Vo ‘ ; i 924 IV ' ] NICHOLES, A Trip to Central Australia. 45 
linns did often have striations on the crown, and said he was 
publishing a note to that effect. 
We consider that C. isabellinus, North, should be given full 
specific rank, it being an interior species, only nearing the coast 
in the far north-west, where the interior conditions extend to the 
coast. The name isabellinus antedates Campbell’s name of 
rubiginosus, and so must stand. 
LIST. 
C. fuliginosus , the Striated Field-Wren, habitat Tasmania, 
Victoria and S.E. portion of South Australia. 
C. moiitanellus. Rock Field-Wren, habitat southern but not 
coastal portion of Western Australia. 
C. campcstris, Rufous Field-Wren, habitat South Australia 
south of the head of Spencer’s Gulf, and, we believe, 
Eastern Victoria. 
C. isabellinus , Rusty Wren, habitat, northern South Aus¬ 
tralia and Western Australia, extending from Leigh’s 
Creek north and west to Point Cloates, and probably 
inland N.S.W. 
A Trip to Mungeranie, Central Australia 
By DU. BROOKE NICHOLES, R.A.O.U., Melbourne. 
On May 24th, 1922, 1 left Melbourne for Adelaide in company 
with Dr. George Horne to visit the country of the Wonkonguru, 
a native tribe inhabiting the eastern shores of Lake Eyre. 
Cooper’s Creek forms the southern boundary, and their territory 
stretches northwards to the Warburton River (so called by 
McKinlay* the explorer, in 1861, after the then Commissioner of 
Police in Adelaide). Later it was found to be the eastern end of 
the Diamentina River, and re-named after the wife (Diamentina 
Roma) of the first Governor of Queensland (Sir George Bowen) 
who married the daughter of a Sicilian nobleman. 
Whilst in the district we met an old white-bearded, white- 
haired native named “Elius,” who as a boy of eighteen saw 
McKinlay (his first white man), and his rescue party searching 
for Burke and Wills. ^ “Elius” and a companion stalked the 
party lor some days. Stealthily creeping behind the bushes, they 
came close up and saw the explorers’ mob of sheep, from which 
they eventually cut out and speared a straggler. Hearing a gun 
fired, they ran away. McKinlay — a red-bearded man — they 
took to be a black man with his face red-ochred, and the sheep 
they mistook for a new kind of dog. This chance meeting of 
ours with “Elius” constituted a remarkable living link between 
1861 and 1922, and possibly the last of its kind that will be 
recorded of the ill-fated expedition. 
