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AUSTRALIA TWICE TRAVERSED.

THE ROMANCE OF EXPLORATION,

BEING

A NARRATIVE COMPILED FROM THE JOURNALS

OF

FIVE EXPLORING EXPEDITIONS

INTO AND THROUGH

CENTRAL SOUTH AUSTRALIA, AND WESTERN AUSTRALIA,

FROM 1872 TO 1876.

BY

ERNEST GILES

FELLOW, AND GOLD MEDALLIST, OF THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON.


"GO FORTH, MY BOOK, AND SHOW THE THINGS,
PILGRIMAGE UNTO THE PILGRIM BRINGS."

BUNYAN.


(PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR. Signed: "Yours faithfully, Ernest Giles.")


CONTENTS.

AUTHOR'S NOTES.

INTRODUCTION.

PREFACE.


BOOK 1.

CHAPTER 1.1. From 4th to 30th August, 1872.

CHAPTER 1.2. From 30th August to 6th September, 1872.

CHAPTER 1.3. From 6th to 17th September, 1872.

CHAPTER 1.4. From 17th September to 1st October, 1872.

CHAPTER 1.5. From 1st to 15th October, 1872.

CHAPTER 1.6. From 15th October, 1872 to 31st January, 1873.


BOOK 2.

CHAPTER 2.1. From 4th to 22nd August, 1873.

CHAPTER 2.2. From 22nd August to 10th September, 1873.

CHAPTER 2.3. From 10th to 30th September, 1873.

CHAPTER 2.4. From 30th September to 9th November, 1873.

CHAPTER 2.5. From 9th November to 23rd December, 1873.

CHAPTER 2.6. From 23rd December, 1873 to 16th January, 1874.

CHAPTER 2.7. From 16th January to 19th February, 1874.

CHAPTER 2.8. From 20th February to 12th March, 1874.

CHAPTER 2.9. From 12th March to 19th April, 1874.

CHAPTER 2.10. From 20th April to 21st May, 1874.

CHAPTER 2.11. From 21st May to 20th July, 1874.


BOOK 3.

CHAPTER 3.1. From 13th March to 1st April, 1875.

CHAPTER 3.2. From 2nd April to 6th May, 1875.


BOOK 4.

CHAPTER 4.1. From 6th May to 27th July, 1875.

CHAPTER 4.2. From 27th July to 6th October, 1875.

CHAPTER 4.3. From 6th October to 18th October, 1875.

CHAPTER 4.4. From 18th October to 18th November, 1875.


BOOK 5.

CHAPTER 5.1. From 18th November, 1875 to 10th April, 1876.

CHAPTER 5.2. From 10th April to 7th May, 1876.

CHAPTER 5.3. From 7th May to 10th June, 1876.

CHAPTER 5.4. From 11th June to 23rd August, 1876.

CHAPTER 5.5. From 23rd August to 20th September, 1876.


APPENDIX.


INDEX.




ILLUSTRATIONS.

PORTRAIT OF AUTHOR.

CHAMBERS' PILLAR.

THE MOLOCH HORRIDUS.

VIEW IN THE GLEN OF PALMS.

PALM-TREE FOUND IN THE GLEN OF PALMS.

GLEN EDITH.

PENNY'S CREEK.

ESCAPE GLEN--THE ADVANCE.

ESCAPE GLEN--THE RETREAT.

MIDDLETON'S PASS AND FISH PONDS.

JUNCTION OF THE PALMER AND THE FINKE.

AN INCIDENT OF TRAVEL.

TIETKENS'S BIRTHDAY CREEK AND MOUNT CARNARVON.

ON BIRTHDAY CREEK.

ENCOUNTER WITH NATIVES AT "THE OFFICER," MUSGRAVE RANGE.

THE FAIRIES' GLEN.

ZOE'S GLEN.

THE STINKING PIT.

ATTACK AT FORT MUELLER.

DRAGGED BY DIAWAY.

ATTACK AT SLADEN WATER.

GILL'S PINNACLE.

VIEW ON THE PETERMANN RANGE.

