But now Mother Nature added to his own firework show: he flew high into the centre of an electrical storm, writing that ‘at times the lightning appeared to form a complete and immense circle around me’. Despite this he reported feeling ‘quite secure’ and enjoyed the view of city of Sydney at night, ‘with its thousands of lights present[ing] a beautiful sight’.
Once the fireworks, which had been smouldering on the ground for ten minutes, seemed to be extinguished, he began his descent. But now the daring young man in his flying machine really got into trouble. A sudden gust of wind sent him off-course towards Randwick but he didn’t notice in time. Instead he descended more quickly, and then ‘passing over the Orphan Asylum, at Randwick, came down with great violence in a garden, a few hundred yards further’. He writes, ‘My first impression was, that my neck was broken, but a second or two afterwards, finding myself unhurt, I prepared for another shock, which I expected would be more violent than the first.’ The balloon, after violently colliding with the ground, had lifted again and he now prepared for a second crash-landing:
I twisted one leg around a rope, held one of the car-ropes with my left hand, and the string of the valve with my right. Down I came again with a frightful shock, and the balloon dragged me at a terrific rate through the scrub, the car cutting through the bushes like a knife. I expected every moment would be my last, but endeavoured to keep cool, and determined to endeavour to save myself by dropping over the side of the car, and setting the balloon free.
After having been dragged along in this manner for at least a mile, expecting every moment to plunge into the bay, I put my legs over the side of the car and waited a favourable opportunity to get completely out. At last I sprang from the car, and was thrown violently on my hands and face into a bush. I soon got on my feet, and followed the balloon at least three quarters of a mile, when I lost sight of it.
Poor Mr Brown’s wandering balloon was found near Botany Bay, four or five kilometres from where he had ‘first struck the earth’, as he put it. He had been in the air for just twenty minutes. Brown and Dean soon left for Melbourne for further ballooning antics. As the reporter of this aerial farce wrote, tongue in cheek: ‘Monday’s ascent concluding, for the present, aeronautic expeditions in New South Wales.’
AFTER BURKE AND WILLS
The doomed explorers Burke and Wills left Melbourne in August 1860 at the head of an elaborate exploration party. Bound for the Gulf of Carpentaria, their poorly defined and planned quest aimed to be the first to cross the continent from south to north. While officially called the Victorian Exploring Expedition and sponsored by the Royal Society of Victoria, the enterprise was known almost from the start, and ever since, as the Burke and Wills expedition.
Robert O’Hara Burke, a 39-year-old policeman, was the leader, and 26-year-old William John Wills was the surveyor and astronomer. Wills also became second in command following the resignation of the original number two partway through the journey. After ten months of hardship, misadventure and incompetence, Burke and Wills and their men were all dead, but for one survivor. He was being cared for by the Yandruwandha people of the desolate ‘corner country’ at the intersection of New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia. The fortunate man’s name was John King.
King was a young Irishman who had joined the expedition as interpreter for the Afghans handling the expedition’s camels, which had been shipped to Australia from Karachi, India. Eventually he became the chief camel handler for the expedition. And so it was that he was the fourth in the party of Burke, Wills and Charlie Gray that left the struggling main expedition at a camp at Cooper’s Creek, in order to make a final desperate dash to the gulf. The return journey cost the three others their lives.
When there had been no news of Burke and Wills back at the Royal Society in Melbourne, a rescue party under the command of A.W. Howitt was despatched to find them. Second in command was Edwin Welch, a 24-year-old surveyor and photographer. The relief party reached the vicinity of the last known campsite of the Burke and Wills expedition only to find it deserted. They followed many tracks but found little to solve the mystery.
