Ernest Giles, exploring on the Darling River…

Giles doesn't attempt a regular exploring expedition until 1872, when with two other men he leaves Chambers pillar, South Australia (now in the Northern Territory), around the middle of August and traverses much previously untrodden country to the northwest and west.

Finding their way barred by Lake Amadeus, a huge salt lake in the southwest corner of Australia's Northern Territory, about 50 km north of Unluru (Ayers Rock), and that their horses are getting very weak, a return is made to the Finke River and thence to Charlotte Waters and Adelaide, where Giles will arrive in January 1873.

He will look upon his expedition as a failure, but he had done well considering the size and equipment of his party.

Giles is supposedly the first European to sight the huge freestanding multicolored monolith rising above the flat plain of central Australia, but is beaten to the claim by a competing explorer, William Gosse. (The rock, sacred to the region’s Aborigines as Uluru, is given its European name in honor of former South Australian premier Sir Henry Ayers.)

Ernest Giles was born in Bristol, England, son of William Giles, a merchant, and Jane Elizabeth, née Powell, and had been educated at Christ's Hospital school, Newgate, London.

At the age of fifteen, he had emigrated to Australia, joining his parents, and had taken up residence in Adelaide, South Australia.

In 1852, Giles had gone to the Victorian goldfields, then became a clerk at the Post Office in Melbourne, and later at the County Court.

Soon tiring of town life, Giles had gone to the back country and obtained valuable experience as a bushman.