Pioneering Days: Thrilling Incidents

From once extreme to the other. The water in Don Creek (where we shifted to when the lakes dried up) was getting very low and a move on again was compulsory. Fortunately a storm put some water in Frances Lake (from the little Creek already mentioned) after being so long dry, and to this hole we shifted. Mary Lake was still waterless, the grass and weeds flourishing where the water should be. We were camped only a week or two at the former hole when down came the rain, a big flood was imminent, and it came, the first in the Herbert for many years. Our camp was fixed on the right side of the river out of reach of any flood we thought. We were greatly mistaken, however. The river having no proper bed the water spread all over the flats till the whole river valley was one sheet of water. We had to shift all our goods and chattels to higher ground in the pouring rain and at the times knee deep in the black soil. The river kept rising and the water spreading. The second time we had to make for higher ground, but the water followed, so that for a third time every thing had to be humped away further out. After so many troubles for want of water we got plenty of it now in all conscience.

We were some six months at Rocklands before being followed up by any one in search of country. The first to arrive was Nash, who took up "Stony Plains," about 40 miles down the river. Then came John Lorne Campbell Ranken, and his cousin Lorne. They took up country on the Ranken and the Lorne (these watercourses are still called after them). Steiglitz Brothers followed, and squatted down below Nash. The latter had a partner named Gregg, and Mrs. Gregg and her little daughter accompanied their husband--the first women to live on the Barclay Tableland, and a rough life they must have experienced.