ATTACK AT THE FARTHEST EAST.

MOUNT OLGA.

CIRCUS WATER.

FIRST VIEW OF THE ALFRED AND MARIE RANGE.

THE LAST EVER SEEN OF GIBSON.

ALONE IN THE DESERT.

JIMMY AT FORT MCKELLAR.

THE HERMIT HILL AND FINNISS SPRING.

WYNBRING ROCK.

LITTLE SALT LAKE.

IN QUEEN VICTORIA'S DESERT.

QUEEN VICTORIA'S SPRING.

ATTACK AT ULARRING.

FORCING A PASSAGE THROUGH THE SCRUBS IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA.

FIRST VIEW OF MOUNT CHURCHMAN.

THE FIRST WHITE MAN MET IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA.

ARRIVAL AT CULHAM (SAMUEL PHILLIPS'S).

ARRIVAL AT PERTH.

ARRIVAL AT THE TOWN HALL, PERTH.

FAREWELL TO WESTERN AUSTRALIA.

GLEN ROSS.

GLEN FERDINAND.

MAP OF FIRST EXPEDITION, 1872.

MAP OF SECOND EXPEDITION, 1873-4.

MAP OF AUSTRALIA, SHOWING THE SEVERAL ROUTES.

MAP OF THIRD EXPEDITION, 1875.

MAP OF FOURTH EXPEDITION, 1875.

MAP OF FIFTH EXPEDITION, 1876.



AUTHOR'S NOTES.

The original journals of the field notes, from which the present
narrative is compiled, were published, as each expedition ended, as
parliamentary papers by the Government of the Colony of South
Australia.

The journals of the first two expeditions, formed a small book, which
was distributed mostly to the patrons who had subscribed to the fund
for my second expedition. The account of the third, found its way into
the South Australian "Observer," while the records of the fourth and
fifth journeys remained as parliamentary documents, the whole never
having appeared together. Thus only fragments of the accounts of my
wanderings became known; and though my name as an explorer has been
heard of, both in Australia and England, yet very few people even in
the Colonies are aware of what I have really done. Therefore it was
thought that a work embodying the whole of my explorations might be
acceptable to both English and Colonial readers.

Some years have been allowed to elapse since these journeys were
commenced; but the facts are the same, and to those not mixed up in
the adventures, the incidents as fresh as when they occurred.

Unavoidably, I have had to encounter a large area of desert country in
the interior of the colonies of South Australia, and Western
Australia, in my various wanderings; but I also discovered
considerable tracts of lands watered and suitable for occupation.

It is not in accordance with my own feelings in regard to Australia
that I am the chronicler of her poorer regions; and although an
Englishman, Australia has no sincerer well-wisher; had it been
otherwise, I could not have performed the work these volumes record.
It has indeed been often a cause of regret that my lines of march
should have led me away from the beautiful and fertile places upon
Australia's shores, where our countrymen have made their homes.

On the subject of the wonderful resources of Australia I am not called
upon to enlarge, and surely all who have heard her name must have
heard also of her gold, copper, wool, wine, beef, mutton, wheat,
timber, and other products; and if any other evidence were wanting to
show what Australia really is, a visit to her cities, and an
experience of her civilisation, not forgetting the great revenues of
her different provinces, would dispel at once all previous inaccurate
impressions of those who, never having seen, perhaps cannot believe in
the existence of them.

In the course of this work my reader will easily discover to whom it
is dedicated, without a more formal statement under such a heading.
The preface, which may seem out of its place, is merely such to my own
journeys. I thought it due to my readers and my predecessors in the
Australian field of discovery, that I should give a rapid epitome
(which may contain some minor errors) of what they had done, and which
is here put forward by way of introduction.

Most of the illustrations, except one or two photographs, were
originally from very rough sketches, or I might rather say scratches,
of mine, improved upon by Mr. Val Prinsep, of Perth, Western
Australia, who drew most of the plates referring to the camel
expeditions, while those relating to the horse journeys were sketched
by Mr. Woodhouse, Junr., of Melbourne; the whole, however, have
undergone a process of reproduction at the hands of London artists.

