I used to work out in the deserts in the 60s (still do). We would meet the nomadic Pitjantjatjara walking from the Musgraves across to Laverton in WA for a bit of a dance with their Wongipitja mates (we were around Mt Venn and Cosmo), carrying spears and woomeras (one is on my wall, complete with burn marks from fire-lighting rubbing sticks and dry hair - they would hold it up in the breeze in the woomera to ignite). Then they would walk back to the Musgraves. At night they would set fire to mulga and sleep with their dingos in a sem-circle huddled together by the fire (got a photo somewhere). No utes and .22s used by them then.
The cave Lasseter sheltered in alone for 25 days:
Local sign erected 42 years ago by the mob from Docker River:
We were prospecting for gold out there in the mid-2000s.
My great-uncle Bob, who I knew as a kid, was born to a wealthy family who ran the paper mill at Buckleys Falls on the Barwon River at Geelong (building still there). They lived in Barwon Bank (still there, National Trust), and Bob went to Geelong Grammar. Great-grandpa tried to build his own mill in 1992 (the Austral, also still there), as the 1890s depression went into full swing, creditors forclosed and he went broke. The sons scattered, my grandpa (Bob's brother) installed the first electric lighting at Ballarat railway station and married the daughter of one of the 11 guys who founded the Australian Navy around 1911 (previously there was only the Victorian volunteer navy). His office was the Cerberus, now sunk as a breakwater in Black Rock (his previous office was Nelson's Victory in Portsmouth). Here is that Great Grandpa Lt Commander, 11th Commissioned officer in the RAN:
The Geelong great-grandpa went broke in the 1930s depression - my dad (his son) was a 16 year-old radio officer in the Pacific, mum's dad (i.e. another grandpa) fought in the trenches at 15 and served again in ww2 and one of her brothers was in the Pacific war at 16. Grandma was descended from an Irish convict - three family were among the first 2000 settlers in WA, surveyed the Australind settlement. One ancestor found the Margaret River goldfield, another walked to the Coolgardie goldfield from Albany (an 1839 settler in Angaston SA). I knew great-Grandpa at 92 (the guy who walked to Coolgardie) - he was a 6 foot 2 inch ex-lawyer farmer then (photo of me and him):
I explored for copper on the family farm in the 70s (Angus Park Estate) when drilling the Kapunda copper mine, without knowing the farm had belonged to the family. Another helped a Fenian political prisoner John Boyle O'reilly escape to Boston (Catalpa saga - O'Reilly got rich, bought a sailing ship in Java and came back and freed the prisoners from Fremantle gaol - when a British gunboat tried to stop them escaping they raised the American flag and dared them to start a war with America, and sailed away). Got a photo of me taken with his statue in Boston last year. Grandpa was a timber-cutter after the war (returned at 21 having been gassed and a bit shell-shocked but lived to his mid-80s farming). Mum was born in a two-room cabin he broad-axed when Grandma said she was damned if she would have a second child born in a tent.
Another son from Geelong was a newspaper editor in Narrogin, but great-uncle Bob went bush. Uncle Bob:
He was a Cobb and Co coach driver, ran his camel train from near Williams Creek to Coober Pedy with drinking water before the opal miners had a bore, around 1916 I suspect (I inherited his opals, which sparked a life-long interest). He was a dogger with RM Williams and others in the Musgraves - loaned his rifle to two Pitjantjara to shoot some roos for food but they really wanted it to shoot one of their guys who told his wife about some secret men's business. The victim's wife fled into Bob's camp and he protected her, and Bob was a witness at a trial where the victim's head was passed around by the judge in Alice Springs court (see book "The Great Australian Loneliness"). It was only a couple of years after the Coniston massacre of aborigines at Brook's Soak (still a lonely and isolated water-hole when I was there) and the public became very concerned when they found that the police had used torture etc to get confessions. There was a government enquiry, which reduced police powers over aborigines and replaced them with the patrol officer system (the first an anthropologist called Strehlow), and recognised some traditional law. Bob was befriended by Chas Duguid ("The Doctor and the Natives", "Not a Dying Race"), a Presbyterian doctor who founded a mission in the Musgraves (Ernabella) - a lot of whites disliked him because he supported the aborigines and didn't insist they wear any clothing on his mission, since it was not their custom. My great-uncle became the cook there, and later worked on Duguids farm in Magill near Adelaide where he died of old age in the 1950s, in his mid-80s. Bob with his wife on a camel:
I worked on exploration and mining around the world, put in some of the first 4x4 tracks in the North Flinders with an aboriginal guy (Clem Coulthard - sons run Iga Warta), married the grand-daughter of a Ruhr mining engineer and daughter of a guy who escaped Hitler come to South Africa alone to work on a gold mine at 16 (her mum's family fled to Bulawayo in Rhodesia). Met her cave-diving in Namibia when working on the Tsumeb mine during the Angolan War, re-emigrated to Australia after the Soweto uprising (family were gaoled with Mandela), still prospecting. Discovered a gold mine, still operating producing 70,000 oz per year. It's been fun....
'Scuse reminiscenses - but you guys seem interested in such things.
This post is not intended as an avertisement for my work but is intended to show the types of interests I have and how I spend my time...away from the the'diggins' 
below is a pic of the band i fronted some years ago, 'Spinifex' got air time on fm 106 in the late eighties and was rated at no.5 in the country at the time we disbanded. We were fortunate to support the American band HOT-RIZE,
on there Aussie odyssey.the band was....Myself on guitar and lead vocal, next to me is Quentin Fraser on Gibson 'Dobro'...He was a wizard on that thing!...in front on Banjo is Bruce Fumini..he was and still is one of the greatest exponents of 5 String Banjo I've ever come across and it was a real honour to have played along side him for those three years that we were together... and Robbie Frencham on Bass, he eventually moved on to other things and was replaced by his sister,Elizabeth...she had the sweetest voice in harmonies as well... and went on to attain a Masters Degree in music.she could play in any key and also in 'modal tuning' which involved dropping the 4th string to a minor note and we would have the Mt Kembla crowd scream'n for more when she did.They were 'heady days' indeed.
