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Updated: May 3, 2025
Leaving the station, some four hundred miles to the N.N.W. of Cutmore's, they travelled by Lake Way, where a fair-sized mining community was then established, and Lawlers, where the advance of civilisation was marked by numerous "pubs." Their stock had not suffered from want of food or water in fact, a very general rain seemed to have spread from Coolgardie to the Nor'-West.
In spite of the disadvantage under which they were placed by the sudden attack and wounds, the white men overpowered and dispersed their treacherous foes. In what a terrible position they were now placed, fifty-five miles from Cutmore's Well, the nearest certain water, for the chances that the water found between would be dried up, were great!
Here we saw for the first time since leaving Coolgardie the tracks of wild aboriginals, and the first tracks of blacks, either wild or tame, since leaving Cutmore's Well. Evidently this part of the world is not overpopulated.
Here they worked for some time with but little encouragement, until after Christmas, when alluvial gold was found on the surface by a member of another party who came upon the original discoverers in a somewhat startling manner. Cable, Janet, and Pickering had pushed out also from Cutmore's Well, and by finding water on a granite between the two, had reached the rocks near Lake Darlot.
Leaving the range the country to the East underwent a distinct change for the worse; and midday of July 31st found us on the borders of an unmistakable desert, the North-West corner of the Great Victoria Desert. We had so far travelled 110 miles from Cutmore's Well, only some 250 in a direct line from Coolgardie and were already in the desert!
They travelled five miles, then camped, and the available man returned to the rocks to water the horses at the risk of being again attacked by the niggers. And thus dot and go one, they hoped to reach Cutmore's. Fortunately Mr. Parks had some knowledge of surgery, picked up in the African bush, where he had been a trader, and so could doctor the wounded men.
I followed a horse pad for fifty-five miles, mostly through thick scrub, to Cutmore's Well, where several parties were camped, who eagerly questioned me as to the richness of the new field. Leaving Cutmore's, I struck through the bush, and before long the sickness I had had on me for some time past, developed into a raging fever. Every bone in my body ached and shot with pain.
As well as small birds, teal had found their way to the clay-pans, and gave us both sport and food. These water-holes are the tail-end of Wilson's Creek, on which is sunk Cutmore's Well, where splendid water was struck at a depth of about eighty feet. Flood-waters from the creek spread out over these flats, and eventually reach the lake already mentioned, to the South.
The northern track from Sandy Creek deviated so much on account of watering-places, thick scrub, and broken rocks, that we left it and cut through the bush to some clay-pans south of Cutmore's Well; and successfully negotiated on our way the lake that had given me so much trouble when I and the fever were travelling together.
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