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.
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