Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia - Thomas Mitchell
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I joined the party encamped at Buree on the 13th of December, having rode
there from Sydney in four and a half days, and on the following Monday,
15th of December, 1845, I put it in motion towards the interior. The
Exploring party now consisted of the following persons:--
SIR T. L. MITCHELL, Kt., Surveyor General, Chief of the Expedition.
EDMUND B. KENNEDY, Esq. Assistant Surveyor, Second in command. W.
STEPHENSON, M.R.C.S.L. Surgeon and Collector of objects of Natural
History. PETER M'AVOY, Mounted Videttes. Charles Niblett, William Graham,
ANTHONY BROWN, Tent-keeper. WILLIAM BALDOCK, In charge of the horses.
John Waugh Drysdale, Store-keeper. Allan Bond, Bullock-drivers. Edward
Taylor, William Bond, William Mortimer, George Allcot, John Slater,
Richard Horton, Felix Maguire, James Stephens, Carpenters. Job Stanley,
Edward Wilson, Blacksmith. George Fowkes, Shoemaker. John Douglas,
Barometer carrier. Isaac Reid, Sailor and Chainman. Andrew Higgs,
Chainman. William Hunter, With the horses. Thomas Smith, Patrick Travers,
Carter and Pioneer. Douglas Arnott, Shepherd and Butcher. Arthur Bristol,
Sailmaker and Sailor.
8 drays, drawn by 80 bullocks; 2 boats; 13 horses; 4 private do.; and 3
light carts, comprised the means of conveyance; and the party was
provided with provisions for a year:--250 sheep (to travel with the
party), constituting the chief part of the animal food. The rest
consisted of gelatine, and a small quantity of pork.
With the exception of a few whose names are printed in italics, the party
consisted of prisoners of the Crown in different stages of probation,
with whom the prospect of additional liberty was an incentive so
powerful, that no money payment was asked by them or expected, while,
from experience, I knew that for such an enterprise as this I could rely
on their zealous services. The patience and resolution of such men in the
face of difficulties, I had already witnessed; and I had hired three of
the old hands, in order the more readily to introduce my accustomed camp
arrangements. Volunteers of all classes had certainly come eagerly
forward, offering their gratuitous services on this expedition of
discovery; but discipline and implicit obedience were necessary in such a
party to ensure the objects in view, as well as its own preservation; and
it was not judged expedient, where some prisoners were indispensable as
mechanics, to mix with them men of a different class, over whom the same
kind of authority could not be exercised.
Following the same road by which I quitted Buree, in 1835, my former line
of route across Hervey's Range lay to the left. The party thus arrived at
Bramadura, a sheep station occupied by Mr. Boyd. It was on the same chain
of ponds crossed by me on the journey of 1835, and then named Dochendoras
Creek, but now known as the Mundadgery chain of ponds. These ponds had
been filled by heavy rains which fell on Tuesday the 9th December--the
day on which I left Sydney, where the weather had been clear and sultry.
A tornado or hurricane had, on the same day, levelled part of the forest
near this place, laying prostrate the largest trees, one side of which
was completely barked by the hailstones. Many branches of trees along the
line of route, showed that the wind had been very violent to a
considerable distance.
16TH DECEMBER.--Some of the bullocks missing: the party could not,
therefore, quit the camp until 11 o'clock. The passage of the bed of the
chain of ponds (which we travelled up) was frequently necessary, and
difficult for heavily laden drays, which I found ours were, owing,
chiefly to a superabundance of flour, above the quantity I intended to
have taken, but supplied to my party, and brought forty miles by my drays
before my arrival at the camp.
We halted at another sheep station of Mr. Boyd's. Here I perceived that
Horehound grew abundantly; and I was assured by Mr. Parkinson, a
gentleman in charge of these stations, that this plant springs up at all
sheep and cattle stations throughout the colony, a remarkable fact, which
may assist to explain another, namely, the appearance of the Couchgrass,
or Dog's-tooth-grass, wherever the white man sets his foot, although
previously unknown in these regions.
17TH DECEMBER.--Set off about 7 A.M. and travelled along a good road, for
about 6 miles. Then, at a sheep station, we crossed the chain of ponds,
following a road leading to Dr. Ramsay's head station, called
Balderudgery. Leaving that road, and, at 7 miles, taking to the left, we
finally encamped on Spring Creek, after a journey of about 9 miles. We
had passed over what I should have called a poor sort of country, but
everywhere it was taken up for sheep; and these looked fat; yet not a
blade of grass could be seen; and, but for the late timely supply of
rain, it had been in contemplation to withdraw these flocks to the
Macquarie.
