Depot Glen Outback NSW

Milparinka Courthouse
on the way to Depot Glen

You will find Depot Glen on Mt Poole Station, North east of Milparinka. Follow the track towards the station homestead after asking at the hotel if permission is needed.

The waterhole is a beautiful spot contrasting with the bare and stony desert around it, but if you read the following excerpts from the explorer, Captain Charles Sturt’s Journal, Depot Glen has even more significance.

This is a must-see area of the Corner Country and you should include the trip to the cairn on Mt Poole in your visit.

Don’t miss the blazed tree in the small cemetery marking Poole’s grave. This was the exploring party’s campsite for the 6 months they were stranded there.

I was told the waterhole was much deeper originally and silted up in the 1974 floods.

Also notice the slate type rock outcrop surrounding Depot Glen. It seems similar to the gold bearing country around Bendigo and Arltunga.

There was gold mining activity at Mt Browne, south of here, and a visit to the old workings and the cemetery is another interesting day trip.

The Milparinka pub is one of my outback favourites and I have had some great times there. There are some good camping spots on the eastern side of Evelyn Creek north of the Milparinka Hotel. No camping is allowed at Depot Glen.

From Sturt’s Journal 1845

“Depot Glen

The ground was thoroughly heated to the depth of three or four feet, and the tremendous heat that prevailed had parched vegetation and drawn moisture from everything. The mean of the thermometer for the months of December, January, and February, had been 101 degrees, 104 degrees, and 101 degrees respectively in the shade. Under its effects every screw in our boxes had been drawn, and the horn handles of our instruments, as well as our combs, were split into fine laminae. The lead dropped out of our pencils, our signal rockets were entirely spoiled; our hair, as well as the wool on the sheep, ceased to grow, and our nails had become as brittle as glass. The flour lost more than eight per cent of its original weight, and the other provisions in a still greater proportion. The bran in which our bacon had been packed, was perfectly saturated, and weighed almost as heavy as the meat; we were obliged to bury our wax candles; a bottle of citric acid in Mr. Browne’s box became fluid, and escaping, burnt a quantity of his linen; and we found it difficult to write or draw, so rapidly did the fluid dry in our pens and brushes. It was happy for us, therefore, that a cooler season set in, otherwise I do not think that many of us could much longer have survived. But, although it might be said that the intense heat of the summer had passed, there still were intervals of most oppressive weather.

About the beginning of March I had had occasion to speak to Mr. Browne as to certain indications of disease that were upon me. I had violent headaches, unusual pains in my joints, and a coppery taste in my mouth. These symptoms I attributed to having slept so frequently on the hard ground and in the beds of creeks, and it was only when my mouth became sore, and my gums spongy, that I felt it necessary to trouble Mr. Browne, who at once told me that I was labouring under an attack of scurvy, and I regretted to learn from him that both he and Mr. Poole were similarly affected, ……..

The 10th of May completed the ninth month of our absence from Adelaide, and still we were locked up without the hope of escape, whilst every day added fresh causes of anxiety to those I had already to bear up against. Mr. Poole became worse, all his skin along the muscles turned black, and large pieces of spongy flesh hung from the roof of his mouth, which was in such a state that he could hardly eat.

……. and to keep them in health I employed them in erecting a pyramid of stones on the summit of the Red Hill. It is twenty-one feet at the base, and eighteen feet high, and bears 329 degrees from the camp, or 31 degrees to the west of north. I little thought when I was engaged in that work, that I was erecting Mr. Poole’s monument, but so it was, that rude structure looks over his lonely grave, and will stand for ages as a record of all we suffered in the dreary region to which we were so long confined.

On the 11th the wind shifted to the east, the whole sky becoming suddenly overcast, and on the morning of the 12th it was still at east, but at noon veered round to the north, when a gentle rain set in, so gentle that it more resembled a mist, but this continued all the evening and during the night…………………

All night it poured down without any intermission, and as morning dawned the ripple of waters in a little gully close to our tents, was a sweeter and more soothing sound than the softest melody I ever heard. On going down to the creek in the morning I found that it had risen five inches, and the ground was now so completely saturated that I no longer doubted the moment of our liberation had arrived.

On the 17th the whole party, which had so lately separated, once more assembled at the Depot. We buried Mr. Poole under a Grevillia that stood close to our underground room; his initials, and the year, are cut in it above the grave, “J. P. 1845,” and he now sleeps in the desert.

The funeral of Mr. Poole was a fitting close to our residence at the Depot. At the conclusion of that ceremony the party again separated, and I returned to my tent, to prepare for moving on the morrow.”

When you visit Depot Glen,imagine what it would have been like to look out over the parched and barren landscape knowing you were three months travel from home and trapped there until it eventually rained.

Sturt's Cairn, Mt Poole near Depot Glen

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