In Central Australia

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28559, 12 April 1958, Page 3

In Central Australia

The Fortune Hunters. By Frank Clune. Angus and Robertson. 250 pp.

Writing in his usual breezy style, Frank Clune in this book takes the reader on a trip by jeep across Central Australia to Darwin. At about the time of the uranium finds in the Buller Gorge, Frank Clune was smitten by the urge to make his own fortune. Having persuaded ten Sydney business-men to form themselves into “The Fortune Hunters’ Syndicate” and td back him with a subscription of £250 each in cash, the author bought a jeep and supplies of food, and with a geologist and a geiger counter hopefully set off on his 3000-mile journey. After passing through Broken Hill and Port Augusta he decided not to follow the railway to Alice Springs, but to branch westward first and then to make his way north through the little known opal-mining centre of Coober Pedy. From here he continued on to Alice Springs, thence through’Tennant Creek and Katherine to Rum Jungle, Darwin and Arnhem Land. Besides prospecting for uranium, on the way the tireless traveller found out all he could about the ’pioneers and present-day adventurers; and it is this information which fills i the greater part of his tale. The most impressive description in the book is that of Avers Kock, and readers will find themselves thinking of it long after they have finished the story. Ayers Rock (native- name Oolera) is millions of years old. It is a huge flattopped mesa, five miles round, stands up 1200 ft above the tableland and is situated m the heart of the desert 300 miles south-west from Alice Springs: “Mulga and spinifex have their brief lives, wither and perish, white men and black men come and go in their endless generations of war and peace, but Oolera, the mighty monolette, outlives them all, standing like a sehtinal at the mysterious heart of Australia.’’ Frank Clune found no uranium there “but I found something at Ayers Rock more valuable to me than gold—a memory of a beauty and solitude and grandeur which will remain with me as long as I live.” No story of Central Australia would be complete without experiences of the blacks. Frank Clune tells how he followed the trail of Lasseter’s ghost, and takes, the reader on a police man-hunt for fnurderers in the desert, an experience made real with unforgettably gruesome photographs. At some length also he espouses the cause of Albert Namatjira. the aboriginal artist whose paintings of his native landscape have created such a stir in Australia and overseas. The author believes that the Government has treated Albert very shabbily, and he champions his case for official recognition with hard-hitting enthusiasm. At length Frank Clune reaches Darwin where he investigates the Humpty-Doo rice project and the uranium mines at Rum Jungle and El Shirana. Then, as a climax to the book, with the jeep, the geologist and the geiger counter, our author discovers a uranium field of vast extent—he hopes He flies back with rock samples, only to find that these beautiful specimens were thorium—valueless! So the mirage of fortune faded; the jeep and geiger counter are sold and w th unused funds the Fortune Hunters’ Syndicate is liquidated oach member getting back £173 I for the £250 he had put m.