The Explorers (46 page)

7th—Reached the well at 6 a.m. The natives fled at our approach, but returned after a little time. Wallaby were procured from them by barter. The fresh meat and plenty of water restored me for a time from my forlorn condition. There are so many natives that they drink more of their own water than we can well spare them. We obtained here the rest we all so much needed.

8th—The natives all disappeared at daylight, and our hope of more food goes with them. I have invariably throughout the journey carried my pistol in my belt, but for the last few days its weight was too much for me, and I had put it in my bag. Whilst lying under the shade of a blanket, with my head on the bag, one barrel unaccountably went off and, had not the muzzle been turned from me, I should have had the ball through my head. My life has again been given to me…

9th—Started west at 6.15 p.m. Crossed a few sand-ridges and wide plains thickly covered with spinifex, also two or three water-courses (what a delight it is to see one again!) running, so far as we could judge in the dark, from south to north. The ground seems to be rising. Travelled about twenty-two miles.

10th—…Started at 5.40 p.m. crossing a succession of very high sandhills. At 8.00 p.m. saw what we took for a native fire to our left; turned towards it, but in a couple of miles it disappeared and we renewed our course. Latterly sandhills have become more distant from each other and less high. Travelled over a good deal of burnt ground, but got on pretty well. Camped at 3 a.m.

11th—With all the care we can take of the camels, and with the lightest possible loads, they can barely do twenty miles in the whole night, so we have yet a good stretch of country between us and the river.

We killed our last meat on the 20th October; a large bull-camel has therefore fed us for three weeks. It must be remembered that we have no flour, tea or sugar, neither have we an atom of salt, so we cannot salt our meat. We are seven in all, and are living entirely upon sun-dried slips of meat, which are as tasteless and innutritious as a piece of dead bark. Unless the game drops into our hands in great abundance we must kill another camel directly we get to water. Most of us are nearly exhausted from starvation, and our only resource is a camel, which would disappear from before us in a twinkling.

Started at 6.15 p.m. Travelled five hours, then took a latitude, which put us in 21° 2′, so we turned west for three hours more, completing twenty miles over very hard country and heavy sandhills.

12th—We find no appearance of change in the country, and suppose that we are either more to the eastward than we suppose, or else the head of the Oakover is laid down more to the eastward than it is. The error is most probably mine, as it is difficult to keep the longitude quite correct after travelling so many months on a general westerly course. Our position is most critical in consequence of the weakness of the camels. They cannot get over this terrible country and stand the fierce heat without frequent watering and rest. Without water we are helpless.

Three p.m. I have decided to send Lewis, the two camel-men and the black boy on ahead with the best and strongest camels, to try and reach the river, returning to us with water if successful. My son and Dennis White and myself remain behind, but following the first party as fast as our jaded camels can take us. We have abandoned everything but our small supply of water and meat, and each party has a gun.

Lewis and his party started at 6 p.m. We left ourselves at 6.30. We could only make about four miles, when we lay down till 2 a.m. Starting again, we had made about eight miles when we were surprised by a voice, and found we had overtaken the advance party, one of whose camels had knocked up on the previous night. This was a death-blow to our hopes of getting relief by sending them on first. We are hemmed in on every side; every trail we make fails, and I can now only hope that some one or more of the party may reach water sooner or later. As for myself, I can see no hope of life, for I cannot hold up without food and water.

I have given Lewis written instructions to justify his leaving me, should I die, and have made such arrangement as I can for the preservation of my journal and maps. The advance party has started again, and we followed till a little after sunrise, when our camels showed signs of distress, and we camped. Should the advance party see likely smokes they are to turn to them.

My party at least are now in that state that, unless it please God to save us, we cannot live more than twenty-four hours. We are at our last drop of water, and the smallest bit of dried meat chokes me. I fear my son must share my fate, as he will not leave me. God have mercy upon us, for we are brought very low, and by the time death reaches us we shall not regret exchanging our present misery for that state in which the weary are at rest.

We have tried to do our duty, and have been disappointed in all our expectations. I have been in excellent health during the whole journey, and am so still, being merely worn out from want of food and water. Let no self-reproaches afflict anyone respecting me. I undertook the journey for the benefit of my family, and I was quite equal to it under all the circumstances that could be reasonably anticipated, but difficulties and losses have come upon us so thickly for the last few months that we have not been able to move; thus our provisions are gone, but this would not have stopped us could we have found water without such laborious search. The country is terrible. I do not believe men ever traversed so vast an extent of continuous desert.

We follow this afternoon on the advance tracks as far as our camels can take us. Richard shot me a little bird. It was only about the size of a sparrow, but it did me good. If the country would only give any single thing we could eat, I should do very well, but we cannot find a snake, kite or crow. There are a few wallabies in the spinifex, but we cannot get them. Our miseries are not a little increased by the ants. We cannot get a moment's rest, night or day, for them.

13th—My rear party could only advance eight miles, when the camels gave in. Our food is scanty enough, but our great want is water. We have a little, but dare not take more than a spoonful at a time, whilst the heat is so great that the slightest exposure and exertion bring on a parching thirst. We are as low and weak as living men well can be, and our only hope of prolonging our lives is in the advance party finding some native camp; we have seen smokes, but are in too crippled a state to go to them.

14th—Early this morning my son took our man White, and started in the direction of the smoke we had last seen. At midday, whilst I was sipping in solitude a drop of water out of a spoon, Lewis came up with a bag of water.