To Mrs. Cashel Hoey, the well-known authoress and Australian
correspondent, who revised and cleared my original manuscripts, I have
to accord my most sincere thanks. To Mr. Henniker-Heaton, M.P., who
appears to be the Imperial Member in the British Parliament for all
Australia, I am under great obligations, he having introduced me to
Mr. Marston, of the publishing firm who have produced these volumes. I
also have to thank Messrs. Clowes and Sons for the masterly way in
which they have printed this work. Also Messrs. Creed, Robinson,
Fricker, and Symons, of the publishing staff. The maps have been
reproduced by Weller, the well-known geographer.

(ILLUSTRATION: Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society of London.
"Victoria D.G. Britanniarum Regina, 1837, Patrona.
Or, Terras Reclusas, Ernest Giles, 1880.")


INTRODUCTION.

Before narrating my own labours in opening out portions of the unknown
interior of Australia, it will be well that I should give a succinct
account of what others engaged in the same arduous enterprise around
the shores and on the face of the great Southern Continent, have
accomplished.

After the wondrous discoveries of Columbus had set the Old World into
a state of excitement, the finding of new lands appears to have become
the romance of that day, as the exploration by land of unknown regions
has been that of our time; and in less than fifty years after the
discovery of America navigators were searching every sea in hopes of
emulating the deeds of that great explorer; but nearly a hundred years
elapsed before it became known in Europe that a vast and misty land
existed in the south, whose northern and western shores had been met
in certain latitudes and longitudes, but whose general outline had not
been traced, nor was it even then visited with anything like a
systematic geographical object. The fact of the existence of such a
land at the European antipodes no doubt set many ardent and
adventurous spirits upon the search, but of their exploits and labours
we know nothing.

The Dutch were the most eager in their attempts, although Torres, a
Spaniard, was, so far as we know, the first to pass in a voyage from
the West Coast of America to India, between the Indian or Malay
Islands, and the great continent to the south, hence we have Torres
Straits. The first authentic voyager, however, to our actual shores
was Theodoric Hertoge, subsequently known as Dirk Hartog--bound from
Holland to India. He arrived at the western coast between the years
1610 and 1616. An island on the west coast bears his name: there he
left a tin plate nailed to a tree with the date of his visit and the
name of his ship, the Endragt, marked upon it. Not very long after
Theodoric Hertoge, and still to the western and north-western coasts,
came Zeachern, Edels, Nuitz, De Witt, and Pelsart, who was wrecked
upon Houtman's Albrolhos, or rocks named by Edels, in his ship the
Leewin or Lion. Cape Leewin is called after this vessel. Pelsart left
two convicts on the Australian coast in 1629. Carpenter was the next
navigator, and all these adventurers have indelibly affixed their
names to portions of the coast of the land they discovered. The next,
and a greater than these, at least greater in his navigating
successes, was Abel Janz Tasman, in 1642. Tasman was instructed to
inquire from the native inhabitants for Pelsart's two convicts, and to
bring them away with him, IF THEY ENTREATED HIM; but they were never
heard of again. Tasman sailed round a great portion of the Australian
coast, discovered what he named Van Diemen's land, now Tasmania, and
New Zealand. He it was who called the whole, believing it to be one,
New Holland, after the land of his birth. Next we have Dampier, an
English buccaneer--though the name sounds very like Dutch; it was
probably by chance only that he and his roving crew visited these
shores. Then came Wilhelm Vlaming with three ships. God save the mark
to call such things ships. How the men performed the feats they did,
wandering over vast and unknown oceans, visiting unknown coasts with
iron-bound shores, beset with sunken reefs, subsisting on food not fit
for human beings, suffering from scurvy caused by salted diet and
rotten biscuit, with a short allowance of water, in torrid zones, and
liable to be attacked and killed by hostile natives, it is difficult
for us to conceive. They suffered all the hardships it is possible to
imagine upon the sea, and for what? for fame, for glory? That their
names and achievements might be handed down to us; and this seems to
have been their only reward; for there was no Geographical Society's
medal in those days with its motto to spur them on.

