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A PROSPECTING TRIP IN TASMANIA'S WILD WEST.

BY P. ORMSBY LENNON.

A WANDERING party of prospectors found payable osmiridium around the headwaters of the Adams River in January 1925, but kept their discovery secret for many months. The news of their find, however, gradually leaked out, and caused public attention to be focussed on the potentialities of the discovery. Within a short time the new field began to boom, and a mad rush to Adams River set in, which continued for upwards of three months. The rush was the biggest of the kind ever recorded in the annals of Tasmania, and in many ways was strongly reminiscent of the gold rushes on the mainland of Australia in the old boom days. The new field proved to be fabulously rich, and vast quantities of the rare white metal were unearthed by lucky miners. It is a strange thing that most of the world's supply of high-grade osmiridium comes from the "Wild West of Tasmania-an island itself not quite as big as Scotland. Beyond the fact that the metal is found in the alluvial and detrital matter near outcrops of serpentine rock, nothing is really known as to its origin. It has never been found in the rock itself, so its occurrence is a mystery to mineralogists.

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Osmiridium is largely used by manufacturers to tip the gold nibs of fountain pens. It is also employed to harden aeroplane bearings, &c. One of its component parts osmium— forms the base for osmic acid, which is one of the most deadly poison gases known to science.

The Adams River field is now the only one of any importance being worked in Tasmania, and when that is exhausted, manufacturers will have to look elsewhere for supplies of the metal, unless, of course, another field is discovered there. At the commencement of the Tasmanian boom, the price ruling for osmiridium was nearly £33 per ounce Troy. The price or the future of osmiridium has nothing to do with this story beyond the fact that its then high value lured a fellow-prospector and myself out into the depths of the great terra incognita that lies to the west of Adams River, in the fond hopes that we would discover a new and valuable valuable field, which hopes, unfortunately, were not realised.

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self claimless, and not likely to obtain another piece of ground. Every available inch of payable ground was pegged" and rooted up just as if a vast colony of wild pigs had been suddenly turned loose there. Finding another man in a similar position to myself, we put our heads together, and decided to make a break out westward to the littleknown Hamilton Range, which lay, as the crow flies, about forty miles out towards the coast. There were vague rumours that a big serpentine outcrop threaded its way along the eastern flanks of the range, and to us this spelt that doubly magic word-osmiridium.

The country around the Adams River is covered with dense and almost impenetrable forests and marshes, and is in one of the wildest and most inhospitable parts of the Western Tasmanian bush. In winter it is subject to a torrential rainfall, interspersed with fierce snowstorms and blizzards, which make life almost unbearable; not that there was any life there until osmiridium was found, except for the marsupial wolves and other strange denizens of those ancient wastelands. Fitzgerald, a diminutive timber milling township, lies over the ranges to the east some thirty miles away, and a sorry thirty miles it was then, too. A narrow track, over knee-deep in mud, led out from there to the field, and so bad was it that pack-horses could only get out part of the way, leaving the osmiridium "dig

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gers" to pack their goods on their backs for the remainder of the distance.

The area between Adams River and the west coast is rougher still, consisting mainly of a series of rugged mountain ranges stretching from north to south. The valleys and table-lands in between are covered with almost impenetrable forest and scrub, alternated occasionally by monotonous stretches of swampy buttongrass plains. This great terra incognita west of the osmiridium field comprises an area of over 4000 square miles, practically one-sixth the size of the whole of Tasmania. A few exploration tracks, some of them over sixty years old, have been made through it in different directions, but few of these were of a permanent nature. Consequently, most of them have become overgrown with scrub and littered with fallen timber. In many places it is a matter of great difficulty to distinguish a track from the surrounding bush, the only indication being an occasional

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across the mountain ranges and elevated plateaux.

On expeditions into this Tasmanian "Never Never" everything has to be hand-packed, for it is a sheer impossibility to take horses through the type of country to be traversed. The average prospector "humps a swag" weighing from between 70 to 100 lb., and, needless to say, only necessaries are carried. The food supply generally consists of bacon, flour, oatmeal, and tea; while a blanket apiece, a small tent and fly, slash-hooks, axes, mattocks, picks, shovels, prospecting dishes, a couple of "billies " and a frying-pan, make up the rest of the equipment.

Travelling is slow and arduous work, and in open country ten miles a day is considered to be really good going. In scrubby and timbered areas it is not possible to do anything like this, for prospectors constantly have to set down their packs and hew out a track of their own. In the beds of horizontal scrub that are encountered in parts, a mile only may be covered in a day's march. The ground is often littered with the trunks of fallen forest monarchs, and it is no easy matter to scale these, for they are often eight or ten feet high. Prospecting work in Tasmania is perhaps more difficult than in any other part of the world, only those possessing an iron constitution being able to stand the rough life and the hardships involved. It was now getting on for the middle of the Antipodean

summer, so as soon as Christmas was over we made final arrangements for our trip into the back country. We kept our movements as secret as possible, for old Warwick Castle, my companion, was a well-known west coast prospector who had made many a good find of mineral in his day, and if it were known that he had his eye on a place, there were many claimless "diggers

who would have

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dogged our footsteps just on the offchance of our "striking it rich." So one fine morning, just before day break, we sneaked out of camp with a weighty swag apiece, and took them to a place about four miles out in the direction we intended taking. We then suspended them with a length of rope from the branches of a leather-wood tree so that the pestilential tiger-cats could not interfere with them, and then we returned to camp without exciting any comment. The next morning we packed up two more swags, and like the Arabs we folded up our tents and as silently stole away, leaving the rest of the camp still enwrapped in the arms of Morpheus.