But early one Sunday morning, 15 September, many days after they had arrived at the abandoned campsite, Welch left and rode along Cooper’s Creek, as it was then called by the Europeans. After a few hours he came across a group of Aboriginal people who shouted to him and pointed further along the creek. Welch rode on for a little distance and then:
I was startled at observing what appeared to be a white man come from amongst them, although had it not been for the hat, it might still have been mistaken for an aboriginal as many of them had obtained old clothes at the depot. The hat convinced me it was a white man, and giving my horse his head I dashed down the bank towards him, where he fell on his knees on the sand for a few moments in the attitude of prayer. On arising I hardly asked ‘who in the name of wonder are you?’ and received the reply ‘I am King, sir, the last man of the exploring expedition.’
King explained that Burke, Wills and himself had made it back to the expedition’s last campsite only to find the depot party had left. Wills became too ill to move, and King pushed on with Burke to seek help. On 29 June Burke died. King, subsisting on nardoo (an aquatic fern) and a crow he had managed to shoot, struggled back to where he had left Wills. Four days later he arrived to find Wills dead. Alone, King remained with the body for several weeks then went again in search of help from the Yandruwandha people. He followed them around until he became a tolerated addition to the number of mouths to be fed, contributing to the common store by shooting birds. ‘Living in this state, we found him, more like an animated skeleton than anything else, and a complete black fellow in almost everything but the colour’, Welch wrote.
King now directed the relief party to Burke’s body. They wrapped the skeletal remains in a Union Jack and buried him as Howitt read a chapter from the gospel of St Joan. The people who had kept King alive were given gifts: ‘tomahawks, knives, looking glasses, beads, handkerchiefs, coloured ribbons’, as well as flour and sugar. The relief party and the recovering survivor moved on the following day. The journey back was a dry and uncomfortable ride, made more miserable by sickness and large scorpions.
When they reached the boundaries of European settlement the rescuers were feted. King in particular was treated as a hero. Unfortunately, his experiences had made him shy of civilisation and he found the parties and public receptions given enthusiastically in his honour at each settlement they passed through to be very trying.
At Bendigo they were greeted by crowds of diggers ‘blowing horns, firing guns and pistols, cheering and waving flags &c.- &c.as much as if it were a triumphal entry of blood royal’. Flags were flying and they were greeted by a theatrical troupe and a brass band playing ‘See, the Conquering Hero Comes’. King was put on stage but was unable to speak. Welch tried but was himself too ill to do the honours and so a local resident spoke to the crowd. He went on for so long that Welch was obliged to drag King away, fearful that it would all be too much for him. The crowd hissed, groaned and cursed. Photographers vied for permission to snap King. At one point Welch left King in his hotel room while he went for a smoke and returned to find the room full of the women of Bendigo, who ‘under other circumstances would have shuddered at the idea of being in the next room to a strange man’.
On the train journey from Bendigo to Melbourne, Welch had to rescue King from the hero worshippers at Woodend station by barricading themselves in the station master’s house. At every stop along the line crowds greeted them and at North Melbourne Welch had to fight to keep possession of the bewildered survivor.
When they reached Melbourne ‘the crowd was terrific’. They barely escaped in a cab to Government House, where yet another mob barred their way. Welch and King pushed their way up to the executive council chambers. Here King was reunited with his sister and had a brief word with the governor and one or two other dignitaries. To appease the waiting crowd outside, Welch and
King had to be shown from a balcony, before Welch could finally hand over his charge to the officers of the exploration committee who had sponsored the expedition and Howitt’s rescue party.
John King was given a gold watch and a pension in the form of an investment that returned the tidy sum of 180 pounds per annum. However, physically and psychologically, he never recovered from his ordeals. In 1871 he married, but only five months later died of tuberculosis.
Edwin Welch went on to a varied career as surveyor, public servant and journalist. He was a noted raconteur and wrote fiction and non-fiction under various pen names. He was also one of the most prolific collectors of pioneer and Aboriginal artefacts.
Burke and Wills’ disastrous expedition was controversial immediately upon its dreadful end, and has since become a byword for futile action. The often-ambiguous details have been ground over and over again by historians, lawyers and the many others fascinated by the tale and its folklore. There is even a persistent story that King shot Burke dead, though little evidence supports it. Like many other Australian journeys, its history has fallen into myth.
