A LONELY WANDERER.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19317, 23 May 1928, Page 7

A LONELY WANDERER.

TRAMP FROM DARWIN TO SYDNEY. (IROU OUB OWH COBBBSPONDIVT.) SYDNEY, May 10. A remarkable man is Robert Morley, v a Londoner, who arrived'in Sydney last Saturday after a tramp of several thousands of miles. Almost always alone, fighting his way through summer and winter, Hooded rivers, and desert sands, he has been trudging over Australia for years. And so, it seems, not all the men who carry then swags through the ione outback are "true Aussies." In lact there is maiiy a Londoner among them, and Morley is the most remarkable of them all. Since two months after the war, his gratuity money gone, he has scarcely ever slept in a proper bed. Lonely bush tracks, flooded rivers, thirsty stretches, blacks, and alligators, and the never-ending "damper"—for years these have filled his life. He has wandered through the lonely wastes travelling by the compass only, depending on cockatoos, pigs, ana turkeys for food, meeting alligators and even young crocodiles, and ceaselessly guarding against snakes and leeches. Taking the little-known back track, far away from any railway or telegraph line, any road or bush track, he has come to Sydney over 3000 miles from Darwin. Actually he travelled many more thousand miles on- foot. He is a keen-eyed man, 45 years of age, straight and wiry. He set out from Sydney in 1921, to walk towards North Queensland for a new start in life. But work was hard to get, and from Cairns he trudged to Cooktown, and then, later, across the lonely wastes to Darwin. From Camooweal to near Darwin his companions were a Frenchman and his dog—but, for the rest, naught but the silence of the bush and plain, and the wanderlust to urge him on. Leaving Darwin some four years ago, carrying only revolver and rifle, tobacco ana flour, the wanderer set out on the long and lonely tramp south to Sydney, a journey which he has just completed. "There were uneasy moments, when blacks and alligators were to be feared," he said, explaining his experiences, "and sometimes I was badly in need of water But I feel better than ever I did, and there is no telling when a maa will _ take it into his head to have another little stroll around the place." In the meantime, in Sydney, he is mending umbrellas and doing a little tin-smithing for a precarious living.