The Personnel Of My First Expedition Into The Interior Consisted In The First Instance Of Myself, Mr. Carmichael, And A Young Black Boy.

I intended to engage the services of another white man at the furthest outpost that I could secure one.

From Port Augusta I despatched the bulk of my stores by a team to the Peake, and made a leisurely progress up the overland road via Beltana, the Finniss and Strangways Springs stations. Our stores reached the Peake station before us. This station was originally called Mount Margaret, but subsequently removed to the mound-springs near the south bank of the Peake Creek; it was a cattle station formed by Mr. Phillip Levi of Adelaide. The character of the country is an open stony plateau, upon which lines of hills or ranges rise; it is intersected by numerous watercourses, all trending to Lake Eyre, and was an excellent cattle run. The South Australian Government erected the telegraph station in the immediate vicinity of the cattle station. When the cattle station was first formed in 1862 the natives were very numerous and very hostile, but at the time of my visit, ten years later, they were comparatively civilised. At the Peake we were enabled to re-shoe all our horses, for the stony road up from Port Augusta had worn out all that were put on there. I also had an extra set fitted for each horse, rolled up in calico, and marked with its name. At the Peake I engaged a young man named Alec Robinson, who, according to his account, could do everything, and had been everywhere, who knew the country I was about to explore perfectly well, and who had frequently met and camped with blacks from the west coast, and declared we could easily go over there in a few weeks. He died at one of the telegraph stations a year or two after he left me. I must say he was very good at cooking, and shoeing horses. I am able to do these useful works myself, but I do not relish either. I had brought a light little spring cart with me all the way from Melbourne to the Peake, which I sold here, and my means of transit from thence was with pack-horses. After a rather prolonged sojourn at the Peake, where I received great hospitality from Mr. Blood, of the Telegraph Department, and from Messrs. Bagot, the owners, and Mr. Conway, the manager, we departed for the Charlotte.

My little black boy Dick, or, as he used generally to write, and call himself, Richard Giles Kew, 1872, had been at school at Kew, near Melbourne. He came to me from Queensland; he had visited Adelaide, Melbourne, and Sydney, and had been with me for nearly three years, but his fears of wild natives were terribly excited by what nearly everybody we met said to him about them. This was not surprising, as it was usually something to this effect, in bush parlance: "By G - , young feller, just you look out when you get OUTSIDE! the wild blacks will [adjective] soon cook you. They'll kill YOU first, you know - they WILL like to cut out your kidney fat! They'll sneak on yer when yer goes out after the horses, they'll have yer and eat yer." This being the burden of the strain continually dinned into the boy's ears, made him so terrified and nervous the farther we got away from civilisation, that soon after leaving the Peake, as we were camping one night with some bullock teams returning south, the same stories having been told him over again, he at last made up his mind, and told me he wanted to go back with one of the teamsters; he had hinted about this before, and both Carmichael and Robinson seemed to be aware of his intention. Force was useless to detain him; argument was lost on him, and entreaty I did not attempt, so in the morning we parted. I shall mention him again by-and-bye. He was a small, very handsome, light-complexioned, very intelligent, but childish boy, and was frequently mistaken for a half-caste; he was a splendid rider and tracker, and knew almost everything. He was a great wit, as one remark of his will show. In travelling up the country after he had been at school, we once saw some old deserted native gunyahs, and he said to me as we rode by, pointing to them, "Gentleman's 'ouse, villa residence, I s'pose, he's gone to his watering place for the season p'r'aps." At another time, being at a place called Crowlands, he asked me why it was called so. I replied pointing to a crow on a tree, "Why, there's the crow," and stamping with my foot on the ground, "there's the land;" he immediately said, "Oh, now I know why my country is called Queensland, because it's land belonging to our Queen." I said, "Certainly it is;" then he said, "Well, ain't it funny? I never knew that before." In Melbourne, one day, we were leaning out of a window overlooking the people continually passing by. Dick said, "What for, - white fellow always walk about - walk about in town - when he always rides in the bush?" I said, "Oh, to do their business." "Business," he asked, "what's that?" I said, "Why, to get money, to be sure." "Money," he said; "white fellow can't pick up money in the street."

From the Peake we had only pack-horses and one little Scotch terrier dog. Dick left us at Hann's Creek, thirty miles from the Peake. On our road up, about halfway between the Peake and the Charlotte, we crossed and camped at a large creek which runs into the Finke, called the Alberga. Here we met a few natives, who were friendly enough, but who were known to be great thieves, having stolen things from several bullock drays, and committed other robberies; so we had to keep a sharp look out upon them and their actions.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 14 of 200
Words from 13485 to 14495 of 204780