INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 21 



pipes, and cabbage-tree hats were the fashionable wear. I remember 

 that a favorite way of passing the time was to criticise the stores and 

 provisions offered at the store for the use of explorers ; and on one 

 occasion some dried beef was talked over, smelt, and tasted with the 

 air of connoisseurs. 



Although Menindie cannot be included in Central Australia, it was 

 on the verge of it when I started on my search for Burke and Wills 

 and their comrades, because it was then the outside settlement, beyond 

 which was the unknown interior. When I say " unknown " I must 

 qualify that term to some extent by saying that all known of it was 

 from Burke's despatch from Torowotto ; from Gregory's account of 

 his expedition down the Barcoo, in search of Leichhardt ; and the 

 more distant expedition of Sturt, who discovered Cooper's Creek, the 

 Great Stony Desert, and E\Te's Creek. 



My personal reminiscences of Central Australia in connection 

 with the Burke and Wills Expedition practically commence with the 

 start of my party from Menindie. It is not necessary to say more of 

 the country passed over in the first 13 days than that we were following 

 Burke's track, as delineated upon Wills's route plan. The horses 

 were becoming accustomed to the camels, and everything worked 

 satisfactorily. On the fourteenth day we left Burke's track to avoid 

 a long detour to the north-east before it turned north-westerly to strike 

 Cooper's Creek. We were, therefore, in new country, much to the 

 eastward of Sturt's route from Fort Grey. 



There is a passage in Wills's report of the 15th December, 1860, 

 which is worth noting here. In speaking of the country passed over 

 between Torowotto and Cooper's Creek he mentions that they found 

 the tracks of drays — four distinct tracks, two of which appeared to be 

 those of heavy horse drays, the other two might have been made 

 by light ones or spring carts — and he says they were unable to make 

 out the tracks of the horses and cattle. This was near Burke's Camp 

 54 (that is, according to the route plan prepared by Wills), on a creek, 

 apparently a tributary of the BuUoo Kiver. Wills attributes these 

 tracks to De Rinsey, and adds, " who, I believe, had some drays with 

 him, and reported that he had been somewhere in this direction." (m) 

 I mention this because we also foimd dray tracks, or what were taken 

 for them. They looked like the tracks of a bullock-dray and a spring 

 cart, which had been travelling when the ground was soft, after rain. 

 We also were unable to make out " the tracks of the horses and cattle," 

 and this caused me to follow them for some distance along the flats 

 (m) Andrew Jackson, op. cit., pp. 44 5. 



