Spinifex and Sand<br />A Narrative of Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Ausralia by David Wynford Carnegie (popular books of all time TXT) 📕

edge of the dish, is pulled, and the dish tipped up allowing the dirt to fall on to the prepared surface below, where it is swept up and treated as in the first method described. With a fair breeze this is a very effectual way of getting rid of the fine dirt.

3 By means of a sieve.

This method is only suitable when the soil is wet and sticky, or where the nuggets are fairly large and not too rare.

On the first rush to Kurnalpi, where more alluvial gold was found in a short time than on any other field, sieves were almost the only implements used.

A sieve is very useful for prospecting the surface soil, being more portable and more rapidly worked than the dishes.

A combination of these three methods is found in the Dry-blowing Machine.

It has always been a hotly debated question, whether what is known as the “Cement” comes under the heading of “reefs” or “alluvial.” This cement is composed of angular quartz-fragments, broken from the reefs or veins, and fragments of diorite and hornblende schists, cemented together by lime; it is very hard and solid and, in places, continues to a depth of over twenty feet. The gold is extracted from these depths by crushing and dry-blowing. I have mentioned this peculiar composition last, as I am not at all clear to which class of formation it belongs.

At first this cement, which the shallow alluvial ground overlies, was supposed to be “bottom,” that is to say, that there was considered no likelihood of gold being found at a greater depth. Later developments, however, have proved this theory to be wrong, and with regard to this I cannot do better than quote extracts from a report made by Mr. E. P. Pittman, Government Geologist of New South Wales, in which he says:—

He had considered the question of deep-leads of alluvial, and after visiting Coolgardie, Kalgoorlie, and Kanowna, he thought it probable that there would shortly be a large output of alluvial gold from this source. In Coolgardie the dry-blowing had been confined to a very shallow depth, and yet close to Coolgardie—in Rollo's Bore—there was evidence of the existence of a very deep valley. He produced a specimen, taken by him from an alluvial working near the Boulder Mine, showing what the dry-blowers had all through regarded as the natural floor of the alluvial. Below this floor they had never penetrated until the enterprising prospector at Kanowna recently did so, and followed the lead down to fifty feet.

…He was satisfied that the alluvial went down to a depth at Kalgoorlie just as it did at Kanowna. All the conditions were favourable to deep-leads of alluvial.

…Rollo's Bore at Coolgardie had proved the existence of alluvial gold at great depths.

…So far the alluvial men had been working on a false bottom.

At the time of writing, some two thousand men have found profitable employment in working this newly discovered deposit; and doubtless conditions similar to those found at Coolgardie, Kalgoorlie, and Kanowna, will be proved to hold on other alluvial fields, formerly supposed to be worked out.

How hotly debated this “cement question” has been may be judged from the fact that, at the time of writing, riots are reported from Kalgoorlie, during which the Premier was hooted and stoned. This cowardly act could hardly be the work of genuine diggers, and could doubtless be traced to the army of blackguards and riffraff who have, of late years, found their way to the goldfields.

It would be idle to discuss here the questions of “who is right” and “who is wrong.” A great deal can be said on both sides. Let us hope the controversy will be settled to the satisfaction of both parties; that the diggers will not be turned off what is justly theirs, to benefit leaseholding companies, nor leaseholders deprived of their rights.

PART V THE OUTWARD JOURNEY CHAPTER I Previous Explorers In The Interior Of Western Australia

I had not been enjoying the comforts of civilised life for long before I had a letter from Dave Wilson telling me how he and our mates had pegged out, and applied for, a lease which gave every promise of doing well.

In April, 1896, I returned to Australia, and made speed to our new property, which I found to be in every respect as satisfactory as Wilson had told me. To be in the possession of a good mine, and to find someone anxious to change places on terms mutually agreeable, are two very different things. We were fortunate, however, in finding a purchaser, but not fortunate enough to bring him up to the scratch with any promptitude. I had hoped to have had all preparations for the projected expedition complete by the beginning of May, in order that by the time the hot weather came on we should be well on our way, if not at the end of our journey. The Fates ordered things differently, and it was not until the middle of June that I was free to turn my attention to the thousand and one details connected with the composition and equipment of my party.

With what keenness I entered into the preparations may be well imagined, for now at last I was in a position to undertake the expedition I had so long in my mind. In order to explain what my object was, and what my plan of procedure was to be, it will be necessary to give a short sketch of the history of exploration and advance of settlement in Western Australia. The Colony, occupying one third of the continent, has an extreme length of 1,500 miles and a breadth of one thousand miles. The length of coast-line exceeds three thousand miles. A most noticeable feature of the coast-line on the South is the entire absence of rivers—for nearly seven hundred miles no rivers or even watercourses are met with. Along the Western coast rivers are fairly frequent, the largest being the Swan, Murchison, Gascoyne, Ashburton, the Fortescue, and De Grey. The Swan, on which the capital is situated, is the most important—the rivers North of this are not always running, the seasons in the country where they rise being very unreliable. Further North again, where Warburton's Desert abuts on the sea, we find an inhospitable sandy beach (the Eighty-mile Beach), along which no river mouths are seen. In the far North, the Kimberley Division, the coast-line is considerably indented by bays, gulfs, and the mouths of rivers of fair size, which run for the greater part of the year; of these the most important are the Fitzroy, Lennard, Prince Regent, and Ord. The Colony can boast of no great mountain ranges, the highest, the Darling Range, being something over 2,000 feet. The Leopold range in the north is of about the same altitude. No mountain chain breaks the monotony of the central portions of the Colony. In the interior hills are called mountains, and a line of hills, ranges, for want of a better name.

