In 1855 Augustus and Henry Gregory explored the country south along Sturt Creek to where it terminated at what was to become known as Gregory’s Salt Sea and later Lake Gregory on the northern edge of the Great Sandy Desert.
In 1873 Colonel Peter Eggerton Warburton crossed the desert from East to West. David Carnegie was born in London on 23 March 1871, the youngest son of the ninth Earl of South Esk. After dropping out of studies he travelled to Ceylon and then Australia. After two years with little success on the goldfields prospecting, Carnegie stumbled upon a reef of gold near Lake Darlot that he worked successfully for a short time and then sold it at a considerable profit. After visiting his family in England he returned to Australia and began preparing for a self-funded expedition into the unknown country to the north. Together with five men and nine camels including one aptly named ‘Satan’ and another ‘Misery’, Carnegie left Coolgardie on 9 July 1896. They headed north east into the Great Victoria Desert, and after nearly perishing, came across the tracks of an Aboriginal ‘buck’, and on sighting him ran him down with camels. After feeding him salt beef - and waiting overnight for the hapless fellow they now named ‘King Billy’ to develop a powerful thirst- they were led to water at the place Carnegie named Empress Springs. Sadly this method of divining water became standard practise for the rest of the expedition. Through the months of August, September and October the party pushed forward over the sandhills of the Great Sandy Desert. Close to Halls Creek, their final destination three camels died of poisoning, and on a rocky ridge at the end of the Ramsay Range, Charlie Stansmore slipped and fatally shot himself through the heart. It was a perverse way to die, having survived 1,400 miles of travel across an unknown waterless desert. Carnegie was to hear about the ill fated Calvert Expedition on his arrival at Halls Creek. After offering assistance to the lost expeditioners and waiting for some 15 weeks, Carnegie returned to Coolgardie via a more easterly route. He died at the age of 29 when a poisoned arrow pierced his thigh whilst trying to apprehend a felon in Nigeria. His exploits are recorded in detail in his fascinating book Spinifex and Sand.
In 1897 Captain Frank Hann discovered Lake Disappointment.
Wells and Carnegie described the Great Sandy Desert as useless for pastoralism. The importation of African Zebu cattle into the Kimberley that were infected with the Boophillis microplus tick resulted in a major outbreak of Redwater Fever, so named because the infected cattle would wade into water to relieve their fever, and the water would turn red from the blood in their urine. A government decree banning cattle movements from the Kimberley crippled the pastoral industry and led to the surveying and construction of the Canning Stock Route.
The Canning Stock Route was seldom used, the last stock movement being in 1959, and the next encroachment into the desert by Europeans was by Len Beadell, the surveyor and road builder who from 4-21 July 1963 built a road from Gary junction north west across the Canning Stock Route at Well 35, through the heart of the Great Sandy Desert to link up with the Callawa cattle station track. On 2 August Len did reconnaissance work east from the Old Talawana Homestead and located Well 24 on the Canning. He then continued east across the Great Sandy Desert until he intersected the Gary Highway at a place he called Windy Corner. Len completed this road in October, it is today known as the Talawanna Track. Walter MacDougall the Native Patrol Officer for the Woomera Rocket Range operated in the desert in 1964 clearing Martu people from the dump zone of the Blue Streak rocket project.
Today there are four Aboriginal communities in the Great Sandy Desert. |
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