Calling at a shepherd's hut to ask the way, an Irish woman appeared with
a child at her breast and another by her side: she was hut-keeper. She
had been there two years, and only complained that they had never been
able to get any potatoes to plant. She and her husband were about to
leave the place next day, and they seemed uncertain as to where they
should go. Two miles further on, a shoemaker came to the door of a hut,
and accompanied me to set me on the right road. I inquired how he found
work in these wild parts. He said, he could get plenty of work, but very
little money; that it was chiefly contract work he lived by: he supplied
sheep-owners with shoes for their men, at so much per pair. His
conversation was about the difficulty a poor man had in providing for his
family. He had once possessed about forty cows, which he had been obliged
to entrust to the care of another man, at 5S. per head. This man
neglected them: they were impounded and sold as unlicensed cattle under
the new regulations.
"So you saw no more of them?"
"Oh, yes, your honour, I saw some of them AFTER THEY HAD BEEN SOLD AT THE
POUND!--I wanted to have had something provided for a small family of
children, and if I had only had a few acres of ground, I could have kept
my cows."
This was merely a passing remark made with a laugh as we walked along,
for he was one of the race--
"Who march to death with military glee."
But the fate of a poor man's family was a serious subject: such was the
hopeless condition of a useful mechanic ready for work even in the
desolate forests skirting the haunts of the savage. So fares it with the
DISJECTA MEMBRA of towns and villages, when such arrangements are left to
the people themselves in a new colony.
18TH DECEMBER.--The party moved off about 7 A.M., and continued along a
tolerable road, crossing what shepherds called Seven Mile Creek, in which
there was some water; and a little further on we quitted the good beaten
road leading to Balderudgery, and followed one to the left, which brought
us to another sheep station on the same chain of ponds, three miles
higher up than Balderudgery. Having directed the party to encamp here, I
pursued the road south-westward along the chain of ponds, anxious to
ascertain whether I could in that direction pass easily to the westward
of Hervey's Range, and so fall into my former line of route to the Bogan.
At about five miles I found an excellent opening through which the road
passed on ground almost level. Having ascended a small eminence on the
right, I fell in with some natives with spears, who seemed to recognise
me, by pointing to my old line of route, and saying, "Majy Majy" (Major
Mitchell). I little thought then that this was already an outlying
picquet of the Bogan Blacks, sent forward to observe my party. The day
was hot, therm. 97 deg. in the shade. The chain of ponds, there called "the
Little River," contained water in abundance, and was said to flow into
the Macquarie, in which case the Bogan can have but few sources in
Hervey's Range.
The station beside which we had encamped, comprised a stock yard, and had
been formerly a cattle station belonging to Mr. Kite. It was now a sheep
station of Dr. Ramsay's, and there was another sheep station a mile and a
half from it, along the road I had examined. Thus the country suitable
for either kind of stock is taken up by the gradual encroachment of sheep
on cattle runs, not properly such. This easily takes place--as where
sheep feed, cattle will not remain, and sheep will fatten where cattle
would lose flesh. Fortunately, however, for the holders of the latter
description of stock, there are limits to this kind of encroachment. The
plains to the westward of these ranges afford the most nutritive
pasturage in the world for cattle, and they are too flat and subject to
inundations to be desirable for sheep. A zone of country of this
description lies on the interior side of the ranges, as far as I have
examined them. It is watered by the sources of the rivers Goulburn,
Ovens, Murray, Murrumbidgee, Lachlan, Bogan, Macquarie, Castlereagh,
Nammoy, Peel, Gwydir, and Darling; on which rivers the runs will always
make cattle fat. There are two shrubs palpably salt, and, perhaps, there
is something salsolaceous in the herbage also on which cattle thrive so
well; and the open plains and muddy waterholes are their delight.
Excessive drought, however, may occasionally reduce the owners of such
stock to great extremities, and subject them to serious loss. The Acacia
pendula, a tree whose HABITAT is limited and remarkable, is much relished
by the cattle. It is found only in clay soils, on the borders of plains,
which are occasionally so saturated with water as to be quite impassable;
never on higher ground nor on any lower than that limited sort of
locality, in the neighbourhood of rivers which at some seasons overflow.
In such situations, even where grass seems very scarce, cattle get fat;
and it is a practice of stockmen to cut down the Acacia pendula (or Myall
trees, as they call them) for the cattle to feed on.
