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here also is to be seen indications of immense torrents at times, as is seen
40 yards from the banks in the limbs of trees - drift wood which has been
washed down. The acacia is found here in great perfection, it is a splendid
shrubby tree; its foliage is green and beautiful. Of this acacia, the varieties
are extremely numerous, from a lowly shrub to high straight-trunked trees;
other timber is very abundant in this creek' (Brock, 1975: 105). Brock later
recorded the presence of a stinging insect and myriads of flies, and when
rain did eventually fall the area became a quagmire.
According to Brock, the exploring party moved to Depot Glen on January
27th 1845, as the supply of water at the first waterhole was becoming
exhausted.
Of this decision Sturt, who had left the party to seek water further north,
recorded '...1 turned back and reached the camp on the 26th (January
1845) where to my astonishment I found all the water dried up, and Mr.
Poole drawing his supplies from a well'(Sturt 1984:44). Elsewhere in his
'narrative' of the Expedition, Sturt reported the existence of Aboriginal wells
some distance to the north-west and to the south-east and south. If the
'well' from which Poole was drawing his water supply when Sturt returned
was in fact a well, it too may have been of aboriginal origin. A degree of
support for this view comes from one published interpretation of the
Aboriginal word 'Milparinka' - "find a native well here" (Sugden, n.d.)
Unfortunately no reference is quoted for the interpretation provided, and
another of Sturt's accounts suggests the well was in fact a 'hole in the
middle of the creek...the cattle being driven to a neighbouring pond, which
they had all but exhausted' (Sturt, 1965: 128).
Sturt recorded that the waterhole was located on latitude 29..46..00. The
site of Milparinka is at latitude 29..44..00, and the presence of a large
waterhole in the creek below was the main reason for it being so located.
The evidence therefor suggests the waterhole camp and the well used by
Sturt's Central Australian Exploring Expedition in 1845 were located on the
river flats a little more than a mile above the deepest parts of Milparinka
Waterhole. This approximates the location of Chinaman's Garden Well
some forty-five years later.
2.2 European Expansion
2.2.1 Expansion onto the Bulloo, Paroo and Warrego Rivers.
Of these rivers the Warrego and Paroo run from south-western
Queensland into the Darling River. The Bullo peters out in swamplands
just below the Queensland border.
Heathcote (1965:83) found an ebb and flow of expansion took place on the
Warrego, depending upon 'political and economic swells' and the reports
of various exploration parties, but that several stations had been
established on it above Cunnamulla at the time of Bourke and Wills' Great