Queen Victoria Spring, Reported Permanent By Giles, Lay Some Seventy
Miles To The Eastward, And Attracted Our Attention; For Lindsay Had
Reported Quartz Country Near The Ponton, Not Far From The Spring, And The
Country Directly Between The Spring And Kurnalpi Was Unknown.
On April 15th we left Yindi, having seen the last water twenty-six miles
back near Gundockerta, and passed Mount Quinn, entering a dense thicket of
mulga, which lasted for the next twenty miles.
It was most awkward country
to steer through, and I often overheard Luck muttering to himself that I
was going all wrong, for he was a first-rate bushman and I a novice. I had
bought a little brumby from a man we met on the Plains, an excellent pony,
and most handy in winding his way through the scrub. Luck rode Jenny and
led the other two camels. Hereabouts we noticed a large number of old
brush fences - curiously I have never once seen a new one - which the
natives had set up for catching wallabies. The fences run out in long
wings, which meet in a point where a hole is dug. Neither wallabies nor
natives were to be seen, though occasionally we noticed where "bardies"
had been dug out, and a little further on a native grave, a hole about
three feet square by three feet deep, lined at the bottom with gum leaves
and strips of bark, evidently ready to receive the deceased. Luck, who
knew a good deal about native customs, told me that the grave, though
apparently only large enough for a child, was really destined for a grown
man. When a man dies his first finger is cut off, because he must not
fight in the next world, nor need he throw a spear to slay animals, as
game is supplied. The body is then bent double until the knees touch the
chin - this to represent a baby before birth; and in this cramped position
the late warrior is crammed into his grave, until, according to a
semi-civilised boy that I knew, he is called to the happy hunting grounds,
where he changes colour! "Black fella tumble down, jump up white fella."
A clear proof that this benighted people have some conception of a better
state hereafter.
Once through the scrub, we came again into gum-timbered country, and when
fifty miles east of Kurnalpi crossed a narrow belt of auriferous country,
but, failing to find water, were unable to stop. In a few miles we were in
desert country - undulations of sand and spinifex, with frequent clumps of
dense mallee, a species of eucalyptus, with several straggling stems
growing from one root, and little foliage except at the ends of the
branches, an untidy and melancholy-looking tree. There was no change in
the country till after noon on the 18th, when we noticed some grass-trees,
or black-boys, smaller than those seen near the coast, and presently
struck the outskirts of a little oasis, and immediately after an old camel
pad (Lindsay's in 1892, formed by a caravan of over fifty animals), which
we followed for a few minutes, until the welcome sight of Queen Victoria
Spring met our eyes. A most remarkable spot, and one that cannot be better
described than by quoting the words of its discoverer, Ernest Giles,
in 1875, who, with a party of five companions, fifteen pack, and seven
riding camels, happened on this spring just when they most needed water.
Giles says of it: -
"It is the most singularly placed water I have ever seen, lying in a small
hollow in the centre of a little grassy flat and surrounded by clumps of
funereal pines. . . . The water is no doubt permanent, for it is supplied
by the drainage of the sandhills which surround it and it rests on a
substratum of impervious clay. It lies exposed to view in a small, open
basin, the water being about only one hundred and fifty yards in
circumference and from two to three feet deep. Further up the slopes at
much higher levels native wells had been sunk in all directions - in each
and all of these there was water. Beyond the immediate precincts of this
open space the scrubs abound. . . . Before I leave this spot I had perhaps
better remark that it might prove a very difficult, perhaps dangerous,
place to any other traveller to attempt to find, because although there
are many white sandhills in the neighbourhood, the open space on which
the water lies is so small in area and so closely surrounded by scrubs,
that it cannot be seen from any conspicuous one, nor can any conspicuous
sandhill, distinguishable at any distance, be seen from it. On the top of
the banks above the wells was a beaten corroboree path, where the denizens
of the desert have often held their feasts and dances. Some grass-trees
grew in the vicinity of this spring to a height of over twenty
feet. . . ."
A charming spot indeed! but we found it to be hardly so cheerful as this
description would lead one to expect. For at first sight the Spring was
dry. The pool of water was now a dry clay-pan; the numerous native wells
were there, but all were dry. The prospect was sufficiently gloomy, for
our water was all but done, and poor Tommy, the pony, in spite of an
allowance of a billy-full per night, was in a very bad way, for we had
travelled nearly one hundred miles from the last water, and if this was
dry we knew no other that we could reach. However, we were not going to
cry before we were hurt and set to work to dig out the soak, and in a
short time were rewarded by the sight of water trickling in on all sides,
and, by roughly timbering the sides, soon had a most serviceable well - a
state of affairs greatly appreciated by Tommy and the camels.
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