MEMOIR 
32 
taria. It was necessarily a costly expedition, and, over and 
above the £1,000 munificently contributed by Mr. David 
Syme of Melbourne for the purpose, Spencer had to find 
some £500 out of his own pocket; and Spencer was no 
Croesus. Apart from financial worries, moreover, there w T ere 
many preparatory troubles to be faced—a year’s leave of 
absence to be obtained from the University Council (for 
which Frazer paved the way by a request addressed to the 
Victorian Government); kit and transport to be organized; 
and, above all, the Clerk of the Weather to be propitiated. 
For in February, a month before they actually were able to 
make a start, Spencer writes to Frazer: 
‘Gillen and myself are hoping to work across into Queensland so as to 
link on the Central Tribes with those amongst whom Roth has been 
working. Most unfortunately the present season is a terribly bad one 
in Central Australia, and for more than a thousand miles there is not 
a drop of water or a blade of grass. It would be simply foolhardy for 
us to set out under these present conditions. Our horses could only live 
for a few days—even camels are out of the question—and so we have 
decided to wait for a time in the hope that rains will fall during the 
next month. . . . Meanwhile I feel equal to the slaying of half-a-dozen 
Priests of Nemi, if only this would ensure rain in Central Australia.’ 
Nevertheless, they got off from Adelaide on March 15, and 
three days later were on trek from Oodnadatta, heavily 
loaded, and ‘tormented by myriads of flies which make work 
almost impossible’. By June they are past the confines of the 
Arunta and among new folk, the Kaitish; while by September 
they have nearly done with the Warramunga, a fresh tribe 
living another hundred miles to the north. ‘Time is slipping 
by, but we cannot work more quickly than we are doing. 
Natives are very difficult people to worm reliable information 
out of, and we have to keep working back.’ Or, again,‘We 
are getting on very fairly well, but wade through endless 
traditions for here and there a speck of something of real 
