End of “Lonely” O'Brien

Manawatu Times, Volume 60, Issue 276, 22 November 1935, Page 5

End of “Lonely” O'Brien

AUSTRALIAN- DESERT TRAGEDY. DINGO SHOOTER LOST. Thirst drove hordes of dingoes (wild native dogs) in towards the scattered waterholes in the north-west of Western Australia and so lured “Lonely" O’Brien, dingo-shooter, out on a terrible desert journey in quest of scalps, lie failed to return (says an exchange). The dingoes do great slaughter among sheep and cattle, and to keep their numbers under control, the authorities otl'er a bonus on each scalp returned to them. Men all over the Australian Continent are engaged solely in this occupation, many earning good money. Jack O ’Brien was one of them. He had his headquarters at Broome, and when he went on a hunting expedition which sometimes lasted for weeks, he went alone; hence the nick-nihne that the men of the north-west gave him. Prom the Ivimbcrleys to the Gascoyne he was known as ‘ ‘ Lonely. ’ ’ He had the reputation of never firing a bullet without getting a scalp. On August 4 O’Brien left the homestead at the Anna Plains cattle station, 90 miles south of Broome, and disappeared into the desert. Only a fearless bushman like O 'Brien would have ventured out into that parched and Dlazing country. There had been no rain for several months. Natives coming into settlements had said that the dingoes, thirst-crazed, were roaming in packs o.t hundreds. Scalping dingoes was O’Brien’s living, so off he went. He told people att he station ho wolud be absent two months, and with misgivings they watched him vanish into the heat haze.

Two and a half months after ho had set out, O’Brien’s tw r o camels wandered back to a cattle station 40 miles east of Anna Plains. One of them was saddled. Both boro the stains of long travel, and their flanks were sunken with thirst. A tracking party wont back along the camels’ tracks for four days, and at last came upon O'Brien’s camp, but O'Brien was not there. Nor was there any trace of him.

A search party, with police, w r ent out, but they held out little hope of flnding O’Brien alive. “Lonely” O’Brien was somewhere out in the desert—probably as lonely in death as ho had been in life.