There is a solitary grave away up from the crossing; and, again, after passing the Morphett (10 miles on), is the last resting place of a traveller who, a couple of years back, when dying of thirst, attempted unsuccessfully to so damage the telegraph line as to attract to the spot a repairing party.
Not every man can climb a telegraph pole; and one cannot cut or undo stout and firmly fastened wires with one's teeth.
Near the Morphett Creek a narrow pad branches off to the west of the telegraph line, loops out to the headquarters of a very seldom heard of cattle station, and proceeding thence, rejoins the line track at about 35 miles south of Powell's Creek.
One may keep nearer to the telegraph line and travel via Kuerschner Ponds; but against going that way I had been advised. The track was said to be very rough. Nevertheless the straight-ahead road might be the better for cycling. The good people of these parts do not regard tracks or the cyclist's eyes. It has often been recommended to me to turn off at certain places from "hard gritty rises" on to where the track runs over "nice soft flats." Of course the flats were found in such places to be well grassed and suitable for travelling mobs of cattle, whereas the gritty rises (some, good cycling) invariably were barren or spinifex-covered.
Right up almost from Tennant's Creek to the re-junction spoken of, the 88 miles stretch of country is of a very unkindly nature, for the stranger, anyway. The supplies which are annually sent to the various telegraph stations are forwarded only as far as Tennant's Creek from the south; down as far as Powell's, they come from Palmerston. The intervening distance (from Tennant's to Powell's, 123 miles), does not therefore bear those evidences of traffic which are distinguishable between most of the other stations.
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This lack of clear guiding marks is most troublesome about the stony creeks, whether there be water in them or not. When a waterhole has been reached it is not always easy to pick up the track on the other side. In many cases there is no pad at all visible to the unaccustomed eye, as cattle and horses spread out on approaching water, wander aimlessly awhile after drinking, and destroy all traces of a particularly beaten path, as not until long after leaving do they "string" again.
At waterholes, too, (and these remarks apply to many watering places higher up the road) the track is so "freaky." From one hole full or dry, you must pass straight on; from another, the track may take a sudden bend to the east or the west; at still another, the pad does not pass the water, but, after leading to it, forms with the pad going out, more or less of a V; while at a fourth, you have to double back for some distance on the pad by which you entered. When the grass is high and the track not clear, or where many paths lead out from, where one finds oneself, as it were, "cornered," and when one does not know whether the follow-on section of his road runs northerly, easterly, or westerly, one is liable to feel—well, uncomfortable.
As cattle had been lately running in some parts of the country in this stage, between Tennant's and Powell's Creeks, the main pad, if there be one at all, was cut into in places by better beaten ones, and in other places there were such puzzling branches that the non-bushman traveller might be just as likely to follow up the wrong one as the right. How it may be with the expert bushman, I do not know.