Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia Volume II Part 12

Piper alarmed.

Rockets fired to scare them away.

They again advance in the morning.

Men advance towards them holding up their firearms.

They retire, and we continue our journey.

Again followed by the natives.

Danger of the party.

Long march through a scrubby country.

Dismal prospect.

Night without water or gra.s.s.

Heavy rain.

Again make the Murray.

Strange natives visit the camp at dusk.

THE MURRUMBIDGEE COMPARED WITH OTHER RIVERS.

May 15.

The night had been stormy with rain so that I had not been able to ascertain the lat.i.tude of the point at which we had reached this important river. It was Sunday and, although the two men sent after Burnett's party had come in early enough, we remained in the same camp. I had already been struck with the remarkable dissimilarity between the Murrumbidgee and all the interior rivers previously seen by me, especially the Darling. The constant fulness of its stream, its water-worn and lightly-timbered banks, and the firm and accessible nature of its immediate margin, unbroken by gullies, were all characters quite the reverse of those which I had seen elsewhere. Whatever reeds or polygonum might be outside, a certain s.p.a.ce along the river was almost everywhere clear, probably from its constant occupation by the natives.

HEAPS OF STONES USED IN COOKING.

One artificial feature not observed by me in other places distinguishes the localities princ.i.p.ally frequented by the natives, and consists in the lofty mounds of burnt clay or ashes used by them in cooking. The common process of natives in dressing their provisions is to lay the food between layers of heated stones; but here, where there are no stones, the calcined clay seems to answer the same purpose, and becomes better or harder the more it is used. Hence the acc.u.mulation of heaps resembling small hills.* Some of them were so very ancient as to be surrounded by circles of lofty trees; others, long abandoned, were half worn away by the river which, in the course of ages, had so far changed its bed that the burnt ashes reached out to mid-channel; others, now very remote from the river, had large trees growing out of them.

(*Footnote. And Jacob said unto his brethren, Gather stones: and they took stones, and made a heap, and they did eat there upon the heap.

Genesis 31:46. "Thevenot describes the way of roasting a sheep, practised by the Armenians, by which also the use of smoky wood is avoided; for having flayed it, they cover it again with the skin, and put it into an oven upon the quick coals, covering it also with a good many of the same coals, that it may have fire under and over to roast it well on all sides; and the skin keeps it from being burnt." Harmer. Whoever has seen the Australian natives cook a kangaroo must recognise in this description the very same process.)

HIGH REEDS ON THE RIVERBANK.

I saw the first of these heaps when near the end of the last day's journey along the Lachlan, where this river partook of the reedy character of the Murrumbidgee. I understood that the balyan or bulrush-root which is the chief food of the natives there is prepared in those kilns when a family or tribe are together. I ascertained the name of the place to be Weyeba; its lat.i.tude is 34 degrees 21 minutes 34 seconds South; longitude 143 degrees 56 minutes 27 seconds East.

May 16.

We commenced our journey down the Murrumbidgee. Our route pa.s.sed occasionally through reeds as we cut off the bends of the river; but they formed no serious impediment although they stood so high that we occasionally experienced some difficulty in following each other through them. Having found, after surveying the river a few miles down, that the general course was about south-west, as I had also found it to be above our camp, I followed that direction as a general line of route, leaving the river at length at some distance to the left. The country looked well, lofty yarra trees and luxuriant gra.s.s giving it the appearance of fine forest land; but most of these trees bore marks of inundation, and the water appeared to have reached several feet up their trunks. At length I came on a native path conducting westward; but as it led to rising ground with Atriplex halimoides, etc., I bent our course to the south and reached the river at sunset.

LAKE WEROMBA.

Burnett and Piper followed the native path until they came to the bed of a fine lake about half a mile across, and they met some natives who told them that the name of it was Weromba. Mr. Stapylton also discovered a small lake of the same sort near our route and south of the other. Both sheets of water, like that of Waljeers, were surrounded by a ridge of rising ground consisting of the red earth of the dry plains, and it was covered with the salsolaceous shrubs peculiar to them. These lakes seem to be supplied only from the highest floods of the river, and to const.i.tute a remarkable and peculiar feature in the character of the surface. I had been informed of a very large one of the same kind named Quawingame near the left bank of the Lachlan, and not far from its junction with the Murrumbidgee; but the singular turn of the first-mentioned river prevented me from seeing it.

NATIVE ENCAMPMENT.

As we drew near the river I perceived the huts of a tribe with a fire smoking before each. I immediately sent back for the gins, but before they could come up the natives whom we saw there noticed us and immediately disappeared among the reeds, shrieking as if they had been mad. Our females soon after approached their huts and called on them to return, but in vain.

