Ferdinand von Mueller

Peak Telegraph Station

2

SA.

12th July, 1872.

My dear Baron von Mueller, —

Perhaps by this time you thought I had passed the bounds of all civilisation, but I have had so many delays and drawbacks, that I am now thankful to be so far on my route to the west. I can sum up all my troubles and annoyances as arising from the want of grass. Really the country from Port Augusta to Mount Margaret is a perfect desert, and what may surprise you, it is a stony one. I can describe the whole region in a few words, as it is almost a treeless and shrubless stony plain for hundreds of miles, and the stony region extends beyond Lady Charlotte Waters.

3

SA.

The River Finke is the first, which traverses a sandy or soft country, and I shall be most heartily glad when I reach its banks. I have at last reached the region of grass, and my remaining horses are beginning to improve. I had to re-shoe the whole of them here. Heavy rains fell a fortnight ago, and flooded all the small creeks and most of the large ones. It has also been raining all to-day, and has evidently set in for the night. I have every reason to expect a most prosperous trip across to the Murchison River.

4

WA.

I have been joined by a young stockman named Alexander Robinson, so that now my party is quite complete. The nearer I get to the unexplored regions, the more light-hearted I feel, as I am so fully confident of my getting across, though the horses I have had, and the delays and vexatious I have had to put up with, have at times almost made me cranky. However, affairs never looked brighter. I have fourteen and shall most probably have sixteen horses when I leave Charlotte Waters, and I hope then to be disencumbered with any vehicle. This station is the head-quarters of the Mount Margaret run. It is forty miles north-west of that mount, and is the furthest stock station in this province. I have collected a few specimens of flowering shrubs and other plants from the country round the southern shores of Lake Eyre up to this place. I send them in a separate parcel. With regard to the fall of waters in this part of the continent, it appears to me and others who are competent to judge, that all those which flow south or south-east of the MacDonnell Range empty into Lake Eyre, which is a very important feature, as some day this will no doubt be the highway for water carriage into this interior, as it is simply the northern extremity of the ancient Spencer's Gulf continued through Lake Torrens to Lake Eyre. Doubtless some day it will be reconnected by a canal with the sea.

5

The previous two sentences were quoted in a letter by the engineer William F. Anderson to the South Australian register, 13 August 1872, p. 3, urging support for the scheme that he and Thomas Worsnop had previously proposed for such a canal.

The MacDonnell Range

6

NT.

is the dividing range upon Stuart's line, and according to Mr Woods (one of the heads of the telegraph staff) forms also a watershed to the west and south-west, as it does to the east and south-east. That gentleman, upon whose opinion I set great value, advised me to make that range my point of departure. But if I find that the country about the River Finke has been visited by rains, then I cannot afford to lose any more time by going further north.

Well, my dear Baron, this may be the last letter I shall ever write, and I beg you to rest assured of my most earnest gratitude for the truly generous and noble manner in which you have supported me in my present enterprise, and as it is impossible for anyone of us to be certain of the future, and as it is possible that I may never return from my present journey, and as enemies or detractors of yours may hint, or even assert, that you had either sent me upon my present enterprise, or urged me to undertake it without sufficient means to accomplish it, let me state that I undertook the enterprise at my own desire, cherished for many years, and that all responsibility attaching to my expedition falls upon myself alone, and that your advice and assistance has enabled me to attempt an undertaking that no earthly inducement would now cause me to abandon. So now, my dear Baron, I remain your truly obliged and thankful friend,

Carmichael

7

Samuel Carmichael.

and Dick both desire to be remembered to you. The party now consists of four, viz.:—Self, Carmichael, Robinson, and Dick. The blackfellow I mentioned in my last letter

8

Letter not found. No earlier letter from Giles in SA has been found, although in M to A. Petermann, 24 April 1872 (in this edition as 72-04-24b) he mentions having had letters from Giles in Central Australia.

did not make his appearance after I first saw him.

9

In the version published in Perth, the article ends: ‘In the opinion of Baron von Müeller Mr. Giles may be expected to arrive at some point in Western Australia, either at Nickol Bay or at the head of the Murchison, before the very hot weather sets in, and the Baron has requested that a look-out may be kept at the bock (sic) stations in the Victoria district, so that assistance may be rendered to the little band of explorers, should they succeed in carrying out their undertaking.’