For those to whom the bush is
unfamiliar, meaning a tin pot for boiling tea in, and other such uses.
Certainly there was plenty of tin at Kurnalpi, and plenty of alluvial gold
as well for the lucky ones - amongst which we were not numbered. Poor
Driffield was much disgusted; he had looked upon gold-finding as the
simplest thing in the world - and so it is if you happen to look in the
right place! and when you do so it's a hundred to one that you think your
own cleverness and knowledge guided you to it! Chance? Oh dear, no! From
that time forth your reputation is made as "a shrewd fellow who knows a
thing or two"; and if your find was made in a mine, you are an "expert"
at once, and can command a price for your report on other mines
commensurate with the richness of your own!
As the gold would not come to us, and my partner disliked the labour of
seeking it, we returned to Coolgardie, and set about looking after the
mines we already had. Financial schemes or business never had any charms
for me; when therefore I heard that the Company had cabled out that a
prospecting party should be despatched at once, I eagerly availed myself
of the chance of work so much to my taste. As speed was an object, and
neither camels nor men procurable owing to the rush, we did not waste any
time in trying to form a large expedition, such as the soul of the London
director loveth, but contented ourselves with the camels already to hand.
On March 24, 1894, we started; Luck, myself, and three camels - Omerod,
Shimsha, and Jenny by name - with rations for three months, and
instructions to prospect the Hampton Plains as far as the supply of
surface water permitted; failing a long stay in that region I could go
where I thought best.
To the east and north-east of Coolgardie lie what are known as the Hampton
Plains - so named by Captain Hunt, who in 1864 led an expedition past York,
eastward, into the interior. Beyond the Hampton Plains he was forced back
by the Desert, and returned to York with but a sorry tale of the country
he had seen. "An endless sea of scrub," was his apt description of the
greater part of the country. Compared to the rest, the Hampton Plains were
splendid pastoral lands. Curiously enough, Hunt passed and repassed close
to what is now Coolgardie, and, though reporting quartz and ironstone,
failed to hit upon any gold. Nor was he the only one; Coolgardie had
several narrow squeaks of being found out.
Giles and Forrest both traversed districts since found to be gold-bearing,
and though, like Hunt, reporting, and even bringing back specimens of
quartz and ironstone, had the bad luck to miss finding even a "colour."
Alexander Forrest, Goddard, and Lindsay all passed within appreciable
distance of Coolgardie without unearthing its treasures, though in
Lindsay's journal the geologist to the expedition pronounced the country
auriferous.
