56 Australian Life 



land that lies along the sea-coast. To the bush- 

 men who have seen it, now fair and smiling, and 

 decked like a garden with glowing flowers, and 

 again a forbidding and arid wilderness, the Never- 

 Never Land, unknown and only partially known, 

 is a magnet that draws them on to adventure. It 

 holds fortune, and it holds death. 



On the plains of the Never-Never, 

 That 's where the dead men lie, 



wrote Barcroft Boake. For more than fifty years, 

 the Never-Never Land has held one secret that 

 many bold men have failed to wrest from it the 

 fate of Lud wig Leichhardt. In 1848, Leichhardt 

 set out from the Darling Downs in Queensland, 

 following the course of the river Barcoo, with the 

 intention of striking west across Australia in the 

 direction of Perth. He and his party were swal- 

 lowed up by the desert, and from that day to this, 

 their fate remains a mystery. Expeditions were 

 fitted out in the hope, at least, of tracing them to 

 their last camp, but in vain. No explorer goes 

 out at the present day without some faint expecta- 

 tion of discovering an explanation of their total 

 disappearance, but not one vestige of the expedi- 

 tion has been found. And Ludwig Leichhardt is 

 but one of the many victims of the Never-Never 

 Land. 



If the risks are great, the rewards also are great. 

 In the year 1892, two prospectors named Bay ley 

 and Ford, both good bushmen, ventured a little 



