Across No Mans Land in Central Australia part 1

This is the first of three articles by Mr. Michael Terry, who recently returned from a prospecting expedition in the wilderness near the the Western Australian border. False reports of rain led to serious trouble.
By Michael Terry, F.R.G.S., F.R.E.S.

It is now 60 years since the first explorers ventured into the hinter land lying between the Adelaide-Darwin telegraph line and West Australian settlement. Since Giles, Gosse, Warburton, and Forrest reported their discoveries, more than one hundred parties of bushmen have amplified their work, yet there still remains much to be done – untold miles still to be traversed and many a curious sights to be recorded before the final chapters can be written. The party which I have just ceased to lead on behalf of the Emu Mining Company has been taking its share of this latter day work, and we have returned with a few more specimens and a few more facts for the outside world. Moreover, every sort of experience which one anticipates so far away from settlement has been ours – not always for the asking, but thrust upon us when it was far from desirable.

At the outset, rains which reports had led us to expect proved not to have fallen. So, where we had looked for easy stages, there developed day after day of struggle to reach one point after another, on two occasions, in particular, with the smallest margin of safety. At the outset, the water called ‘Ilbilba’, in the Ehrenberg Range, which featured so prominently in the affairs of the Mackay Aerial Survey and Lasseter expeditions, let us down with a nasty bump. Away up a gorge in the range, we found the hole sunk in limestone, but when three gallons had been bailed out for our very dry camels, no more trickled into the basin. We had to pack up without delay. Luckily a big thunderstorm had passed over the route some miles back, and in its track we found two rock holes which did indeed save us from a proper scramble to the nearest permanent water. We called them the ‘Salvation Rock Holes’.

The Black Shaft Soakage

Shortly afterwards, the camels put up a performance which cannot be far below a record. Setting out westwards from Mount Singleton, packing 110 gallons of water for ourselves, the outfit commenced a determined attempt to reach the shore of Lake Mackay, discovered from the air in 1930 but not previously visited by a white man. Soon after passing Mount Farewell, we came to an area of low, jumbled hills, where fresh Aboriginal tracks indicated water not far away. After an early breakfast on a frosty winter’s morning, I rode away on our camels to follow the tracks. In a couple of miles, other tracks joined these, and soon a regular pad led us to a detached clump of mulga. Here, camp fires were still burning, so, apprehensive of hostility, we “wooshed” the camels down. Having dismounted, we led them between the trees. Almost at once we came upon a clear space, and in its centre a low, rounded outcrop of granite met our eyes. Tying our beasts to a tree, we walked over to investigate, and to our great surprise discovered the Black Shaft Soakage, a small tunnel descending at 45 degrees through the granite.

Stuck In The Shaft

Shortly, the team arrived in answer to our smoke signal, and we proceeded to open up the shaft. Selecting the camel boy, Jack, for his thinness, we sent him down head first to investigate with a lamp. But after he had had a good look and seen the water twenty two feet below, imagine our consternation and some amusement when while his mate Lockey was pulling him out by the feet, he got stuck! To get to the water the natives must have sent down children, for we had to do quite a bit of enlarging before our somewhat scared mate could be happily extricated. By late afternoon, about three tons of dirt had been hauled up by bucket and a respectably sized shaft operated. Alas, the supply was too small, the net result being more water lost in sweat than gained from the shaft. So, like Van der Vecken, condemned to sail on in his ghost ship for ever, we poor desert rats had to mount our camels and try elsewhere.

The arrival of Chou-Chou

During the day, however, we gained something more than experience—and that was Chou-Chou. As a wanderer deserted by the natives, who must have fled on our approach, he almost collected a bullet when Lockey sang out “Wild dog coming”— but luckily amplified his words with, “Him quiet fellow all right,” while O’Grady got out a rifle to make sure. Soon Nicker, to our great surprise, got the dingo to drink out of a tin, after which all timidity vanished and this tamed denizen of the wilderness simply attached himself to us for a couple of months, until he heard the call of the wild again, and vanished without warning or regret.

Dingo – Drawing by Natalie Jane Parker

But what fun Chou-Chou gave us, especially when, to test his voracious appetite, he was given a large opossum and two full grown spinifex rats, each as large as the opossum. Imagine the amusement of every one when, without pause, he devoured all three in the most startling fashion. Beginning at the nose he simply chewed and chewed until the entire carcase, bones, flesh, “innards,” and all had disappeared down his throat, even to the last tip of the tail. No waste, no mess —how thorough. As we rode away from the Black Shaft, he trotted beside the string, but when I rode ahead he used to run after my camel, sit down, look back at the string and then howl dismally at their slowness. His first effort in camp was to run round the saddles and eat the leather mountings. This trait was not discovered till someone yelled with horror when he was calmly starting to devour a pair of boots! But despite the fearful fuss he kicked up at first, he soon got used to the chain, although one day while a load was being reset, he took a lump out of a camel’s ribs in sheer lust for warm meat.

Chou-Chou Finds Native Well

By and by, having passed the McEwin Hills, we reached the Sandford Breakaways close to the north-eastern shore of Lake Mackay. On a clear Tea Tree flat, loads were un-roped for the night without delay, as the day was far spent. Chou-chou, however, wanted to travel further, and trotted ahead to a bush by an ant hill a few hundred yards away. Curiosity was aroused by the way he ran there and sniffed about, so we, also, had a look. Great was our pleasure when we found him at the mouth of the most remarkable native well any of us had ever seen. Level with the ground, all the dump having been washed away by rains ages ago, was a big round hole ten feet in diameter. Further examination next morning revealed that some people, evidently far more energetic than us, had, in solid sandstone, sunk a circular well to a depth of at least 35 feet.

This much we know for sure, as we measured the distance to the water. As time has gone on, the original cavity has become filled with dirt, and now the natives have tunnelled down in a corkscrew fashion to the quicksand, where, by tamping back the mush, they gain the water by seepage. Though we did much work to open it up, the supply of O’Grady’s Well gave us only one and a half gallons an hour, such water as was bailed out tasted like flat soda water, had an iridescent scum, frothed when poured, and was unfit for human consumption, nor palatable even for the camels, which were by then becoming very thirsty.  To be continued next week