ADVENTURE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 158, 6 July 1937, Page 5

ADVENTURE.

TWO YEARS' TALE.

NORTHERN AUSTRALIA.

TOUNG AUCKLANDER BACK.

Two years ago a young man aged 20 years left Auckland in search of adventure. He found it; and this is the odyssey of Mr. L. Campbell, who sailed away to Australia in the Idle Hour, a ketch in which a young American, Mr. Dwight Long, was touring the world, who left the craft at Sydney, and who has had the whole of Northern Australia for his province ever since. Mr. Campbell returned by the Maunganui to-day. Into that two years he has packed the experience that you and I have in a lifetime. He has been goldmining; he has driven packhorses; he has heard the surly grunt of camels under the blazing 125 degrees of central Australian heat; he has seen the traces of so many snakes in the sand that their passage looked like a trellis work. Once he was bitten by a spider and almost lost the use of hie leg. He was bitten by a snake, but fortunately not a deadly one. He has seen crocodiles and alligators near Cairns. He has known thirst and hunger and hardship, heat and cold. But he went ever on and on, for wanderlust is a hard master; and eventually he was turned back by the police from a place called Tennant's Creek because after that the waterholes were between 125 miles and 150 miles apart. And thus it is that he did not fulfil his heart's desire and get to Darwin. The Adventure Begins. He had contracted to sail only to Australia on the Idle Hour, so that when at Sydney he was ill he left the vessel. Thereafter he went to the goldfields at Mount Werong, where besides trying his luck at washing gold he drove a team of packhorses. It was then winter and he described how he had had to make a way at times through, eix feet of snow. Moeat

Werong is in New South Wales, in the great Dividing Range, behind the Blue Mountains. Then he went back to Sydney for a time —but not for long, because cities, even Sydney, had no lure for him. "I had a look at the north coast," was the way he put his next move. "I went to Cairns and Townsville," and from there he turned his face to the interior. He took train to Mount Isa from Townsville, a journey of some 700 miles. From there he walked to a place called Camooweal on the border of Queensland and Northern Territory; and from there again he went etill further to an outpost known as Tennant's Creek. He did not have to walk the last leg as he was fortunate enough to get a ride in a freight motor lorry which took mail and anything else which would make up a cargo. This lorry was run by an Afghan, the race who had introduced the camel to Australia. All along the way from Camooweal, he said, were to be seen the graves of swagmen who had died from thirst. A mere stick marked the grave, and that was all in the immensity of loneliness. To Camooweal wae a distance of 125 miles, and there was only one waterhole. He and a friend made the trip, and a large part of their swag consisted of water. It would have been fatal to run out of water there —just a stick on tha side of the road, and two other graves. Feet Became Diseased. It was on that trip that his feet became diseased. Worms burrowed in under the skin and down into the flesh o/ the sole of the foot. Their marks could be plainly seen in the foot, and the only way to kill the worm wae to wait until it approached the surface — when Its trail became plainer —and then thrust a red-hot needle into it, kill it, and then slit the skin and remove it. It was not a pleasant thing to have to do. From Camooweal to Tennant's Creek was some 300 miles, a most eventful journey, with the heat- steady near 125 degrees, with little water, with rice as the mainstay of a meal, with myriads of flies during the day, and more mosquitoes at night. "Every time you took a deep breath you would draw a fly into your mouth," he said. "At night we used to sleep in the bed of dried rivers, enormous cavities, quite dry, which looked-me though thv H*

never seen water. And yet I remember one night. Rain fell in some hills about 50 miles away. We could see it; and then about the middle of the night one of us was awakened by feeling water flowing over his face. The river he'd was filling. Do you know that in half an hour after we had shifted, there was more than 20ft of water in the river? But do you know, more than that, the next night it was as dry as ever again and we slept in the bone-dry bed again ?" At Tennant's Creek he was turned back. To have gone further would have been too dangerous, and so his plan to get to Darwin fell through. "Snakes!" he exclaimed in answer to a question. "There are thousands of them, literally thousands. When we were walking we used to kill one every 100 yards. They range in size from the 25ft rock pythons to the 10in deadly death adder, or deaf adder, as they are variously called. Then there are tiger snakes and black snakes and carpet snakes. After a while you get used to them. I suppose you take care unconsciously. They are so numerous that their tracks in the sand are like a trellis work." Once before he got to Mount Isa he was bitten by a spider, and though that insect was about as big as a man's small finger nail, he nearly lost the use of his leg as the result of the bite. He was in the Mount Isa Hospital for a long time. And now he is home again, aged only 23, but though he has seen Australia there are still other fields to conquer.