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We had brought them through safely, but at the cost of how much trouble to ourselves may be judged from previous pages and the following figures. We left the Deep rock-holes with exactly 102 gallons of water; decrease by breaking through the scrub must have been considerable, as we had nearly thirty gallons of this amount in canvas bags.
There are apparently but few natives about here just now; had there been more of them we might have had some trouble, as indeed I subsequently had at the rock-holes at the back of this hill.
We scratched out a lot of sand with our hands, and some water percolated through, but the hole was too deep to get any out for the horses, as we had no means of removing the sand, having no shovel. Upon searching farther up the gully we found some good-sized rock-holes, but unfortunately they were all dry.
Leaving Forrest's route at Mount Squires, Lindsay marched his caravan across the Queen Victoria Desert to Queen Victoria Spring, a distance of some 350 miles, without finding water except in small quantities in rock-holes on the low sandstone cliffs he occasionally met with.
From our position at the rock-holes, by skirting, possibly without sighting, the end of the Rawlinson Range and steering nearly due South-West, we should hit off Woodhouse Lagoon of our upgoing journey. For simplicity in steering I chose a due South-West course, which should take us a few miles to the East of the lagoon, two hundred miles distant in a bee-line.
Their frequent occurrence would then be accounted for by the fact that the deposit of sand is shallower here than elsewhere. That it is so is pretty evident, for here the sand-ridges are much lower than further North, and still further South they disappear. Low cliffs are seen, and when the latitude of Forrest's route is reached, sandstone hills are numerous and rock-holes abundant.
We saw no smokes, no spinifex rats, no natives, no tracks but old ones, and these led us only to dry rock-holes. Time after time we followed recent tracks from hole to hole, and met with no success; sometimes we were just in time to be too late, and to see that the last drops had been scraped up by the natives! On June 6th we followed a fresh track, and found a hole containing thirty gallons.
It lies about north 62 degrees west from Wynbring and is fifty miles from it; the latitude of Mobing is 30 degrees 10' 30". At this place there was a large, bare, rounded rock, very similar to Wynbring, except that no rock-holes to hold any surface water existed; what was obtainable being in large native wells sunk at the foot of the rock, and brimful of water.
Sending one of my men for a large jar and teacup, we searched along the beach till we found signs of another dry watercourse, and on ascending this were so fortunate as to discover two deep sheltered rock-holes containing several gallons of water, enough to fill all our jars.
Tommy and I expended three days in trying to discover traces, but it was utterly useless, and we returned unsuccessful to the depot. Singular to say, on this attempt I found a place west from the end, the Rawlinson Range, where there were some rock-holes on a grassy mulga flat, but we did not require the water, as the camels would not drink.
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