The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 Part 43

Lake Torrens still occupied the attention of the South Australian colonists, its probable extent and direction, and several expeditions were undertaken to solve the question. To the south-east fresh water and well gra.s.sed pastoral country, but Lake Torrens still remained as on its first discovery by Eyre--a dry bed covered with a thick incrustation of salt, and far away surrounded on all sides by barren country. Goyder found fresh water in the lake, but its unavailability was confirmed.

M'Dowall Stuart has been recognised as the man who first crossed from sea to sea, from the south to the north coast, and now on Stuart's track is built the overland telegraph line, a lasting witness of his indomitable perseverance. In his subsequent expeditions following his old tracks, he was destined to meet success, and come to the sea near the mouth of the Adelaide River. Stuart dipped his hands and feet in the sea, and his initials were cut on the largest tree they could find. This was his last trip, and he never recovered from the great suffering of his return journey.

The expedition under Burke and Wills left amid great celebration; in fact, it was a gala day in Melbourne, and their journey through the settled districts one triumphant march. Their purpose was to cross to Carpentaria. Fate seemed so propitious that one would think in irony she laughed, as she thought of their return.

They accomplished their task; they reached the Gulf; but did not know their exact position; and when they turned back it became a terrible struggle for existence. In spite of the princely outfit with which they started, short rations and great hards.h.i.+ps was their lot, and the men tried to live like the blacks, on fish and nardoo, and an occasional crow or hawk which they shot. Wills met his death alone, while Burke and King were searching for food, and to him, suffering from such extreme exhaustion, death must have come as the "comforter." He met it as a gallant man would, without fear. From his last entries he had given up hope and waited calmly. Burke died the second day; when King looked at him in the dawning light, he saw that he was really, alone. Meantime, the rest of the party were left on Cooper's Creek, and were slowly starving to death. Parties from all sides were now being equipped to go in search of them.

M'Kinlay's trip across the continent did great service. It verified Stuart's report that the country always considered as a terrible desert was not unfit for all pastoral occupation, and, being an experienced man, his report carried conviction.

One of the search parties for Burke and Wills was under William Landsborough, having, through previous explorations, good knowledge of the country; and another, in charge of Frederick Walker, composed of native troopers. Now the eastern half of Australia was nearly all known; it had been crossed and re-crossed from south to north; still, the distinctive value of the country had yet to be learned, and the delusion that the sheeps' wool would turn to hair in the torrid north to be given up. All around the coast settlement was surely and steadily creeping, and unoccupied country going further back every day.

On the north coast, Burketown, under the care of William Landsbrough, was growing up, and in the north of Arnheim's Land, M'Kinlay was looking for a suitable site to establish a port for the South Australian Government.

Somerset was formed on the mainland of Cape York Peninsula, and the formation of this led to the expedition of the Jardine brothers. The successful termination of their journey, when we look at the difficulties through which they pa.s.sed, and the misfortunes they had to encounter, merits our greatest admiration; and although it did not result in the discovery of good pastoral country, still they accomplished their object.

The overland telegraph line, and the small explorations made on either side of it, led greatly to our knowledge of the interior.

John Forrest made his first important journey in 1869, but found no great results in good country to the eastward of Perth. Then a journey was made from Perth to Adelaide by way of the Great Bight--never traversed since Eyre's journey. Owing to a better equipment, he was able to give a more impartial report of the country pa.s.sed through; for Eyre was struggling for life, and it was natural that nature to him would then look at her blackest.

Warburton and Giles now occupied attention, and their great hope, the country between the overland telegraph line and the western settlements.

Warburton's expedition led to the western half of the continent being condemned as a hopeless desert. He no doubt got into a strip of barren country, and being so occupied in pressing straight through, devoted no time to the examination of country on either side.

Giles was twice driven back in his attempts to reach Western Australia.

Then, with an equipment of camels, made a third, and successful, attempt.

No discoveries of any importance were made; the country was suffering from severe drought.

William Hann, one of the pioneer squatters of the North of Queensland, took charge of a party sent by the Queensland Government to investigate the tract of country at the base of Cape York Peninsula, both for its mineral and other resources. Naming the Palmer, and finding here prospects of gold, the further examination of the river resulted in the discovery of what turned out to be one of the richest goldfields in Queensland.

Again the Queensland Government sent out an expedition, under charge of W. 0. Hodgkinson, to determine the amount of pastoral country to the west of the Diamantina River.

