Empress Spring was named by Explorer
David Wynford Carnegie as “a humble tribute to the world-wide rejoicings over the long reign of our Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria.” David
Carnegie was shown this
water hole by a local aboriginal, on his exploratory travels in 1896.
Carnegie and his companions arrived at the spring on 10 October 1896 after many days without finding water. Here they stayed until the morning of 16 October 1896.
Empress Spring is a large underground
cavern in a flat area of
rock. There is a chain ladder that allows you to descend about 10 metres to the
cave floor. The
cave roof was blackened and is almost tar like in
places by aboriginal fires lit over thousands of years. To the eastern corner of the main
cave is a very small tunnel that goes even deeper and leads down to a
cavern. From there you can crawl along another tunnel 5 metres to a sandy base, where you dig down to water.
Empress Spring is accessible from either the
Gunbarrel Highway to the north or the
Great Central Road to the south. Robert J. Rowlands and his wife Joan rediscovered Empress Spring on 29th September 1966. The aboriginal name for the spring, as told by the captive aboriginal is “Murcoolia Ayah Teenyah.”
Look closely on the rocks a few metres from the
cave entrance, a faint “PM”, initials of dogger Peter Muir, can be found chiselled into
the rock surface. Peter Muir and his wife visited the spring on 7th August 1971 without realising that the Rowlands had rediscovered it first.