Boss Stobart, with a thousand Queensland cattle, reached the Finke about midday. The Finke is a wide river of soft white sand, bordered on each side by gnarled and ancient gum trees. Not once in the memory of white man had the Finke carried water from its source in the Macdonnel Ranges to its mouth in the great dry salt Lake Eyre, and the trees which mark its course, and can be seen from many, many miles away scattered about the landscape, gain their nourishment from a water-supply fifty or sixty feet below the arid surface.
The drover saw the cattle safely over the dry creek, put them on camp in a clay-pen surrounded by sandhills, and then rode up to the little group of rough buildings which, because the Finke makes an almost complete turn on itself just there, goes by the name of Horseshoe Bend. The Horseshoe Bend licensed store is a low iron building ornamented on two sides by a broad veranda. Clustered at the back are a hut of split box logs thatched with cane, an iron-roofed cellar, and a few primitive outbuildings. These, with a large set of yards and troughs for watering cattle, make what is not only the homestead of a six-thousand-square-mile cattle station, but also an important depot on the Great North Stock Route, a postal and telegraph station, and the residence—when he is not away on the run—of a justice of the peace. In a cramped and dusty office, where, amid the buzzing of innumerable flies, while the temperature climbs above 110° F. every day for five months in the year, the news of Europe and Asia can be heard tick-tacked in code by inserting a little plug. The reports of a war in India, of an active volcano in South America, or of a cricket match in England could be heard at Horseshoe Bend in the centre of the Australian desert before people in Melbourne knew anything about it. The only thing necessary is to insert a little metal plug and make the current run through the recorder.
But the plug hangs idle on its nail; the recorder is covered with dust; no one bothers about either Europe or Asia. What chiefly concerns the few white men who are able to live in Central Australia are the price of stock, the best place to find a little dried grass or bush, and water. Always water, water, water—everything else is of secondary importance—cattle-feed and water.
The conversation between Stobart and the man behind the bar was all about the needs and the ways of stock. The drover hitched his horse to a veranda-post and walked into the dark drinking-room stiffly, for he had been in the saddle since three o'clock that morning, and had done some hard riding after restless cattle.
"Good-day," said Stobart.
"Good-day," replied Tom Gibbon. "Travelling?"
"Yes. Cattle. How's the water down the road?"
The man consulted a paper nailed on a board. It contained the names of all the water-holes from Alice Springs to Oodnadatta. He began to read, running his finger below the words and pronouncing them slowly: "Yellow—dry. Sugar-Loaf—dry. Anvil Soak—dry. One Tree Well—only enough for a plant; makes very slow. Simpson's Hole—dry. In fact the whole lot are dry till you get as far as the Stevenson Bore. You're right after that. How many've you got?"
"A thousand."
"Holy sailor! You'll never get through. Bob Hennesy was the last man down with cattle. He got as far as the Crown and had to leave them on a well there. They were as poor as wood. No stock passed this way for three months."