Submitted: Friday, Jul 04, 2008 at 00:00

My father John and I turned off to the east leaving the security of the Gary Highway about 16 kilometres south of Windy Corner. It was Friday, 4 July 2008 and our goal was to reach David Carnegie’s “Stoney Banks”. These banks are critical in the search for Patience Well, as they are a major landmark in the area. Carnegie camped there on 5 September 1896 and described on his traverse map the distances and angles to the well from there. I found these banks last year on 18 June 2007. They are located at 23° 38 14S, 125° 16 42.1E (WGS84).


We reached the banks around lunchtime and set up camp and spent the rest of the day looking around and resting. From these banks Carnegie wrote that he went eight miles east, 2.5 miles at 60°, eight miles at 18° and three miles at 157° before he found the well.

I will digress for a while and relay what information Carnegie actually said about the well. Carnegie wrote a lot of information in his daily diary and also wrote a book “Spinifex and Sand”. His handwritten maps are fairly accurate, so with information from different media a general description of the well can be detailed. At the time that Carnegie found the well it was in use by a native family tribe who had the well dug down to fifteen feet. Carnegie and his men eventually found it to be an underground rockhole and dug it out to thirty feet.

“…Well. In bed of ill-defined watercourse, running down between two slopes of gravel and spinifex. The course of water marked by a clump of tall mulgas and above it to the north by high anthills and green bushes.”

“The well itself was situated in a belt of mulga scrub and surrounded by a little patch of grass; growing nearby, a few good camel bushes, such as acacia and fern-tree; enclosing the scrub two parallel banks of sand and stones, with the well in the valley between. Above the well, to the north, high anthills and tussocks of coarse grass appeared. The whole oasis covered no more than three acres.”






Carnegie also mentioned that a female native guided him (with some persuasion) to a rockhole eight miles east south east of the well which had some water but was contaminated by the bodies of dead animals. Carnegie says this of the rockhole, “….and has no guide what ever to its situation.”

So it was with some excitement that we left the area of the Stoney Banks and started to follow in Carnegie’s footsteps to the well. We had worked this out in advance, and could easily have just gone 14.3 miles on a bearing of 65° to the area of the well, but followed Carnegie’s directions, so as to get a better feel for the area and because the more area we covered the more likely we were to find something of interest. The projected position of Patience Well would be the centre of the search area, and we reached it, after a couple of minor deviations just before 1pm.

I will also add here that this is my third time in the area looking for the well. In 2003 I visited 20 locations I had selected from aerial photographs as likely locations without success. In 2007 I came with a different tack which was to traverse the land and visit and search any locations I came across that looked likely positions for the well. In 2007 I traversed the northern section of what was my search area then again without any success. I have never been convinced that the well would be much more north of the Tropic of Capricorn as it simply would not fit properly into Carnegie’s exploration maps.

Any reference that Carnegie used, as to direction, was taken from his compass, therefore errors due to magnetic deviation must be taken into account. Before last year, when I discovered the Stoney Banks, the last known location of a feature of Carnegie’s to the south was McDougalls Knoll, named by Len Beadell. Carnegie stated that he headed north (0°) from the Knoll to the Stoney Banks. Now the banks have been found the deviation in the area can be worked out, which works out to about +3°. So for instance if Carnegie said he headed east (90°) and I wanted to follow I would head east plus 3° (93°).

At the centre of our search area there was nothing of interest so we started to head north east and followed various sections of a long and dry creek course before searching in the south east quadrant of our search area. Large clumps of bushes occasionally caught our eyes, and we would look to see if there was anything of interest nearby. However we camped that night not being any the wiser near the eastern extremity of the search area. It rained lightly in the evening and anything that could be water damaged was safely stored away.

I had brought for the first time into the field a laptop and I pre-plotted tomorrow’s planned search route and then uploaded it into my vehicle’s Global Positioning System. I found it very handy having the laptop as it was easy to download the day’s search route from the GPS and review it with mapping software. The next day I had planned to go to the extreme south east of the search area and head west covering the extreme south before infill searching to the north.

In the morning after getting mobile again John offered a suggestion. The day before we passed a small dry creek which flowed enough at times to leave a definite low patch where the water flowed which John said could have been described as a “bank” if the imagination was left wide open. I have found in the past that Carnegie’s descriptions of features were sometimes a bit vague, and as the creek was only a few kilometres away went there to double check the “bank”.

After looking around the creek and the “bank” we were convinced that the well was not there, but it did not dishearten us, as we were short of clues and anything we could go on would be acted upon. We then decided to proceed on the original course that I had plotted the night before and proceeded to the south east. Little did we know that within minutes, something would happen that would change everything, change our mood, and change the very nature of our plans for the entire search and all because of a single, minute decision I would make.