At this sheep station where we had encamped, I met with an individual who
had seen better days, and had lost his property amid the wreck of
colonial bankruptcies--a tea-totaller, with Pope's Essay on Man for his
consolation, in a bark hut. This "melancholy Jaques" lamented the state
of depravity to which the colony was reduced, and assured me that there
were shepherdesses in the bush! This startling fact should not be
startling, but for the disproportion of sexes, and the squatting system
which checks the spread of families. If pastoralisation were not one
thing, and colonisation another, the occupation of tending sheep should
be as fit and proper for women as for men. The pastoral life, so
favourable to love and the enjoyment of nature, has ever been a favourite
theme of the poet. Here it appears to be the antidote of all poetry and
propriety, only because man's better half is wanting. Under this
unfavourable aspect the white man first comes before the aboriginal
native; were the intruders accompanied by women and children, they could
not be half so unwelcome. One of the most striking differences between
squatting and settling in Australia consists in this. Indeed if it were
an object to uncivilise the human race, I know of no method more likely
to effect it than to isolate a man from the gentler sex and children;
remove afar off all courts of justice and means of redress of grievances,
all churches and schools, all shops where he can make use of money, then
place him in close contact with savages. "What better off am I than a
black native?" was the exclamation of a shepherd to me just before I
penned these remarks.
19TH DECEMBER.--The party moved along the road I had previously examined.
On passing through to the western side, I recognised the trees, plants,
and birds of the interior regions. Granitic hills appeared on each side,
and the sweet-scented Callitris grew around, with many a curious shrub
never seen to the eastward of these ranges. On descending, grassy
valleys, with gullies containing little or no water, reminded me of
former difficulties in the same vicinity, and it was not until we had
travelled upwards of sixteen miles that I could encamp near water. This
consisted of some very muddy holes of the Goobang Creek, on which I had
formerly been pleasantly encamped with Mr. Cunningham. [* See Vol. I. of
Three Expeditions, etc., page 171.] Two or three natives soon made their
appearance, one of whom I immediately recognised to be my old friend
Bultje, who had guided me from thence to the Bene Rocks, on my former
journey along the Bogan. He brought an offering of honey. Ten years had
elapsed since I formerly met the same native in the same valley, and time
had made no alteration in his appearance. With the same readiness to
forward my views that he formerly evinced, he informed me where the water
was to be found; and how I should travel so as to fall in with my former
route, by the least possible DETOUR. Mount Laidley bore 23 deg. E. of N.
20TH DECEMBER.--This day I gave the cattle a rest, as the grass seemed
good, while I rode to look at my old line of marked trees. A cattle
station (of Mr. Kite) was within a mile and a half of our camp, and at
about three miles below it, I fell in with the former line. Where it
crossed the Goobang, a track still continued by them, but finally
diverged, leaving the line of marked trees, without the slightest trace
of the wheels or hoofs that had formerly passed by it. Reaching a hill
laid down on my former survey, and from which I recognised Mount Laidley,
I returned directly to the camp. We had encamped near those very springs
mentioned as seen on my former journey, but instead of being limpid and
surrounded by verdant grass, as they had been then, they were now trodden
by cattle into muddy holes, where the poor natives had been endeavouring
to protect a small portion from the cattle's feet, and keep it pure, by
laying over it trees they had cut down for the purpose. The change
produced in the aspect of this formerly happy secluded valley, by the
intrusion of cattle and the white man, was by no means favourable, and I
could easily conceive how I, had I been an aboriginal native, should have
felt and regretted that change. The springs which issue from the level
plains of clay, while the bed of the water-course some twenty feet lower
continues dry and dusty, are numerous. One had a strong taste of sulphur,
and might probably be as salubrious as other springs more celebrated.
They show that, in this country at least, the water-courses are not
supplied by springs, but depend wholly on heavy torrents of rain
descending from the mountains. Some holes in the bed of the Goobang Creek
did however retain some water which had fallen during the last rain. The
thermometer stood at 107 deg. in the tent.
21ST DECEMBER.--Guided by my old friend Bultje, we pursued a straight
line of route through the forest to Currandong, which was half way to the
Bogan. We passed over a very open, gently undulating country, just
heading a gully called Brotherba--showing how well our guide knew the
country--and we reached Currandong at 2 o'clock. Here also were two
flocks belonging to Dr. Ramsay; Balderudgery, the head station, being
fifteen miles distant, by a mountain road through a gap. While travelling
this day, Corporal Graham overtook me with letters from Buree, and a cart
had also been sent after us by Mr. Barton with a small supply of corn.
