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Updated: May 31, 2025
Cockburn Creek, now an important stream was followed down for four miles, when it formed a junction with the Staaten. The width of the main stream is about 400 yards, in many channels sandy and dry. It now runs generally west and very winding. Beyond, a waste of sandy tea-tree levels, thickly covered with triodia or spinifex, and other desert grasses.
The country in its immediate neighbourhood is open, and timbered with fine casuarina trees; the grass is dry and long, and the triodia approaches to within a quarter of a mile of it. The line of hills I previously mentioned as running along to the south of us, we had now run out. I named them Gardiner's Range, after a friend of Mr. Carmichael's.
On arriving at the junction of the larger creek, we followed down the channel and in five miles, to my great surprise, though the traveller in these regions should be surprised at nothing, we completely ran the creek out, as it simply ended among triodia, sandhills, and scrubby mulga flats.
A breeze from the north-west caused the dust raised by the pack-horses, which we drove in a mob before us, travelling upon the loose soil where the spinifex had all been lately burnt, to blow directly in our faces. At five miles we struck on a bend of a river, and we saw great volumes of smoke from burning grass and triodia rising in all directions.
From where we are, the prospect is wild and weird, with the white bed of the great lake sweeping nearly the whole southern horizon. The country near the lake consists of open sandhills, thickly bushed and covered with triodia; farther back grew casuarinas and mulga scrubs. It was long past the middle of the day when I descended from the hill.
On what I thought was the 27th I almost gave up the thought of walking any farther, for the exertion in this dreadful region, where the triodia was almost as high as myself, and as thick as it could grow, was quite overpowering, and being starved, I felt quite light-headed.
Crossing two more creeks, we were now in the midst of a broken, pine-clad, hilly country, very well grassed and very pretty; the hills just named were on the north, and low hills on the south. Ever since we entered the Livingstone Pass, we have traversed country which is remarkably free from the odious triodia.
Many of them have the flesh quite raw and bleeding; they are also very tender-footed from traversing so much stony ground, as we have lately had to pass over. Bordering upon the open stony triodia ground above-mentioned is a bed of scrubs, composed chiefly of mulga, though there are various other trees, shrubs, and plants amongst it.
Fort Mueller cannot be said to be a pretty spot, for it is so confined by the frowning, battlemented, fortress-like walls of black and broken hills, that there is scarcely room to turn round in it, and attacks by the natives are much to be dreaded here. We have had to clear the ground round our fort of the stones and huge bunches of triodia which we found there.
Leaving this encampment, we struck away for a new line of ranges. The country was very peculiar, and different from any we had yet met; it was open, covered with tall triodia, and consisted almost entirely of limestone.
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