The first settlement was formed on the Swan River in 1826, and gradually spread to the South and North, until to-day we find the occupied portion of the Colony extending along the western seaboard for about 1,200 miles, with an average breadth of perhaps two hundred miles. In the North the occupied country is confined to the watersheds of the two main rivers, the Fitzroy and the Ord.

To the Eastward of Perth the populous mining towns and many scattered mining camps and settlements extend some five hundred miles towards the interior. In spite of the discovery of gold and the advance of the Colony in every way, there still remains more than half the province unoccupied.

How scattered the population of the settled country is may be judged from the fact that the average population is one individual to every six square miles. The vast, almost unknown, interior well merits its designation of “Desert,” and I suppose that in few parts of the world have travellers had greater difficulties to overcome than in the arid, sun-dried wilderness of interior Australia. The many attempts to penetrate beyond the head-waters of the coastal rivers date from the earliest days of the Swan River Settlement. But in every case travellers, bold and enduring, were forced back by the impassable nature of the sandy deserts—impassable to all except camels. Roe, Hunt, Austin, and the Gregorys made more than one effort to solve the mysteries of the interior. Numerous attempts were made to cross the Colony from West to East or vice versa, with the double object of ascertaining whether the nature of the country rendered it suitable for settlement, and of establishing some means of communication with the sister colonies to the East.

The first who succeeded in travelling overland from South to West Australia was Eyre, afterwards made governor of Jamaica. He started in 1841, and his route hugged the coast-line along the shores of the Great Australian Bight, and is now closely followed by the telegraph line. In spite of almost insurmountable obstacles in the form of waterless regions, almost bare of vegetation, in spite of mutiny in the camp, and the murder of his white companion by one of the black-boys, the loss of his horses, in spite of starvation and thirst, this gallant man battled his way across, finishing his journey on foot with one companion only, a faithful black-boy. Lucky it was that this district is blessed with a plentiful dew in the cool weather, otherwise Eyre's horses could never have lasted as long as they did. This journey was successfully accomplished again in 1879 by Forrest (now Sir John Forrest, Premier of West Australia) who, keeping somewhat to the north of Eyre's track, had comparatively little difficulty in finding water.

Some 150 miles to the northward, the Colony was traversed from East to West by Giles in 1876, who found it to be a flat, sandy wilderness of scrub, alternating with open limestone plains, covered with saltbush and grass.

These plains, first crossed by Giles, have every appearance of being splendid pasture-lands. Unfortunately no surface water can be obtained. The formation is limestone, in which are found “blowholes”—that is to say, circular holes two to four feet in diameter, which go down vertically to a depth never yet ascertained. They derive their name from the curious booming noise which they emit, probably caused by the wind. Judging from the growth of saltbush and other herbage it would seem likely that the rainfall on these elevated plains is considerable, and apparently runs to waste down blow-holes and cracks in the limestone. No doubt when other parts of the Colony become occupied and civilisation advances, settlers will turn their attention to this part, and possibly, by means of bores, find a plentiful supply of water, as on the Nullarbor Plains across the border. It seems likely that a most undesirable class of colonists will forestall the “back blockers” from the west, for to the northward of Eucla rabbits have been seen slowly advancing to the westward. The Government fortunately realises the importance of checking the incursion. To my mind the safest plan would be to run a fence, at whatever cost, north from Eucla, for some 150 miles, until the desert was reached, and so force the rabbits into a part of the country where, supposing they could live (which is doubtful), they could do no harm, and might come as a welcome addition to the diet of the wandering blacks, or might serve to break the monotony of “tinned dog” for the weary prospector.

Without camels as transport this expedition could not have been carried out, which will be readily understood when we find that a waterless stage of three hundred miles was negotiated. It is of course likely that Giles passed by waters unknowingly, for owing to the number of camels he had (twenty-two) and the supply of water he was enabled to carry, he was able to push on without turning to the right hand or to the left.

In the following year Giles again crossed the Colony from West to East, some 350 miles North of his first route, and encountered considerably worse country, spinifex desert covered with light gravel. Between Giles's two tracks, Forrest, in 1874, made a remarkable journey from West to East, connecting his traverse with that of Gosse, who from the East had penetrated some 150 miles into the Western Colony, and finally reached the Adelaide-Port Darwin telegraph line. This journey was accomplished with horses, and Forrest, like Stuart in Central Australia, happened to strike a belt of country intersected by low ranges and hills in which he found water. On his left hand was the undulating hill-less desert crossed by Giles, on his right a wilderness of rolling sandhills. Not only was Forrest a surveyor but a bushman as well, and accompanied by good men and black-boys, who let not the slightest indications of the existence of water escape them. One has only to