Buchanan and F. Scarr next attacked the country between the overland telegraph line and the Queensland border, and in 1878, Mr Lukin, proprietor of the COURIER, in Brisbane, organised an expedition for the purpose of exploring the country in the neighbourhood of a proposed railway line, which had been inaugurated in Port Darwin, and to find the nature, value, and geographical features of the unexplored portions.

Under the leaders.h.i.+p of Ernest Favenc, the party started from Blackall.

This expedition had the effect of opening up a great area of good pastoral country, nearly all of which is now stocked.

In 1883, Favenc traced the heads of the rivers running into the Gulf of Carpentaria, near the Queensland border, and in the year following, crossed from the Queensland border to the telegraph line, and across the coast range to the mouth of the Macarthur River. Soon after, the South Australian Government surveyed this river, and opened it as a port; a good road was formed from the interior to the coast, and the settlement of the country followed.

In Western Australia, Alexander Forrest led an expedition from the De Grey River to the telegraph line, which they reached after a great struggle. It was a most successful trip, and the district found contains some of the best country in Western Australia, both for pastoral and mineral purposes.

Stockdale, with a view to settlement, explored the country in the neighbourhood of Cambridge Gulf. Landing there by steamer, he began the journey, which ended in a tragedy. After a hard struggle, he reached the telegraph line.

McPhee's exploration east of Daly Waters may be said to conclude the expeditions between the Queensland border and the overland line.

To complete the exploration of Arnheim's Land, the South Australian Government fitted out an expedition under the guidance of Mr. David Lindsay, but the country pa.s.sed over was not available for pastoral settlement, some of it being good sugar country. Messrs. Carr Boyd and O'Donnell, undertaking another trip from the Katherine River to Western Australia, were more fortunate in finding good country, but no geographical discovery resulted.

Thus our island continent has been opened to us by the indomitable courage and endurance of navigators and explorers. Can we look for instances of greater bravery in the exploration of any other portion of the globe? Our old navigators, with their meagre equipment, searched minutely every portion of the coast, until the termination of the survey of the BEAGLE, for the mouth of some river that would communicate with the interior, as our earlier explorers hoped to find a waterway in the wilderness through which they travelled.

The idea of the work they did, being verified as it now is, could never have been dreamt of. Think of Flinders, in the old INVESTIGATOR, as he.

sailed from group to group of islands, and from point to point of reefs; when he got at last through Torres Straits, and stood down the Gulf, looking up the old land marks of the early Dutch visitors to our sh.o.r.es--Duyfhen Point, the Van Alphen River, GROOTE EYLANDT, and the rest--names still preserved, that bear witness to the brave old navigator who visited these sh.o.r.es before we did. Many an anxious day and night, doubtless, he had. Now, with steam at our command, the straits have become the safe highway of traffic to all the leading marts of the world.

It is well for us to bear in mind that, as a rule, experienced bushmen do find the best points of new country, and not the worst. The after result generally is that the discoveries of the first explorers are extended, but not improved on. Therefore, in comparing the different routes that traverse the western half of our continent, we can safely allow that each man found, and noted, the most promising features on his line of travel.

By close comparison of the work done by the men who have laid bare so many of the secrets of the interior, and by deductions to be drawn from the physical conformation and climatic peculiarities already revealed, we may, to some extent, conjecture the possibilities of the future. With every variety of climate between temperate and tropical, with enormous mineral treasures--the extent of which, even at the present time, can only be conjectured--boundless areas of virgin soils, and a coastline dotted with good harbours and navigable rivers, we have all the elements of a nation yet to take rank among the recognised powers of the world.

But in the interim there is much to be done. The flat and monotonous nature of most of the continent, which is at present to a certain extent our bane, will, when the principles of water storage, and its distributation are fully understood, be of wonderful a.s.sistance. The physical formation of the interior lends itself to the creation of artificial channels, and the work of leading waterways through the great areas of unwatered country, that for months lie useless and unproductive, will be comparatively easy. We have always, or nearly always, our annual floods to depend upon, and the supply furnished by them should be amply sufficient for use. Flood water is surplus water, and its conservation should be the thing aimed at. Many a dry watercourse, that is now but a slight depression, could be utilised as a channel for conducting the flood waters to the back country. What would be impossible in an island of bold mountain ranges, becomes easy in the flats of our dry interior.

In the dry inland plains, a water supply that will relieve the frontage from overstocking during the droughty months, means the preservation of some of our most valuable indigenous fodder plants. The overcrowding of stock on the natural permanent waters during dry periods, has often been the cause of a depreciation in the natural gra.s.ses on some of our princ.i.p.al rivers. And whilst this has been going on, sun-cracked lagoons and lakes, surrounded by good, if dry, feed have been lying unnoticed and useless, waiting for the time to come when they would be turned to account.