That night we did not trouble to unroll our packs, but lay down as we were, sans blankets and sans tent, beneath a grove of giant Tasmanian tree-ferns, the Dicksonia Antarctica of botanists, but the "old man " fern of outbackers. I rather missed my camel-hair rug, but Warwick being one of the hardy old pioneer type, scorned the notion of such a luxury

a fine summer's night, so perforce I, out of very shame, was compelled to emulate his example. I know now, however, why so many of these old prospectors suffer from rheumatism-they are apt to be much too Spartan in their mode of living. That even

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mosquitoes, with the water oozing up through our blankets and soaking us through and through. This is one of the many unpleasantnesses associated with prospecting in new country, and is quite unavoidable, for when prospectors are "on the wallaby," they have

overtakes them, unless they are out for the pleasure of the thing, which we were not.

ing our meal was extremely to pitch camp wherever night frugal, and only consisted of some stale "1 damper,' for we could not find any water to make tea with, although we could hear the roar and thunder of the Adams River Falls in the distance. The chances were that, had we gone in search of the precious fluid, we should have got bushed, as it was now quite dark, and a myrtle forest is a place one cannot wander about in at night. Warwick, being versed in bush-lore, promptly set to work, and dug a hole in the damp spongy ground farther down the gully, saying that it would be full of water in the morning. It was; but even the liberal fistful of tea we threw in the billy could not disguise its nasty peaty flavour, and but for our raging thirst we could not have stomached it. This was only the first of many waterless nights. It was either a feast or a famine. One night we would be camped on the edge or perhaps the summit of a bleak, windswept, and waterless range, while the next might find us in the depths of a slimy odoriferous The stars were fading, and swamp, crawling with leeches, a light dawn wind had comand alive with great black menced to rustle through the

The large fire we had made died down towards the small hours, and I woke up feeling exceedingly cold. Throwing a couple of myrtle logs on to the glowing embers, and poking them up into a cheery blaze, I was about to compose myself to further slumbers when I suddenly noticed what appeared to be a number of greenishglowing eyes staring down at us from different points in the velvety ring of blackness that lay beyond the small halo of light cast by the fire. Thinking they were cats or ringtail opossums, I seized a small log and hurled it at the nearest glow; but neither it nor any of the others made any movement, still looking down on us with that unwinking basilisk stare. Getting annoyed, I strode forward to investigate, only to find that my cats and 'possums were small luminous green fungi which adhered to the trunks of the surrounding trees.

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feathery branches of the myrtles by the time we finished a hastily snatched breakfast of milkless tea and damper, and once more "hit the trail." As we had two swags apiece, each of which weighed about 75 lb., our method of progression was to keep plodding onwards until mid-day, when we would halt and dump our cumbersome burdens, returning for the packs we had left at our last campingplace. It was back-breaking work; to advance even five miles a day to our goal entailed a journey of fifteen miles, ten of which were were accomplished with packs on our backs. The apology for a track we were following was charted on the maps as "Marriott's Track." It was really not a track at all, but merely a series of blazes marked on the trees to indicate the line of route that Marriott, an old bushman, had cut when doing work for Government some twenty-five years previously. The "track was a regular snake-walk, crossing the lower reaches of the Adams River in a zig-zag fashion at least ten times, when once only would have been sufficient.

Exploration tracks in Tasmania are nearly always like this; the men who mark them out generally head for the highest hill in sight, taking it as a landmark, and cutting towards it regardless of what obstacles are in the way. Had old Bob Marriott been alive, his ears would have tingled at the uncomplimentary things we said about his track. He was a famous bushman in his day,

but he certainly could not make a track let alone even marking one out.

The Adams River down in these parts was a muddy unpleasant-looking stream of varying width, which flowed rapidly through a gloomy tunnel of verdure formed by the interlacing branches of the giant myrtles lining each bank. Its muddy condition was due to the tailings from the myriad osmiridium claims which were being worked about its headwaters. The discoloured torrent bubbled and swirled and eddied in a sickening fashion around and over the litter of decayed and rotting tree-trunks which had toppled over from the suffocating tangle of vegetation that grew down to its very brim. We, however, found no difficulty in crossing it, for there were numerous fallen trees which reached from bank to bank, making excellent natural bridges.

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The scenery in this great forest was magnificent. Under the spreading arms of the myrtles and giant gum-topped stringy barks, enormous specimens of the old man " ferns threw out their graceful drooping fronds; while here and there long sinuous shoots of horizontal scrub thrust their octopus-like tentacles over the dark green undergrowth of cathead and umbrella fern, as though they were endeavouring to ensnare some passer-by. Brightly coloured lichens stood out in gaudy relief against the moss - clad tree trunks, and where a fugitive shaft of the

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