RIVERBANKS OF DIFFICULT ACCESS. BEST HORSE DROWNED.

A misfortune befel us this evening which made the party better aware of the treacherous nature of the banks of this part of the Murrumbidgee. I had just time before it got dark to find a place where the cattle could approach the water, the banks being almost everywhere water-worn and perpendicular, and consequently inaccessible and dangerous to animals in descending to drink. To this point I had sent the sheep, and the men were leading the horses also towards it when the foremost, which unfortunately was the best, made a rush to the water at a steeper place, and fell into the river. He swam however to the other side but, in returning, sank in the middle of the stream, never to rise again. He had winkers on and I think it probable that he had put his foot into a short rein which was attached to the collar. This horse was of the Clydesdale breed and drew the cart containing my instruments throughout the journey along the Darling last year. His name was Farmer--an unfortunate appellation for surveying horses--for Farmer's Creek, in the new road to Bathurst, was named after another horse which fell there and broke his neck while I was marking out the line.

CROSS A COUNTRY SUBJECT TO INUNDATIONS.

The land adjacent to the river was of the richest quality; and the gra.s.s on it was luxuriant and the forest scenery fine. The lofty trees certainly bore marks of inundation one or two feet high; but as land still higher was not far distant it cannot be doubted, notwithstanding its liability to become flooded, that the soil might supply the wants of an industrious population; especially as its spontaneous productions are the chief support of the aboriginal inhabitants.

TRAVERSE A BARREN REGION AT SOME DISTANCE FROM THE RIVER.

May 17.

A beautiful morning. The lat.i.tude of this camp being exactly that of the most southern bend of the river in Arrowsmith's map, I ventured upon a course nearly west in order to clear the bends. The lofty trees I had seen before me were found to be situated, not on the banks of the river, but amongst scrubs. We afterwards came to sandhills and extensive tracts covered with that most unpleasing of shrubs to a traveller, the Eucalyptus dumosa, and the p.r.i.c.kly gra.s.s mentioned by Mr. Oxley. We traversed ridges of sand rising perhaps sixty feet above the plains, nearer the river; and, when viewed from trees, the same kind of country seemed unlimited in all directions. I therefore travelled south-south-west and afterwards southward; until we once more entered among the yarra trees on the more open ground by the river, and encamped after a journey of about twelve miles. The country we had this day traversed was of so unpromising a description that it was a relief to get even amongst common scrubs, and escape from those of the Eucalyptus dumosa. This species is not a tree but a lofty bush with a great number of stems, each two or three inches in diameter; and the bushes grow thickly together, having between them nothing but the p.r.i.c.kly gra.s.s in large tufts. This dwarf wood approached to the very river, where we encamped without leaving an intermediate plain, as on the Lachlan. In this country, however dreary it appeared, we found a beautiful grevillea not previously seen by us.

KANGAROOS THERE.

During the day we saw also a great many kangaroos and killed two of them.

ANOTHER HORSE IN THE RIVER.

Notwithstanding every precaution in watering the cattle, and at a place selected too as the best that could be found after a careful examination of two miles of the river, one of the horses fell in; but on this occasion it was safely got out again. The abundance of water, though a novelty to us, was a source of new trouble and anxiety from the danger our cattle were in of being drowned, owing to the precipitous banks and soft mud of the river. This peril was indeed so imminent that in the morning it was thought most prudent to water all the horses with a bucket, and not to risk the loss of the bullocks by suffering them to drink at all.

May 18.

Being determined to keep the river in sight, we this day continued our journey along its margin. I found we could follow the general course without entering bends by travelling at the base of a second bank, which seemed to divide the yarra-tree flats from the scrubby ground behind.

LAGOONS PREFERABLE TO THE RIVER FOR WATERING CATTLE.

We came thus upon some rainwater in the clay of the plains which, being sufficient to satisfy the bullocks, we gladly availed ourselves of the opportunity it afforded of watering them without unyoking. After proceeding about three miles further we saw a lagoon between us and the Murrumbidgee. It resembled a bend of the river, and contained abundance of water on which were three pelicans and a number of ducks. When we had travelled nearly far enough to encamp, we came on two other lagoons of the same kind, similarly situated and both containing water. The gra.s.s being good, I determined to pitch our tents between them, as the cattle might thus be watered for one night at least without the risk of being bogged or drowned. These lagoons looked like different bends of a river, although we saw the ends of both and pa.s.sed on firm ground between them.

It was evident however that they could only be supplied by the inundations of the river. On this day we killed a kangaroo.