Back from the main watercourses are countless natural reservoirs, that lie for years dry, and drought-smitten, save in an exceptional flood.

They are never filled, and the fact of supplying them with water is practicably feasible.

In many districts of the inland slope, the rivers have sandy beds, incapable of retaining the water for more than a few months; whilst running parallel with them on either side, are chains of lagoons that often run dry through the floods not being excessive enough to overflow the banks. These lagoons are, as a rule, well calculated to hold water, and could be brought under the influence of ordinary floods, instead of being, as now, dependent upon extraordinary ones; thus atoning for the insufficient retaining power of the river bed.

The present great need of Australia is the conservation of water, and the irrigation works which have been already commenced on the banks of the Murray River, coupled with the recent discoveries of an apparently unlimited artesian supply on the and plains of Western Queensland, testify alike to the recognition of the want, and to the ease with which it may be met. One inevitable rule of settlement is that population follows water; present prospects therefore amply justify the hope that at no very distant date the one-time "central desert" of the first explorers will be the centre of attraction for the fast-growing population of the coast line; and that in the merging together of the peoples of the colonies, now separated by merely imaginary boundary lines, will be found the one great help to the fulfilment of the desire of every true Australiana Federated Australia--a grand result of the indomitable courage, heroic self-sacrifice, and dogged perseverance of the men of all nationalities, who have established a claim to the proud t.i.tle of "Australian Explorer."

APPENDIX.

THE PANDORA Pa.s.s.

The following memorandum, written on parchment, was enclosed in a bottle, and buried under a marked tree in the Pandora Pa.s.s:

"MEMORANDUM.

"After a very laborious and hara.s.sing journey from Bathurst, since April last, a party, consisting of five persons, under the direction of Allan Cunningham, H.M. Botanist (making the sixth individual), having failed of finding a route to Liverpool Plains, whilst tracing the south base of the Barrier Mountains (before us north), so far as fifty miles to the eastward of this spot, at length upon prosecuting their research under this great mountain belt, in a westerly direction, reached this valley, and discovered a practicable and easy pa.s.sage through a low part of the mountain belt, north by west from this tree, to the very extensive levels connected with the abovementioned plains, of which the southernmost of the chain is distant about eleven or twelve miles (by estimation), N.N.W.

from this valley, and to which a line of trees has been carefully marked, thus opening an unlimited, unbounded, seemingly well-watered country, N.N.W., to call forth the exertions of the industrious agriculturist and grazier, for whose benefit the present labours of the party have been extended. This valley, which extends to the S.W. and W.S.W., has been named 'Hawkesbury Vale,' and the highest point of the range, bearing N.W.

by W. from this tree, was called 'Mount Jenkinson,' the one a former t.i.tle, and the other the family name of the n.o.ble earl whose present t.i.tle the plains bear, and which, from the southern country, this gap affords the only pa.s.sage likely to be discovered. The party in the earlier and middle stages of their expedition encountered many privations and local difficulties of travelling to, and in their return from the eastward; in spite, however, of these little evils, 'a HOPE at the bottom,' or, at this almost close of their journey, an encouragement induced them to persevere westerly a limited distance, and thus it was this pa.s.sage was discovered. It has therefore been named 'Pandora's Pa.s.s.' Due east and west by compa.s.s from this tree, in a direct line (by odometrical admeasurement) were planted the fresh stones of peaches, brought from the colony in April last, with every good hope that their produce will one day or other afford some refreshment to the weary farmer, whilst on his route beyond the bourne of the desirable country north of Pandora's Pa.s.s. A like planting took place on the plains, twelve miles distance north at the last marked trees, with similar good wishes for their growth. A remarkably high mount above the pa.s.s east, being a guide to the traveller advancing south from the plains, has been named 'Direction Head.' The situation of this tree is as follows:--Lat.i.tude, observed on the 7th and 8th of June, 1832, 32 deg. 15 min. 19 sec. S; its longitude being presumed about 149 deg. 30 min. E. The party now proceed with the utmost despatch south for Bathurst.

"ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.

"June 9th, 1823.

"Buried for the information of the first farmer who may venture to advance so far to the northwards as this vale, of whom it is requested this doc.u.ment may not be destroyed, but carried to the settlement of Bathurst, after opening the bottle."

(See page 72.--Chapter II.)

DEATH OF SURVEYOR-GENERAL OXLEY.

ABSTRACT FROM THE "GOVERNMENT GAZETTE" OF MAY 27TH, 1828.