European exploration of the Great Victoria Desert

Ernest Giles’ exploration of the Great Victoria Desert commenced in March 1875 with a journey north from the settlement of Fowlers Bay on the Southern Ocean to Ooldea Soak, and on to Wynbring on today’s Indian Pacific rail line, before heading NNE to intersect the Overland Telegraph Line at Mt. Eba. After returning down the line back to Beltanna, the home of his patron Sir Thomas Elder, Giles prepared for another expedition. This time he returned to Wynbring, and then to a soak called Ooldabinna where he split the party. His second in command William Tietkins was to explore the country to the north, hopefully find water that would open a route north to the Musgrave Ranges. Giles headed west to the West Australian border and then south to the start of the Nullarbor Plain. On returning to Ooldabinna the entire party moved west and would have perished had Tietkins not discovered a claypan holding a spring with plentiful water. Giles named this spring, and the desert after his Queen. After a week recuperating, Giles led his team on to finish in Perth.

In May 1891the largest exploring party ever assembled, the Elder Scientific Exploration Expedition, led by David Lindsay, left Warrina in the north of South Australia and headed to the Everard Ranges, striking red granite tors north of the Great Victoria Desert in today’s Pitjantjatjara Lands. As the expedition moved along the ranges, several sorties were made south, deep into the Great Victoria Desert. The expedition gradually made its way westward until they found themselves near the present day Warburton. With water critical Lindsay decided to attempt to cross the Great Victoria Desert to Queen Victoria Springs some 600kms distant. At camp 47, a location to the east of today’s Connie Sue Highway, Lindsay suggested to Dr. Elliot that the camps supply of lime juice be breached to have with their evening tipple. Elliot mixed the lime concentrate with whisky in a galvanised canteen and the entire party became ill with zinc poisoning. The camp is recorded on the expeditions official map as Lime Juice Camp. After two months of one of the longest dry marches in the history of Australian exploration they located Queen Victoria Springs, but found it how we have always found it, a dry claypan, and the men toiled late into the night to dig down to water. Moving north west towards the Murchison River the party descended into bickering and quarrelling. Four members resigned without reason, and Lindsay was replaced by the surveyor Larry Wells and ordered to return to Adelaide. Despite ending in disaster, the expedition managed to gather over 700 species of plants and map over 20 million hectares of previously unexplored country. A later Royal Commission exonerated Linday.

The western side of the Desert was explored by David Carnegie, the seventh son of the Earl of Southesk in 1873, his most important discovery was Empress Springs, on a track north of today’s Tjukayirla Roadhouse on the Great Central Road. It is a deep sinkhole requiring some trepidation to reach the water at the bottom. William Carr-Boyd and Samuel Hubbe.also explored western parts of the desert.

Perhaps the explorer with the greatest affiliation with the Great Victoria Desert was Richard Maurice, who self funded and led at least eight private expeditions between 1897 and 1903 into the eastern parts of the desert that he called ‘the back country.’ Maurice also had close contact with the Aboriginals and his photographs and manuscripts provide a valuable record. The prolific and colorful explorer Frank Hann made numerous explorations in the Great Victoria Desert, primarily searching for pastoral land and minerals. Hann has the honour of naming more geographical features in Western Australia than any other individual. The singular Hann Tabletop Hill on the Connie Sue Highway is named after him.

Whilst not an explorer it would be remiss not to mention Daisy Bates, who arrived at Ooldea in September 1919 at sixty years of age to work with the Aboriginals. She had a colourful life, her first husband was Breaker Morant. She initially lived in a tent. She claimed she came to Ooldea to provide Aboriginal people with food, clothing and medicines. Up until her arrival disease was rife, and Aboriginal people were begging from passing trains on the railway line. She stayed for 16 years, the subject of great curiosity and controversy. Here memoirs are recorded in her book ‘The passing of the Aboriginies.’ Whilst the fervor of European Exploration from the 1870s to the 1930s in the Great Victoria Desert failed to yield pastoral lands or great mineral finds it had a profound effect on the traditional owners living there and would forever change their lives.