That country is considered excellent as a fattening run for sheep; the
shepherd told me they there find a salt plant, which keeps them in
excellent condition and heart for feeding. The scarcity of water at some
seasons occasions a conversion here of cattle runs into sheep runs, and
VICE VERSA, a contingency which seems to render these lands of Hervey's
range of temporary and uncertain value.
22D DECEMBER.--Guided by Bultje we continued to follow down the little
chain of ponds which, as he said, led to the Bogan. The road was good--
the Currandong ponds running in a general direction about N. N. W. It was
the first of the sources of the Bogan we had reached. Crossing at length
to its left bank, near an old lambing station of Dr. Ramsay's, we further
on came to a large plain with the Yarra trees of the Bogan upon its
western skirts. Some large lagoons on the eastern side of the plains had
been filled by the late rains, and cattle lay beside them. We at length
arrived in sight of a cattle station of Mr. Templar's, called Gananaguy,
and encamped on the margin of a plain opposite to it. The cattle here
looked very fat, and although the herd comprised about 2000 head, there
was abundance of grass. The Bogan thus first appeared on our left hand,
and must have its sources in the comparatively low hills, about the
country crossed by my former line of route, rather than in Hervey's or
Croker's ranges, as formerly supposed. The water in the ponds of the
Bogan seemed low.
This fine grazing country had been abandoned more than once from the
failure of the water, and yet these ponds seemed capable of holding an
almost inexhaustible supply. A single dam would have retained the water
for miles, the Bogan always flowing through clay in a bed of uniform
width and depth like a canal. No doubt a little art and labour would be
sufficient to render the land permanently habitable: but on an uncertain
tenure this remedy was not likely to be applied, and therefore the
sovereignty of art's dominion remained unasserted there. The incursions
of the savage, who is learning to "bide his time" on the Darling, are
greatly encouraged by the hardships of the colonists when water is
scarce; and I was shown where no less than 800 head of fat bullocks had
been run together by them when water was too abundant. Then horses cannot
travel, and cattle stick fast in the soft earth and are thus at the mercy
of the natives. The stone ovens, such as they prepare for cooking
kangaroos, had been used for the consumption of about twenty head of
cattle a day, by the wild tribes who had assembled from the Darling and
lower Bogan on that occasion. Thermometer in tent 109 deg. at noon, wind
W.N.W.
23D DECEMBER.--We crossed the Bogan (flowing eastward) at Mr. Templar's
station at Gananaguy, and the overseer most hospitably stood by the party
as it passed with a bucket of milk, of which he gave a drink to each of
the men. Bultje put us on the right road to the next nearest water-holes
(Mr. Gilmore's station), and having rendered me the service he promised,
I gave him the tomahawk, pipe, and two figs of tobacco promised him, and
also took a sketch of his singularly Socratic face. This native got a bad
name from various stockmen, as having been implicated in the murder of
Mr. Cunningham. Nothing could be more unfounded; and it must indeed
require in a man so situated the wisdom of a Socrates to maintain his
footing, or indeed his life, between the ignorant stockmen or shepherds
on one hand, and the savage tribes on the other. These latter savages
naturally regard those who are half civilised, in the same light as we
should look on deserters to the enemy, and are extremely hostile to them,
while perhaps even his very usefulness to our party had most unjustly
connected this native's name with the murder of one of our number. His
laconic manner and want of language would not admit of any clear
explanation of how much he had done to serve our race--and the
difficulties he had to encounter with his own; while the circumstance of
his having been met with at an interval of ten years in the same valley
in a domesticated state, if it did not establish any claim to the soil,
at least proved his strong attachment to it, and a settled disposition.
Much tact must be necessary on his part to avoid those savages coming by
stealth to carry off his gins; and to escape the wrath of white men, when
aroused by the aggressions of wild tribes to get up a sort of foray to
save or recover their own. How Bultje has survived through all this,
without having nine lives like a cat, still to gather honey in his own
valley, "surpasseth me to know."
We encamped at two large water-holes of the Bogan near Mr. Gilmore's
station, and the overseer sent to the men two buckets of milk. At the
station a well had been made to the depth of eighty feet, but a flood had
come, and risen so high as to wash in the sides and so fill up the well.
The workmen had passed through yellow clay chiefly, and the clay was wet
and soft when the further sinking was interrupted. Thermometer in my tent
109 deg., wind W. N. W.
24TH DECEMBER. A lurid haze hung among the trees as the earliest sunbeams
shot down amongst them. The party were ready to move off early, but the
progress was slow from various impediments. A hot wind blew like a blast
furnace. A bullock dropt down dead at the yoke. We encamped on the
Currandong, or Back Creek, near a small plain, after travelling about ten
miles. Thermometer in tent, 103. deg. Hot wind from the west.
