Aboriginal peoples would scoop out the sand or mud using a coolamon or woomera, often to a depth of several metres, until clean water gathered in the base of the hole.
[1]: 23 Donald Thomson writes: Just before we left, the old men recited to me the names of more than fifty waters – wells, rockholes and claypans ... this, in an area that the early explorers believed to be almost waterless, and where all but a few were, in 1957, still unknown to the white man.
I realized that here was the most important discovery of the expedition – that what Tjappanongo and the old men had shown me was really a map, highly conventionalized, like the works on a "message" or "letter" stick of the Aborigines, of the waters of the vast terrain over which the Bindibu hunted.
[2]In the nineteenth century, both Warburton and Carnegie recorded that they had run down Aboriginal residents with camels and captured and chained them to compel them to reveal their secret sources of water.
This sheds light on the resentment built up among the Aboriginal population against explorers for the exploitation and, by enlarging well entrances and digging out springs, the devastation of their precious water supplies to satisfy camel teams.
[1]: 135 Don McLeod (Aboriginal rights activist, see Pilbara) also tells a story of clashes over soak water at the time of the gold rushes in Western Australia: During the time of the Laverton rush, the Blackfellows tried to keep their meager water supplies hidden from the knowledge of white prospectors since their horses and camels quickly exhausted the limited soaks.McLeod relates a story told to him by an old prospector by the name of Long, observing an Aboriginal man and woman: The man took the throwing stick he was carrying and worked it into the sand.
On the diggings, a hue and cry was raised over this alleged murderous attack and a party was quickly organised to set out and teach the Blackfellows a lesson – for daring to protect their water.