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Breaden Pool was once used by David Carnegie, an explorer who in 1896 led an expedition from the Gold fields in the South West of Western Australia to Hall Creek in the North East. The country they travelled over is dry desert. Carnegie and his men had a constant battle to find water for themselves and their mob of camels. Here one of the men, Breaden, found a small pool of water which was later named after him. In this image the pool is almost dry and at the time the photo was taken, another pool nearby, Godfrey’s Tank was completely dry. What would have been the outcome of the expedition if the pool had looked like this when Carnegie visited?
Here is a small passage from the book of when they found the pool.
“On meeting Breaden he told us he had found a small pool at the head of the first valley which was easy of access. This was good news, so we returned to camp, and, as it was now dark, did not move that night. And what a night it was! – So hot and oppressive that sleep was impossible. It was unpleasant enough to be roasted by day, but to be afterwards baked by night was still more so! A fierce fire, round which perhaps the warriors were dancing, lit up the rocks away beyond the headlands, the glow showing all the more brilliantly from the blackness of the sky.
The next morning we packed up and moved the camp to the pool, passing up the first valley – Breaden Valley – with the first promontory on our left. At the mouth of the valley, on the south side, are three very noticeable points, the centre one being conical with a chimney-like block on one side, and flanking it on either hand table-topped hills.
Down the valley runs a deep but narrow creek which eventually finds its way round the foot of the headlands into a ti-tree-encircled red lagoon enclosed by sand-ridges. Near the head of the valley the creek splits; near the head of the left-hand branch is Godfrey’s Tank; in the other, just before it emerges from the cliffs, is the small pool found by Breaden.” David W. Carnegie – Spinifex and Sand
There are no kangaroos in Austria. We're talking about Australia, the world's smallest continent. That being cleared up, let's dive right in! Australia is a sovereign state under the Commonwealth of Nations, which is in turn overseen by Queen Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, Queen of Australia and Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth. The continent was first sighted and charted by the Dutch in 1606. Captain James Cook of Britain came along in the next century to claim it for Britain and name it "New South Wales." Shortly thereafter it was declared to be a penal colony full of nothing but criminals and convicts, giving it the crap reputation you may have heard at your last cocktail party. This rumor ignores 40,000 years of pre-European human history, especially the Aboriginal concept of Dreamtime, an interesting explanation of physical and spiritual reality. The two biggest cities in Australia are Sydney and Melbourne. Sydney is more for business, Melbourne for arts. But that's painting in very broad strokes. Take a whirl around the panoramas to see for yourself! Text by Steve Smith.
