32 INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 



where we were used to come and bring news to me which messengers 

 had brought them from the Yaurorka, who lived at the southern edge of 

 Sturt's Stony Desert, who had received it from the tribe on the Diaman- 

 tina River on the other side of it. This news related to John McKinlay, 

 the explorer, who was known to the blacks by the name of " Wheelpra 

 Pinnaru " — that is the head man or elder with the " cart." The word 

 wheelpra seems to me to be the native form of our word " wheelbarrow," 

 which has become part of the " pigeon-English " used by the tame 

 blacks, and which is transmitted from tribe to tribe as settlement 

 progresses. The reason why this word was applied to McKinlay was 

 "because he had a cart or dray with him. I was told at one time by 

 my native informants that " Wheelpra Pinnaru " was surrounded by 

 a great arimata, or flood, and could not get out ; then, after a time, it 

 was that the arimata had gone away, and that " Wheelpra Pinnaru " 

 had gone away they did not know where to, and that he had thrown 

 his wheelpra away — that is, left it behind. 



Having made myself acquainted with that part of the Barcoo delta 

 which lay to the north, and as far as the southern edge of the Stony 

 Desert (which the blacks call Murda pinna, or Great Stones, or Stony 

 Place), I determined to go further afield to where it was said the great 

 arimata had surrounded McKinlay. 



This trip was interesting in many respects. Sturt, for instance, 

 when he penetrated into Central Australia as far as Eyre's Creek, did 

 so during a protracted drought. He discovered and graphically 

 described the Great Stony Desert as the dried bed of a former sea. 

 He also described the condition of the country beyond it as a water- 

 less desert — that is, the country which we now know as the Everard 

 or Lower Diamantina. 



The route which I followed on my trip was nearly that taken by 

 Sturt ; but the conditions of climate were very different to those he 

 experienced. Although the season had been persistently dry at Cooper's 

 Creek, I saw, on several occasions, that heavy rains must be falling far 

 to the north. When I went out that way this proved to have been the 

 case. The country north of that part of Cooper's Creek was a land of 

 lakes, fed by the divergent channels of a great delta, by which the flood 

 waters found their way to the very edge of the desert. 



It was in July that I made this journey, and on the 8th of that 

 month we camped at a place called Appenparra by the blacks, and 

 near to the southern edge of the desert. We were five in all, being 

 Dr. Murray, Weston Phillips, Williams, McWilliams, the blackboy 

 Charley, and also one of the Yaurorka tribe. 