Never shall I forget the draught of water I then got, but I was so weak that I almost fainted shortly after drinking it. The advance party had run up a smoke and found a well about twelve miles off. Our lives were saved, but poor Charley was nearly killed. He had gone forward alone (at his own request, and as he had done before) to the native camp, the remainder of the party with the camels keeping out of sight. The blacks treated Charley kindly, and gave him water, but when he cooeed for the party to come up, and the camels appeared, then I suppose the men were frightened, and supposed Charley had entrapped them; they instantly speared him in the back and arm, cut his skull with a waddy, and nearly broke his jaw.

I do not think this attack was made with any premeditated malice, but doubtless they would have killed the lad, had not the remainder of the party, rushing to his rescue, frightened them away. Unfortunately, the few medicines we had not eaten had, by some oversight, been left behind at the camp, where we had abandoned almost everything but the clothes we happened to stand up in. Lewis returned to the well, and was to come out and meet us next day with more water. We started at sunset, but could not keep on the tracks for more than two miles when we camped.

15th—We made another effort at daylight to get on, but one of the camels broke down, though it had not carried a saddle. The poor beast had become quite blind, and staggered about in a most alarming way. We could not get her beyond a mile and a half, when she knocked up under the shade of a bush, and would go no farther. We therefore also sat down to await the water to be sent out to us. The heat was intense, and my son, having been obliged to walk because the camel could not carry him, suffered very greatly from thirst, and had not water been brought us before midday, it would have gone ill with him. Between 10 and 11 a.m. Lewis returned with water from the well.

The camel, though we gave it some water, could not move from the shade of the bush. We tried to drive it, and to drag it, but to no purpose, therefore we shot it.

*
The number of flies in Australia, and the rapidity with which they breed, are quite horrible. Nothing in the shape of meat can be left exposed for a moment, otherwise a swarm of flies descend and seem to emit living maggots on the flesh. They assail the ears, nostrils and eyes of the traveller, who is unable to stir without a veil, and in Colonel Warburton's expedition the additional precaution of rubbing Holloway's ointment round the eye had to be taken. Owing to the flies and the impoverished condition of the blood, the slightest abrasion of the skin led to its festering and becoming an ugly wound. A little scratch, that under other circumstances would pass unnoticed, here becomes a troublesome, ulcerous sore. Some idea of the condition of the camel's back may be imagined when the reader hears that the maggots were
scooped out with a pint pot
! [Charles Eden]

*
A small black ant seems to have been the avowed enemy of this expedition. The ground literally swarmed with them, and a stamp of the foot brought them up in thousands. When the wearied men threw themselves down under the shade of a bush, to snatch the half-hour's slumber their exhausted frames required, the merciless littie insects attacked them, and not only effectually routed sleep, but even rendered a recumbent position impossible. The scanty clothing possessed by the travellers was no protection; so feeble a bulwark was speedily under-run by the enemy, and their successful invasion announced by sharp painful nips from their powerful mandibles. Often, when the vertical sun poured down in full fierceness on their heads, and the poor shade afforded even by a bush would have been an inestimable blessing, the travellers were driven away from the shelter by their relentless persecutors, and in despair flung themselves down on the burning sand, where it was too hot even for an ant. By day or by night the little insects gave them no respite. [Charles Eden]

E
RNEST
G
ILES

Living, Raw, Dying, 1874

Ernest Giles was retrenched from the Victorian Post Office in 1854 during an austerity drive. The post office's loss was our gain, for Giles went on to become one of the most audacious and eloquent explorers in the history of the continent. For Giles, exploration was a huge and irresistible game of brinkmanship. It was a game in which he gambled his life, the lives of his horses, and even his men. Here in the waterless wasteland later known as the Gibson Desert, we see Giles face his nadir. Yet even when things are at their most desperate, when the explorers are a hundred miles from nowhere, with just a few pints of water and one exhausted horse between them, all Giles can think of is the quest. ‘Oh, how ardently I longed for a camel,' he writes, as he sees the distant and untouchable ranges on the horizon.

And then, when Giles is alone, without water and horse, he hangs grimly on in conditions that would have killed a lesser man. The tiny wallaby he eats alive, and which perhaps tips the balance from death to life, is a meal that few could have written about so enthusiastically.

20th April 1874—Gibson and I, having got all the gear we required, took a week's supply of smoked horse, and four excellent horses, two to ride and two to carry water, all in fine condition. I rode the Fair Maid of Perth, an excellent walker; I gave Gibson the big ambling horse, Badger, and we packed the big cob, a splendid bay horse and fine weight-carrier, with a pair of water-bags that contained twenty gallons at starting. The other horse was Darkie, a fine, strong, nuggetty-black horse, who carried two five-gallon kegs of water and our stock of smoked horse, rugs etc. We reached the Circus, at twenty miles, early, and the horses had time to feed and fill themselves after being watered, though the grass was very poor.

21st—While I went for the horses Gibson topped up the water-bags and kegs, and poured a quantity of water out of the hole on to a shallow place, so that if we turned any horses back, they could drink without precipitating themselves into the deep and slippery hole when they returned here. As we rode away, I remarked to Gibson that the day was the anniversary of Burke and Wills's return to their depot at Cooper's Creek, and then recited to him, as he did not appear to know anything whatever about it, the hardships they endured, their desperate struggles for existence, and death there, and I casually remarked that Wills had a brother who also lost his life in the field of discovery. He had gone out with Sir John Franklin in 1845.
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