Such a
man is Billy Frost, to quote a well-known name on the goldfields, a man
who has had no chance to learn any of the rudiments of surveying, and who
started life as a boundary rider on a cattle station. He has shown me a
note-book in which he has jotted down directions and distances from water.
In mountainous country where landmarks are numerous the traveller may
manage it; but no man could travel for any length of time without keeping
some sort of reckoning, in a flat country like the interior of Western
Australia, where for days together one sees no hill or rise, without
before long becoming hopelessly lost.
Paddy Egan had been content to travel in this haphazard way, and it was
long before he would acknowledge the benefits of a compass and map. That
he could travel straight there was no gainsaying, for if, as I sometimes
did, I pointed out our line and sent him ahead, he would go as straight as
a die, with now and then a glance at the sun, and a slight alteration in
his course to allow for its altered position, and require but little
correction. Indeed, even when using a compass, one instinctively pays as
much and more attention to the sun or the stars, as the case may be.
The rock-hole at Beri was dry, so we pushed on for Lake Roe, and, though
we worked sinking holes until past midnight, and nearly the whole of the
next day, we were unable to find water. It was only salt water we
expected, but a stiff pipeclay, continuing to a depth too great for our
limited means of sinking, baffled all our efforts. I followed the lake
some six miles to the eastward, carrying a shovel and digging trial holes
at intervals, but this pipeclay foiled me everywhere.
I do not know how far this lake runs east, and fancy its limits have never
been laid down on the map; not that there is anything sufficiently
inviting in its appearance - the usual flat expanse of mud, with banks of
sand fringed with low straggling mallee and spinifex - to warrant further
investigation.
Lake Roe having failed us, we turned on our tracks for the nearest point
of Lake Lapage, some nine miles distant. Here we were more fortunate, and
obtained a splendid supply of salt water at a depth of only three feet.
Timber was not easily got - that would have been too much joy! It had to
be carried nearly half a mile on our shoulders, for the camels, having
travelled all day, deserved a rest.
