A FRESH START

Four days sufficed to make preparations for another trip, to hear and read the news, and write letters.  My first, of course, was to my Syndicate, to report our past movements and future plans, and how I intended making northward, hoping that change of direction would change our luck.

January 4th we set out with the same three camels, and rations for three months.  My plan was first to revisit some known good country to the south of Hannan’s, and, if unsuccessful, to travel from that point in a more or less north-north-west direction, and so follow, instead of crossing, the trend of the various formations; for in travelling from east to west, or vice versa, one crosses a succession of parallel belts, first a sand-plain, then a ridge of granite, next a timbered flat, then a stretch of auriferous country, with possibly a belt of flat salt-lake country on either side.  Since these parallel belts run nearly north-north-west, it seemed to the mind of the untrained geologist that by starting in a known auriferous zone, and travelling along it in a north-north-west direction, the chances of being all the time in auriferous country would be increased, and the plan worth trying.

Passing the homestead of the Hampton Plains Land Company, where I was given valuable information and a map by the courteous and kind manager, Mr. Anderson (now alas! dead, a victim to the typhoid scourge), we continued on the Lake Lefroy road as far as the Fourteen Mile rock-hole.  This contained water, but so foul that the camels would not look at it.  Nor were we more successful in our next water-hole, for it contained a dead horse.  Leading to this Namma-hole, which was prettily situated on a low rock at the foot of a rough, broken ridge of granite, surrounded by green and shady kurrajongs, we found a curious little avenue of stones.  These were piled up into heaps laid in two parallel rows, and at intervals between the heaps would be a large boulder; evidently this was the work of aboriginals, but what meaning to attach to it we could not think.  The beginning of our journey promised well for water, for we were again favoured by a local thunderstorm which, in clay-pans and swamps, left a plentiful supply.  Mr. Anderson had told me of some hills in which he had found gold in small quantities, and sure enough wherever we tried a “dish of dirt,” colours were sure to result.  A pleasant camp was this, plenty of water, numberless quartz reefs, every prospect of finding payable gold, and feed of the best kind in profusion—­a welcome change for our beasts.  They were shedding the last of their winter coats, and, as the weather was hot, I hastened the transformation by pulling off great flakes of wool with which Egan stuffed one of the saddles.  Poor Misery had an uncomfortable experience here in consequence of catching the rings of his hobble-chain in the broken stump of a bush, so that he was held captive all night.