen. A slender chance, but it so chanced that rain had fallen and there at the dam the whole party stayed for a week preparing for the future.

'I had set my own and my companions' lives upon a cast, and will stand the hazard of the die, and I may add that each one displayed at starting into the new unknown the greatest desire and eagerness for our attempt.'

In such a spirit, then, they began the next long trek. The scrub gave way to open, endless, waterless plains for ten days. Then after this utterly forsaken region, the mallee, she-oak and quandong appeared once more.

'We were on the worst desert probably upon the face of the earth; but that only gave us the more pleasure in conquering it,' he remarks, later adding, with a delightful touch of humor, that he could not even on account of the barrenness of the land and the absence of animal life, do 'as some Oriental travellers are accused of ... 'Geographers on desert downs, Place elephants instead of towns!'

Wrong Course

They were now 242 miles from the Boundary Dam on the thirteenth day out. The last water was given to the camels — eighty gallons — and they plodded on again, not knowing where the next water might be. Toward the evening of the sixteenth day, while Young was steering the course, Giles told him he was holding too close to northward.

'You take it then,' replied Young. Giles took the compass quietly and altered the course. It was a momentous decision. Towards sunset low white sandhills show up to the south which they would surely have missed had the course remained the same. Even then they might have passed on to a certain death from thirst had not Tommie's sharp eyes seen a track in the sand. . .

Natives Attack

The worst of the journey was over after that, though not by any means all their adventures. After a grateful stay of a week at Queen Victoria Spring, where men and camels both could recuperate after their privations Giles prepared for the last 390 miles. Two days march brought them to the first sign of a hill a granite outcrop, in the last 800 miles. Now the granite ridges became as monotonous as the sand ridges had been before, until at 302 miles they struck a natural well which they found from the blacks was named Ularring, and thus saved themselves, as Giles remarks, from having to invent one.

Here after the heat of the desert the weather was delightful under shady trees with quiet 'inoffensive natives.' Young cut red handkerchiefs into strips to decorate the natives and all went well until one evening when the party were at supper, unheeding Tommie's warnings that all was not well, they had only just time to snatch their rifles when a force of natives 100 strong was upon them.

Finally the 'inoffensive natives' were scattered and a huge bonfire was made of the spears, wommeras and boomerangs dropped. Here too, Young cut Giles's initials into a Grevillea tree — E.G.75— before leaving Ularring to the undisputed possession of the natives once more.

There were still six more days of difficult travelling through scrub until Mount Churchman, the objective for which Giles had been steering for so many months, was reached. From here was only a short journey to the outlying sheep stations. From this point on the expedition became a triumphal procession to Perth. They almost walked over Coolgardie without having any inkling of the nature of its possibilities; the land they traversed was valueless to the young colony; but the story of their trek will be told by our children's children for the epic it was.— G.B.