Australian Bushmen Do Not, As A Rule, Make Good
Walkers - Their Home Has Been The Saddle.
It was the more necessary,
therefore, that we should start on foot at once and carry out a system of
training, in which I am a great believer; thus we never ate or drank
between breakfast at daylight and tea at night - from nine to eleven hours
afterwards.
Stopping in the middle of the day wastes time, and entails the
unloading of the camels or putting them down with their burdens on, a
very bad plan; the time so spent at midday is far more valuable in the
evening, when the camels can employ it by feeding. Then again, a meal,
really unnecessary, during the day soon makes an appreciable difference in
the amount of provisions used. Breaden and Godfrey consoled themselves
with tobacco, but Charlie and I were not smokers. I used to be, but gave
up the practice because it made me so dry - an effect that it does not have
on every one, some finding that a smoke relieves not only hunger but
thirst. I have only one objection to a smoker as a travelling companion,
and that is, that if by some horrible mishap he runs out of tobacco, he
becomes quite unbearable. The same holds with an excessive tea-drinker.
I was specially careful, therefore, to have a sufficient supply of these
articles. A large amount of tea was not required, since Godfrey was the
only confirmed tea-drinker.
On July 15th we reached Menzies, having followed the telegraph line to
that point. And a very badly constructed line this is, the poles being
timber and not sunk sufficiently deep into the ground - a contract job.
The iron poles which are now used in the Government-constructed lines are
a vast improvement. Menzies was the last town we called at, and was not
so specially inviting that we regretted leaving it. Niagara, the next
city, we avoided, and turned up the old Lake Darlot road, some fifteen
miles to the west of it. Between Menzies and Sandy Creek, close to where
we turned, the open, saltbush plain which fringes the salt lake, Lake
Prinsep, was looking quite charming, dotted all over with patches of
splendid green and yellow herbage, plants like our clover and dandelion,
and thousands of pink and white everlastings. There can be no doubt that
with a better rainfall or with some means of irrigation, could artesian
water be found, a great part of the goldfields would be excellent pastoral
land. As it is, however, a few weeks suffice to again alter the face of
the country to useless aridity. We camped a day on Sandy Creek, to allow
our beasts to enjoy, while they could, the luscious green feed; I embraced
the opportunity of taking theodolite observations for practice. The pool,
some eighty yards long, and twenty wide, fringed with overhanging bushes
and weeping willow with its orange-red berries, made a pretty picture;
turkeys evidently came there to water, but we had not the luck to
shoot any.
The northern track from Sandy Creek deviated so much on account of
watering-places, thick scrub, and broken rocks, that we left it and cut
through the bush to some clay-pans south of Cutmore's Well; and
successfully negotiated on our way the lake that had given me so much
trouble when I and the fever were travelling together. All through the
scrub every open spot was covered with grass, that horrible spear-grass
(ARISTIDI), the seeds of which are so troublesome to sheep and horses.
I have seen sores in a horse's mouth into which one could put two
fingers, the flesh eaten away by these vicious little seeds. When turned
out on this kind of grass, horses' mouths should be cleaned every day.
Camels do not suffer, as they seldom eat grass unless long, young, and
specially succulent. We, however, were rather annoyed by the persistent
way in which the seeds worked through our clothes and blankets; and before
much walking, our trousers were fringed with a mass of yellow seeds, like
those of a carter who has wound wisps of straw round his ankles. Truly
rain is a marvellous transformer; not only vegetable but animal life is
affected by it; the bush is enlivened by the twittering of small birds,
which come from nobody knows where, build their nests, hatch out their
young, and disappear! Almost every bush held a nest, usually occupied by a
diamond-sparrow. Her nest is round, like a wren's, with one small entrance
and is built roughly of grass, lined with soft, small feathers. The eggs,
numbering four to five in the few nests we disturbed, are white and of the
size and shape of our hedge-sparrow's. I am pretty sure that the nesting
season depends entirely on the rain. After rain, the birds nest, however
irregular the seasons.
As well as small birds, teal had found their way to the clay-pans, and
gave us both sport and food. These water-holes are the tail-end of
Wilson's Creek, on which is sunk Cutmore's Well, where splendid water was
struck at a depth of about eighty feet. Flood-waters from the creek spread
out over these flats, and eventually reach the lake already mentioned,
to the South. The caretaker at the Well occupied his spare time by growing
vegetables, and our last meal, with white men near us, for many months to
come, was accompanied by pumpkins and turnips. Camped here, too, was a mob
of cattle, about 130 head. The stockmen told us they had started from the
head of the Gascoyne River with 2,000 sheep and 150 bullock's. Leaving the
station, some four hundred miles to the N.N.W. of Cutmore's, they
travelled by Lake Way, where a fair-sized mining community was then
established, and Lawlers, where the advance of civilisation was marked by
numerous "pubs." Their stock had not suffered from want of food or
water - in fact, a very general rain seemed to have spread from Coolgardie
to the Nor'-West.
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