Vlaming was the discoverer of the Swan River, upon which the seaport
town of Fremantle and the picturesque city of Perth, in Western
Australia, now stand. This river he discovered in 1697, and he was the
first who saw Dirk Hartog's tin plate.

Dampier's report of the regions he had visited caused him to be sent
out again in 1710 by the British Government, and upon his return, all
previous doubts, if any existed, as to the reality of the existence of
this continent, were dispelled, and the position of its western shores
was well established. Dampier discovered a beautiful flower of the pea
family known as the Clianthus Dampierii. In 1845 Captain Sturt found
the same flower on his Central Australian expedition, and it is now
generally known as Sturt's Desert Pea, but it is properly named in its
botanical classification, after its original discoverer.

After Dampier's discoveries, something like sixty years elapsed before
Cook appeared upon the scene, and it was not until his return to
England that practical results seemed likely to accrue to any nation
from the far-off land. I shall not recapitulate Cook's voyages; the
first fitted out by the British Government was made in 1768, but Cook
did not touch upon Australia's coast until two years later, when,
voyaging northwards along the eastern coast, he anchored at a spot he
called Botany Bay, from the brightness and abundance of the beautiful
wild flowers he found growing there. Here two natives attempted to
prevent his landing, although the boats were manned with forty men.
The natives threw stones and spears at the invaders, but nobody was
killed. At this remote and previously unvisited spot one of the crew
named Forby Sutherland, who had died on board the Endeavour, was
buried, his being the first white man's grave ever dug upon
Australia's shore; at least the first authenticated one--for might not
the remaining one of the two unfortunate convicts left by Pelsart have
dug a grave for his companion who was the first to die, no man
remaining to bury the survivor? Cook's route on this voyage was along
the eastern coast from Cape Howe in south latitude 37 degrees 30' to
Cape York in Torres Straits in latitude 10 degrees 40'. He called the
country New South Wales, from its fancied resemblance to that older
land, and he took possession of the whole in the name of George III as
England's territory.

Cook reported so favourably of the regions he had discovered that the
British Government decided to establish a colony there; the spot
finally selected was at Port Jackson, and the settlement was called
Sydney in 1788. After Cook came the Frenchman Du Fresne and his
unfortunate countryman, La Perouse. Then Vancouver, Blyth, and the
French General and Admiral, D'Entre-Casteaux, who went in search of
the missing La Perouse. In 1826, Captain Dillon, an English navigator,
found the stranded remains of La Perouse's ships at two of the
Charlotte Islands group. We now come to another great English
navigator, Matthew Flinders, who was the first to circumnavigate
Australia; to him belongs the honour of having given to this great
island continent the name it now bears. In 1798, Flinders and Bass,
sailing in an open boat from Sydney, discovered that Australia and Van
Diemen's Land were separate; the dividing straits between were then
named after Bass. In 1802, during his second voyage in the
Investigator, a vessel about the size of a modern ship's launch,
Flinders had with him as a midshipman John Franklin, afterwards the
celebrated Arctic navigator. On his return to England, Flinders,
touching at the Isle of France, was made prisoner by the French
governor and detained for nearly seven years, during which time a
French navigator Nicolas Baudin, with whom came Perron and Lacepede
the naturalists, and whom Flinders had met at a part of the southern
coast which he called Encounter Bay in reference to that meeting,
claimed and reaped the honour and reward of a great portion of the
unfortunate prisoner's work. Alas for human hopes and aspirations,
this gallant sailor died before his merits could be acknowledged or
rewarded, and I believe one or two of his sisters were, until very
lately, living in the very poorest circumstances.

The name of Flinders is, however, held in greater veneration than any
of his predecessors or successors, for no part of the Australian coast
was unvisited by him. Rivers, mountain ranges, parks, districts,
counties, and electoral divisions, have all been named after him; and,
indeed, I may say the same of Cook; but, his work being mostly
confined to the eastern coast, the more western colonies are not so
intimately connected with his name, although an Australian poet has
called him the Columbus of our shore.

