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Updated: June 28, 2025
More tracks the following day, fresher this time; but though doubtless there was water at the end of them, for several reasons we did not follow them far: first, they were leading south-west and we wished to go north; second, the quantity of mallee root heaps, suggested the possibility that the natives could obtain from them sufficient moisture to live upon.
I collected a great quantity of various plants and flowers along all the way I had come in fact, but just about Mount Olga I fancied I had discovered several new species. To-day we passed through some mallee, and gathered quandongs or native peach, which, with sugar, makes excellent jam; we also saw currajongs and native poplars.
At seventy-eight miles from Ooldabinna, having come as near west as it is possible to steer in such a country on a camel of course I had a Gregory's compass we had met no signs of water fit for man or animal to drink, though brine and bog existed in most of the lake-beds. The scrubs were very thick, and were chiefly mallee, the Eucalyptus dumosa, of course attended by its satellite spinifex.
Packed up, and steering in an east direction over generally very grassy country with occasional mallee thickets, for about twenty-two miles, we came to a splendidly-grassed rise, and found a fine rock water-hole on it, containing about 100 gallons, which our horses soon finished being fearfully in want, the day being very warm. We are now only thirty miles from Eucla.
Night came on richest starlight, though, of course, dark in the scrub and still I objurgated round, and purposely scattered the bullocks to search for themselves, and anathematised in all directions, and consigned the whole vicinity to the Evil One, for lack of that clump of mallee.
On the eleventh day the plains died off, and we re-entered a new bed of scrubs again consisting of mallee, casuarinas, desert sandal-wood, and quandong-trees of the same family; the ground was overgrown with spinifex.
On Saturday, the 25th of September, being the sixteenth day from the water at the Boundary Dam, we travelled twenty-seven miles, still on our course, through mallee and spinifex, pines, casuarinas, and quandong-trees, and noticed for the first time upon this expedition some very fine specimens of the Australian grass-tree, Xanthorrhoea; the giant mallee were also numerous.
The first twelve miles north was through very dense thickets and sandy hills, when we reached the cliffs, which we ascended with difficulty, and steering about North-North-East for the first three miles, through dense mallee thickets, we emerged into a generally grassy country, and travelled over beautifully-grassed downs.
So we pushed on eastwards, through open forest of gums, scrubs, and thickets, broken by occasional small plains of saltbush, seeing no signs of water or lake, when presently we entered a belt of sandy desert rolling sandhills, spinifex-clad, with occasional thickets of mulga and mallee.
Left the camp at 9 a.m. on a bearing of 190 degrees for two miles, thence 230 degrees for one mile and a half, thence 250 degrees for four miles and a half, thence 286 degrees for two miles, thence 290 degrees for one mile, thence 270 degrees for five miles, thence 320 degrees for one mile, to camp at some mallee.
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