Page:History of Adelaide and vicinity.djvu/190

 I64 ADELAIDE AND VICINITY The Railway-BuUders In April, 1873, Major Warburton, then 60 years of age, whose party was equipped by the liberality of Sir Thomas Elder and Sir W. W. Hughes, started to cross from Central Mount Stuart to Fremantle. Giles and Gosse went out with horses, but Warburton was supplied with camels. I'Vom Alice Springs the explorer pursued a course near to the MacDonnell Ranges, and then he struck to the north-west, missing the stretch which defeated Ciiles. As soon as the border was crossed, the serious trials of his journey began. Perhaps Warburton was not so expert a bushman as many Australian explorers, but certainl- he was as fearless as the bravest, and as stoical in bodily suffering. The necessity to obtain water drove him in the search upon a more northerly course than he intended to jHirsue. Month after month passed as he wrestled with his task. Long excursions were made west, and then back on his track to the east, north, and south, for water. Hot sand, blown by the wind, scorched his face ; by day the sun's heat was almost unbearable, and at night the cold was intense. It is said that, out of 49 attempts he made to find water by sinking, only one was successful. The way led over innumerable ranges of sandhills ; nowhere was there a pleasant prospect. One or two of the camels broke loose, and were lost in the desert. As the months passed, and the provisions diminished, the remaining animals were killed for food. Fatigue and anxiety caused Warburton to despair, and he would have gladly died in the wilderness. So weak was he, that his companions strapped him upon a camel, and thus a great part of the. journey was accomplished. The success of the expedition was largely due to Charlie, an Australian native attached to the expedition, who found water when the others gave up hope. All possible speed was made for the Oakover, a river in the north-west of the sister colony, and there the party arrived on December 4, 1873, after "looking death close in the face" — to use Warburton's own words. Help was procured at a station on the De Grey River, and by slow stages the journey was continued among the settlements to Perth. Thus an old man was the first to successfully storm the deserts of Western Australia. The South Australian Parliament voted Warburton In 1874, Ernest Giles and John Ross discovered considerable areas of country near the border, but they failed to get overland to Perth. Warburton, with his camels, had crossed the western colony in its northern latitudes ; and John P^orrest, with horses, now determined to take a more southerly and central course. In March, 1874, accompanied by his brother Alexander, two other Europeans, and two natives, he left Geraldton, north of Perth, followed the Murchison watershed, and then resolutely turned his face eastwards. In all his journeys P'orrest proved himself to be a master in bushcraft, a ".science" in which he was helped by the cunning of the clever natives who accompanied him. One of these. Tommy Windich, deserves to be ranked among the great explorers of Australia. He accompanied John Forrest in all his long and arduous journeys, and was also a companion of Alexander P'orrest and another explorer in their expeditions. The brothers affectionately laud his ingenuity and hardihood. Though he had many vicissitudes to put up with during his overland trip, P'orrest conducted his party with such good judgment and generalship, that their sufferings did not compare
 * ^i,ooo, and his companions .^500.