As we headed to the south east, which was towards the corner of our search area, whilst we were only a few hundred metres or so from the creek, I noticed that the scrub surrounding the creek was spreading out and moving slowly away from the course that we were on. I distinctly remember having to make the decision; to keep going on course or to follow the very rough, ill defined course of the creek and its sparse shrubs which were heading away to the left. I chose to follow the course of the creek and was soon rewarded by the discovery of a rockhole.

The rockhole itself was not that big. It was almost completely filled in and silted up but would hold many litres when dug out and full. Straight away I was thinking that this could be the rockhole that Carnegie was taken to by the native woman. If it was it would be a very significant find. I had never thought that the rockhole would be found before Patience Well as Carnegie had implied that it would be hard to find. I had always thought Carnegie’s rockhole would only be found using Patience Well as a guide as he said that it was 8 miles to the ESE.

Once again I was glad I had my laptop and associated mapping software with me and immediately started to extrapolate the coordinates of Patience Well. If this was the rockhole that Carnegie went to and it was said to be eight miles to the ESE, did it not figure that Patience Well could be eight miles to the WNW (292.5°) from it? I made the relevant calculations and noticed that the new predicted position of Patience Well was at the far north west of our search area and amongst an area which I had already searched five years ago in 2003. In fact there were three areas of interest in that area all of which were actually my top three predicted positions of the well from 2003 and one of which we had camped at, at the time. Although I was enthusiastic about this possible new clue to the puzzle I was not confident, due to the fact I had already searched the area.

We spent the best part of the next two hours examining the rockhole and the surrounding area. I found an old upturned grinding stone about four metres from the rockhole but that was the only artefact we found. I dug out the deepest part of the rockhole and managed to get some moist soil but no water. I have no doubt, if this rockhole was serviced regularly (ie dug out) it would yield a good supply of water over time. The rockhole is situated at 23° 33 59.3S, 125° 33 37.9E (WGS84).

As technically we were still looking for Patience Well in this area we resumed our planned course for the time being only deviating to a new course when the new predicted position of Patience Well was approximately north about eight kilometres. Heading north, still deviating to look at possible well sites on the way we eventually came to one of the sites I had previously visited in 2003. We carefully looked around but this was not the place. A few hundred metres further and we came to the site of the 2003 camp, my best guess for the location of the well five years ago. I was pretty sure I would not find anything new as three of us camped here and surely one of us would have seen something. I did find an old can and some flywire from our 2003 camp but the well was not here.

That left the last of the three sites, all distinguishable, as from the aerial photographs they show clumps of bushes, all likely oases to hold the well. When we arrived at the site we didn’t even have to get out of the vehicle before we noticed on the southern side a line of rocks placed on the ground that seemed to indicate the existence of something.

This was a very good sign, as I hadn’t noticed the line of rocks before, obviously put there by natives, when I alone visited here in 2003. The next thing we both noticed was the large number of big gum trees at the site. These trees are very rare in this area and usually only one is seen at a time. Naturally I searched every corner of the site to see if there was a well anywhere. I did not find any water, however, there were a number of animal diggings around. The whole oasis was enclosed by two parallel banks of sand and stone, with the run-off of any rain directed into the small valley. The area surrounding the site was mostly clear of vegetation which made erosion of the nearby gravel into the site clearly visible. Over many years the site would get much sand washed into it. There was grass covering the whole area. All the clues pointed to the fact that this site was the site of Patience Well.

We camped about six kilometres from the well to the south east. That night I spent a few hours calculating the relative positions of the well and the rockhole and related this information to Carnegie’s exploration maps.








The next day we actually headed north east for a few kilometres before west back to the site. This was to make absolutely sure there were no other oases around that were not visible on the aerial photographs.














At the site I dug down to four feet and only got sand, itself not unexpected, as the well described by Carnegie was quite deep, and over the decades, without servicing would have filled up with the broken down gravel of the surrounding slopes. I have no doubt that this site is the site of Patience Well, where Carnegie camped from 8-11 September 1896. No celebrations were had though; it was more a sigh of relief. Carnegie said that the rockhole he found was eight miles to the ESE. The rockhole we found yesterday was 8.9 miles away at almost exactly the correct bearing, not bad considering Carnegie took his measurements from the back of a camel. Patience Well is located at 23° 30 29S, 125° 26 3.5E (WGS84).

Having found what we were looking for, we then left the area, happy in the knowledge that we had found what others had tried to find for decades. We were also very privileged in regards to the rockhole, as we were the first non-indigenous people to see it after Carnegie himself. Patience Well was easy to find after we had the clue of the rockhole. I still am totally amazed at the circumstances that led to the rockhole’s finding. Call it fate, act of god or just plain good luck, there it was.

Cheers

Alan McCall

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