Australia Twice Traversed - The Romance Of Exploration, Through Central South Australia, And Western Australia, From 1872 To 1876 By Ernest Giles
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The Natives In This, As In Most Other Parts Of Australia,
Seldom Hunt Without Making Perpetual Grass Or Spinifex Fires,
And the
traveller in these wilds may be always sure that the natives are in
the neighbourhood when he can
See the smokes, but it by no means
follows that because there are smokes there must be water. An
inversion of the terms would be far more correct, and you might safely
declare that because there is water there are sure to be smokes, and
because there are smokes there are sure to be fires and because there
are fires there are sure to be natives, the present case being no
exception to the rule, as several columns of smoke appeared in various
directions. Old Jimmy's native name was Nanthona; in consequence he
was generally called Anthony, but he liked neither; he preferred
Jimmy, and asked me always to call him so. When at Youldeh the old
fellow had mentioned this spot, Wynbring, as the farthest water he
knew to the eastwards, and now that we had arrived at it, he declared
that beyond it there was nothing; it was the ultima thule of all his
geographical ideas; he had never seen, heard, or thought of anything
beyond it. It was certainly a most agreeable little oasis, and an
excellent spot for an explorer to come to in such a frightful region.
Here were the three requisites that constitute an explorer's
happiness - that is to say, wood, water, and grass, there being
splendid green feed and herbage on the few thousand acres of open
ground around the rock.
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