After Flinders and Baudin came another Frenchman, De Freycinet, bound
on a tour of discovery all over the world.

Australia's next navigator was Captain, subsequently Admiral, Philip
Parker King, who carried out four separate voyages of discovery,
mostly upon the northern coasts. At three places upon which King
favourably reported, namely Camden Harbour on the north-west coast,
Port Essington in Arnhem's Land, and Port Cockburn in Apsley Straits,
between Melville and Bathurst Islands on the north coast, military and
penal settlements were established, but from want of further
emigration these were abandoned. King completed a great amount of
marine surveying on these voyages, which occurred between the years
1813 and 1822.

Captain Wickham in the Beagle comes next; he discovered the Fitzroy
River, which he found emptied itself into a gulf named King's Sound.
In consequence of ill-health Captain Wickham, after but a short
sojourn on these shores, resigned his command, and Lieutenant Lort
Stokes, who had sailed with him in the Beagle round the rocky shores
of Magellan's Straits and Tierra del Fuego, received the command from
the Lords of the Admiralty. Captain Lort Stokes may be considered the
last, but by no means the least, of the Australian navigators. On one
occasion he was speared by natives of what he justly called Treachery
Bay, near the mouth of the Victoria River in Northern Australia,
discovered by him. His voyages occurred between the years 1839 and
1843. He discovered the mouths of most of the rivers that fall into
the Gulf of Carpentaria, besides many harbours, bays, estuaries, and
other geographical features upon the North Australian coasts.

The early navigators had to encounter much difficulty and many dangers
in their task of making surveys from the rough achievements of the
Dutch, down to the more finished work of Flinders, King and Stokes. It
is to be remembered that they came neither for pleasure nor for rest,
but to discover the gulfs, bays, peninsulas, mountains, rivers and
harbours, as well as to make acquaintance with the native races, the
soils, and animal and vegetable products of the great new land, so as
to diffuse the knowledge so gained for the benefit of others who might
come after them. In cockle-shells of little ships what dangers did
they not encounter from shipwreck on the sunken edges of coral ledges
of the new and shallow seas, how many were those who were never heard
of again; how many a little exploring bark with its adventurous crew
have been sunk in Australia's seas, while those poor wretches who
might, in times gone by, have landed upon the inhospitable shore would
certainly have been killed by the wild and savage hordes of hostile
aborigines, from whom there could be no escape! With Stokes the list
of those who have visited and benefited Australia by their labours
from the sea must close; my only regret being that so poor a
chronicler is giving an outline of their achievements. I now turn to
another kind of exploration--and have to narrate deeds of even greater
danger, though of a different kind, done upon Australia's face.

In giving a short account of those gallant men who have left
everlasting names as explorers upon the terra firma and terra
incognita of our Australian possession, I must begin with the
earliest, and go back a hundred years to the arrival of Governor
Phillip at Botany Bay, in 1788, with eleven ships, which have ever
since been known as "The First Fleet." I am not called upon to narrate
the history of the settlement, but will only say that the Governor
showed sound judgment when he removed his fleet and all his men from
Botany Bay to Port Jackson, and founded the village of Sydney, which
has now become the huge capital city of New South Wales. A new region
was thus opened out for British labour, trade, capital, and
enterprise. From the earliest days of the settlement adventurous and
enterprising men, among whom was the Governor himself, who was on one
occasion speared by the natives, were found willing to venture their
lives in the exploration of the country upon whose shores they had so
lately landed. Wentworth, Blaxland, and Evans appear on the list as
the very first explorers by land. The chief object they had in view
was to surmount the difficulties which opposed their attempting to
cross the Blue Mountains, and Evans was the first who accomplished
this. The first efficient exploring expedition into the interior of
New South Wales was conducted by John Oxley, the Surveyor-General of
the colony, in 1817. His principal discovery was that some of the
Australian streams ran inland, towards the interior, and he traced
both the Macquarie and the Lachlan, named by him after Governor
Lachlan Macquarie, until he supposed they ended in vast swamps or
marshes, and thereby founded the theory that in the centre of
Australia there existed a great inland sea. After Oxley came two
explorers named respectively Hovell and Hume, who penetrated, in 1824,
from the New South Wales settlements into what is now the colony of
Victoria. They discovered the upper portions of the River Murray,
which they crossed somewhere in the neighbourhood of the present town
of Albury. The river was then called the Hume, but it was subsequently
called the Murray by Captain Charles Sturt, who heads the list of
Australia's heroes with the title of The Father of Australian
Exploration.

