Nicker Creek - WA

Explorer Michael Terry recorded this feature during his 1933 expedition. Certainly many features to the west around the Murraba Range bear names of Terry's 1933 party including Nicker Creek after Ben Nicker his guide on 2 of his expeditions (see below).

The Nicker Creek drains much of the southern reaches of the Murraba Range in and around the area of the Labbi Labbi Rockhole. Any water is soon drained the broad salty expanse of Lake Hazlett. The creek is in the region Terry dubbed Chugga Kurri. No tracks currently exist into this area which can only be reached by many kilometres of rugged off track travel.

Much of the water along the creeks length is brackish and often too salty to drink.

Some background on Ben Nicker

Benjamin Esmond Nicker (3 March 1908 – 19 April 1941) was a legendary bushman born and raised in Central Australia. In 1923, at 15, Nicker crossed the Tanami Desert solo and, in 1932 and 1933 he guided the expeditions of Michael Terry through the Gibson Desert

Nicker was the son of Elizabeth and Sam Nicker who arrived at the Arltunga goldfields in the Northern Territory in 1903.

By 1908, when Nicker was born, the family had moved, a little north of Arltunga, to establish what would become The Garden station which would provide produce, on a larger scale the Elizabeth's market garden, to the Arltunga and Winnecke Depot goldfields.

In 1914 they uprooted again when Sam purchased the lease on Ryan's Well, near Aileron, where the family operated a cattle station and supplemented their income by operating the well for travelling stock and operating as a post and telegraph office.

It was at Ryan's Well, which the family called Glen Maggie, that Nicker developed a relationship with the passing Afghan Cameleers and one of them, Sadiq, gifted Nicker with an orphaned camel calf and he spent a lot of time training the camel and exploring the station.

In 1923 Joe Brown, an explorer and prospector, came through Ryan's Well on his way to cross the Tanami Desert and 15 year old Nicker convinced his parents to let him go with him. Nicker was unable to take his camels, as they didn't get along with Brown's horses and, instead, he took two station horses with him.

Brown is described as an argumentative and difficult man and at Halls Creek the two parted company leaving Nicker to travel alone back to Ryan's Well. This was a very dangerous journey, in which many had died, at any time but was especially so in 1923 with the desert in the midst of severe drought and many wells in disuse.

Nicker served as Terry's guide, alongside Aboriginal cameleers, on his 1932 and 1933 expeditions which, under his influence, used camels only. These expeditions became the subject of Terry's book Sun and Sand (1937).