HIGH WIND, DANGEROUS IN A CAMP UNDER TREES.

May 19.

During the night the weather was tempestuous; at three A.M. it blew a hurricane and the rain fell heavily afterwards. I was not sorry when the wind abated for we were so confined for room between the two lagoons that my tent had been pitched, and most of our encampment placed, unavoidably under a large yarra tree, a very unsafe position during high winds, but fortunately no branches fell. In the morning, after proceeding about a mile, another lagoon lay before us, which was full of water and indeed terminated in the river. We avoided it by turning to the right and gaining the higher ground above the level of floods. We continued along this upper land, thus crossing two small plains; but soon after, being apprehensive of going too far from the river, we again entered the open forest of yarra trees which marked so distinctly its immediate margin. At 3 1/2 miles we pa.s.sed a bend of the river, full of dead trees, the banks being quite perpendicular and loose. After reaching another bend three miles further we noticed two lagoons, apparently the remains of an ancient channel of the river; and at ten miles we came upon a creek as capacious as the Lachlan and full of large ponds of water. Mr. Stapylton examined this creek some way up and he found that it came from the north-east; and on arriving at a favourable place I crossed with the party and encamped, the day having been very rainy and cold. We soon discovered that this channel was only a branch of one from the north and, the latter being very deep, I determined to halt next day, that its course might be explored while the men made a fit pa.s.sage across it for the carts.

May 20.

This morning the weather appeared beautifully serene; and the barometer had risen higher than I had ever seen it on this side of the mountains.

Mr. Stapylton, who left the camp in the morning, returned about sunset after exploring the creek through a very tortuous course, more or less to the northward of west. He had also ascertained that it supplied a small lake about eight miles to the westward of our camp, whence he had perceived its course bending again towards the river, of which he in fact considered it only a branch: and I therefore concluded that the ponds of water so abundant in it were but the remains of a flood in the Murrumbidgee.

May 21.

A good pa.s.sageway having been made, we crossed the watercourse and proceeded towards Lake Stapylton as I understood that there we might easily recross. I was informed by Burnett that when the journey commenced this morning the gins in the bush had not responded to Piper's call until after such a search as convinced him that both intended to leave the party. He said that in such cases the law of the aborigines was that the two first attempts of a wife to leave her husband might be punished by a beating, but that for the third offence he might put her to death. On the way we traversed the head of a creek somewhat similar to the last, at a place where it was nearly level with the plain although, just below, it contained a fine reach of water obviously supplied by the river.

SERIOUS ACCIDENT; A CARTWHEEL Pa.s.sES OVER THE WIDOW'S CHILD.

Here an unfortunate accident befel the little native child Ballandella who fell from a cart and, one of the wheels pa.s.sing over, broke her thigh. On riding up I found The Widow her mother in great distress, prostrate in the dust with her head under the limb of the unfortunate child. I made the doctor set it immediately; but the femora having been broken very near the socket, it was found difficult to bandage the limb so as to keep the bone in its place. Every care however was taken of the poor little infant that circ.u.mstances would allow; and she bore the pain with admirable patience though only four years old. In her cries on first meeting with the accident she was heard to call for Majy, a curious instance of this child's sense at so early an age.

I found that the ground near the lake afforded so good a position for a depot that I encamped upon it with the intention of ascertaining what gra.s.s the neighbourhood afforded, and how the situation was likely to answer this purpose in other respects. It had been latterly my intention to leave the carts, boats, and most of the cattle in a depot at the junction of the Murrumbidgee and Murray; and to proceed with two light carts only and a month's provisions to complete the survey of the Darling. We were now, I considered, within three days' journey, at most, of that junction (according to Arrowsmith's map) and as these rivers were dangerous to the cattle, and their banks much frequented by the natives, such a place as this seemed more convenient and secure for a temporary depot.

GRAVES OF THE NATIVES.

On the rising ground near our camp were several graves, all inclosed in separate parterres of exactly the same remarkable double or triple ridges as those first seen on the lower part of the Lachlan. There were three of these parterres all lying due east and west. On one, evidently the most recent, the ashes of a hut appeared over the grave. On another, which contained two graves (one of a small child) logs of wood mixed with long gra.s.s were neatly piled transversely; and in the third, which was so ancient that the enclosing ridges were barely visible, the grave had sunk into a gra.s.sy hollow. I understood from The Widow that such tombs were made for men and boys only, and that the ashes over the most recent one were the remains of the hut which had been burnt and abandoned after the murder of the person whose body was buried beneath had been avenged by the tribe to whom the brother or relative keeping it company above ground had belonged.

CHOOSE A POSITION FOR THE DEPOT.