25TH DECEMBER. Halted to rest the cattle. The wind blew this day more
from the northward, and was cooler. Thermometer in tent, 107 deg..
26TH DECEMBER.--Proceeded to Graddle, a cattle station belonging to Mr.
Coss, 21/2 miles. Thermometer, 109 deg..
27TH DECEMBER.--The bullock-drivers having allowed twenty-two of the
bullocks to stray, it was impossible to proceed.
At early morning the sky was overcast, the weather calm, a slight wind
from the west carried off these clouds, and at about eleven a very hot
wind set in. The thermometer in my tent stood at 117 deg., and when exposed
to the wind rose rapidly to 129 deg., when I feared the thermometer would
break as it only reached to 132 deg..
28TH DECEMBER.--All the cattle having been recovered, we set off early,
accompanied by a stockman from Graddle, Mr. Coss's station. The day was
excessively warm, a hot wind blowing from the west. We finally encamped
on the Bogan, at a very muddy water-hole, after travelling eleven miles.
Thermometer in tent, 115 deg.. At half past five, the sky became overcast,
and the hot wind increased to a violent gust, and suddenly fell. I found
that tartaric acid would precipitate the mud, leaving a jug of the water
tolerably clear, but then the acid remained. Towards evening the sky was
overcast, and a few drops of rain fell. The night was uncommonly hot. At
ten the thermometer stood at 102 deg., and at day-break at 90 deg..
29TH DECEMBER.--The remaining water was so muddy that the cattle would no
longer drink it. The sky was overcast, with the wind from south. Finding
a cart road near our camp, I lost no time in conducting the lighter
portion of our equipment to Mr. Kerr's station at Derribong. In the
hollows I saw, for the first time on this journey, the POLYGONUM JUNCEUM,
reminding me of the river Darling, and on the plains a SOLANUM in flower,
of which I had only seen the apple formerly. At length, greener grass
indicated that the late rains had fallen more heavily there, and at about
twelve miles I reached the station situated on a rather clear and
elevated part of the right bank of the Bogan. Here the stock of water had
been augmented by a small dam, and a channel cut from a hollow part of
the clay surface conducted any rain water into the principal pool, where
the water was very good. We had now arrived at the lowest station on the
Bogan. The line of demarcation between the squatter and the savage had
been once much lower down, at Muda, and even at Nyingan (see INFRA), but
the incursions of the blacks had rendered these lower stations untenable,
without more support than the Colonial government was able to afford.
There, at least, the squatter is not only not the real discoverer of the
country, but not even the occupier of what had been discovered. The map
will illustrate how it happens that the colonists cannot keep their
ground here from the marauding disposition of the savage tribes. [* See
map of Eastern Australia--INFRA.] The Darling is peopled more permanently
by these natives, than perhaps any other part of Australia: affording as
it does a more certain supply of food. It is only in seasons of very high
flood that this food, the fish, cannot be got at, and that they are
obliged to resort to the higher country at such seasons, between the
Darling, the Lachlan, and the Bogan. It also happens that the cattle of
the squatter are most accessible from the soft state of the ground; the
stockmen cannot even ride to protect them. The tribes from the Lachlan
and Macquarie meet on these higher lands, and when tribes assemble they
are generally ready for any mischief. The Bogan is particularly within
their reach, and when wet seasons do occur the cattle of squatters must
be very much at the mercy of the savages. The tribes from the Darling are
extremely hostile, even to the more peaceably disposed hilltribes near
the colony, and several stations have already been abandoned in
consequence of the outrages of the aborigines from the Darling and
Lachlan. Nothing is so likely to increase these evils as the precarious
or temporary occupation of such a country. The supply of water must
continue uncertain so long as there is no inducement from actual
possession to form dams, and by means of art to secure the full benefit
of the natural supply. Hence it is that half a million of acres, covered
with the finest grass, have been abandoned, and even savages smile at the
want of generalship by which they have been allowed to burn the white
man's dairy station and stockyards on the banks of the Bogan. The
establishment of a police station near the junction of the Bogan with the
Darling, or the formation of an inland township about Fort Bourke, had
been sufficient to have secured the stations along the Bogan and
Macquarie, and to have protected the Bogan natives as well as our own
countrymen from frequent robbery, murder, and insult. Such are the
results where SQUATTING has been permitted to supersede settling. With
possession, deficiency of water in dry seasons had been remedied, and no
such debateable land had remained on the borders of a British colony.