In 1827 Sturt made one of the greatest discoveries of this century--or
at least one of the most useful for his countrymen--that of the River
Darling, the great western artery of the river system of New South
Wales, and what is now South-western Queensland. In another
expedition, in 1832, Sturt traced the Murrumbidgee River, discovered
by Oxley, in boats into what he called the Murray. This river is the
same found by Hovell and Hume, Sturt's name for it having been
adopted. He entered the new stream, which was lined on either bank by
troops of hostile natives, from whom he had many narrow escapes, and
found it trended for several hundreds of miles in a west-north-west
direction, confirming him in his idea of an inland sea; but at a
certain point, which he called the great north-west bend, it suddenly
turned south and forced its way to the sea at Encounter Bay, where
Flinders met Baudin in 1803. Neither of these explorers appear to have
discovered the river's mouth. On this occasion Sturt discovered the
province or colony of South Australia, which in 1837 was proclaimed by
the British Government, and in that colony Sturt afterwards made his
home.

Sturt's third and final expedition was from the colony of South
Australia into Central Australia, in 1843-1845. This was the first
truly Central Australian expedition that had yet been despatched,
although in 1841 Edward Eyre had attempted the same arduous
enterprise. Of this I shall write anon. On his third expedition Sturt
discovered the Barrier, the Grey, and the Stokes ranges, and among
numerous smaller watercourses he found and named Strezletki's,
Cooper's, and Eyre's Creeks. The latter remained the furthest known
inland water of Australia for many years after Sturt's return. Sturt
was accompanied, as surveyor and draftsman, by John McDouall Stuart,
whom I shall mention in his turn. So far as my opinion, formed in my
wanderings over the greater portions of the country explored by Sturt,
goes, his estimate of the regions he visited has scarcely been borne
out according to the views of the present day.

Like Oxley, he was fully impressed with the notion that an inland sea
did exist, and although he never met such a feature in his travels, he
seems to have thought it must be only a little more remote than the
parts he had reached. He was fully prepared to come upon an inland
sea, for he carried a boat on a bullock waggon for hundreds of miles,
and when he finally abandoned it he writes: "Here we left the boat
which I had vainly hoped would have ploughed the waters of an inland
sea." Several years afterwards I discovered pieces of this boat, built
of New Zealand pine, in the debris of a flood about twenty miles down
the watercourse where it had been left. A great portion, if not all
the country, explored by that expedition is now highly-prized pastoral
land, and a gold field was discovered almost in sight of a depot
formed by Sturt, at a spot where he was imprisoned at a water hole for
six months without moving his camp. He described the whole region as a
desert, and he seems to have been haunted by the notion that he had
got into and was surrounded by a wilderness the like of which no human
being had ever seen or heard of before. His whole narrative is a tale
of suffering and woe, and he says on his map, being at the furthest
point he attained in the interior, about forty-five miles from where
he had encamped on the watercourse he called Eyre's Creek, now a
watering place for stock on a Queensland cattle run: "Halted at sunset
in a country such as I verily believe has no parallel upon the earth's
surface, and one which was terrible in its aspect." Sturt's views are
only to be accounted for by the fact that what we now call excellent
sheep and cattle country appeared to him like a desert, because his
comparisons were made with the best alluvial lands he had left near
the coast. Explorers as a rule, great ones more particularly, are not
without rivals in so honourable a field as that of discovery, although
not every one who undertakes the task is fitted either by nature or
art to adorn the chosen part. Sturt was rivalled by no less celebrated
an individual than Major, afterwards Sir Thomas, Mitchell, a soldier
of the Peninsula War, and some professional jealousy appears to have
existed between them.

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