A DANGEROUS VISIT
Australia’s only royal assassination attempt took place the first time a British royal ever set foot on the colonies, during the reign of Queen Victoria. The target was her second son, Prince Alfred Earnest Albert, a navy officer and the Duke of Edinburgh, among other grand titles, who visited Australia in 1868 as part of a year-long world voyage during his command of the steam frigate HMS Galatea. The prince went firstly to South Australia, then Victoria, Tasmania, Sydney and Brisbane, before returning to Sydney where he was to attend a charity picnic for the Sydney Sailors’ Home at Clontarf on 12 March.
There was great excitement and enthusiasm for the royal visit but it was also a time of high tension between Irish Catholics and the Protestant establishment in Britain and Australia. Supporters of Irish independence were known as Fenians and some were prepared to inflict violence on the symbols of the Crown. During Alfred’s stay in Melbourne there had already been trouble between Catholic supporters of Ireland and Protestants loyal to the British monarch. In this atmosphere there were fears of an attack on the prince.
At the Clontarf picnic these fears were realised. Straight after lunch, as the prince handed over a no-doubt substantial cheque towards the Sailors’ Home, Henry James O’Farrell walked up to within a metre or so of the noble and fired a shot from his revolver directly into Alfred’s back. The prince fell forward, crying, ‘Good God, my back is broken.’ As O’Farrell was tackled by a couple of the dignitaries, he fired one more shot into another man’s foot. Then they managed to pin the assassin’s arms and the attack was over.
The prince was carried carefully away for medical attention.
The dress of his Royal Highness was removed, and upon an examination of the wound it was found that the bullet had penetrated the back, near the middle, and about two inches from the right side of the lower part of the spine, traversing the course of the ribs, round by the right to the abdomen, where it lodged immediately below the surface. No vital organ, fortunately, appeared to be injured, the course of the bullet being, to all appearance, quite superficial.
In the meantime, elsewhere in the picnic grounds there was pandemonium:
The people shouted ‘lynch him’, ‘hang him’, ‘string him up’, and so on, and there was a general rush to get at him. The police, headed by Superintendent Orridge, got hold of the assassin, and they had the greatest difficulty in preventing the infuriated people from tearing him limb from limb.
The police just managed to get O’Farrell onto the steamer at the nearby wharf:
By that time all the clothing from the upper part of his body was torn off, his eyes, face, and body were much bruised, and blood was flowing from various wounds; and when he was dragged on to the deck of the Paterson, he appeared to be utterly unconscious.
But even aboard the steamer the sailors threatened to string up the bruised and beaten O’Farrell. Meanwhile, on shore the crowd convened a hasty meeting and decided to drag the would-be assassin off the steamer. They rushed for the boat as it drew away, demanding the captain return to shore. For a moment the captain looked as if he would comply, but a gentleman on the bridge ordered him to haul off.
The effect of this dastardly attempt at assassinating the Prince, among the immense number of persons congregated at Clontarf, may be more easily imagined than described. A large number of ladies fainted, others were seized with hysterics, and the whole multitude was convulsed. Suddenly a joyous throng had been converted into a mass of excited people, in whose breasts sympathy for the Royal sufferer, and indignation for his murderous assailant, alternately prevailed; while pallid faces and tearful eyes told of the deep anxiety that was felt in reference to the extent of the injuries which his Royal Highness had sustained.
Hundreds crowded anxiously around the tent where the Prince lay. He remained conscious, saying, ‘Tell the people I am not much hurt, I shall be better presently.’ He was taken back to Sydney for further medical attention, where it was confirmed that the prince had luckily suffered only a relatively minor wound.
O’Farrell was taken to gaol. There, he was described as of fair complexion, just under 6 foot, with a beard, moustache and ‘military air’. When questioned he provided only flippant answers, leading many to suspect he was mentally deficient. But he was definitely Irish and feelings against the Irish in the colony became hysterical. The government made it an offence not to drink the queen’s health and tried hard to paint the affair as an act of organised terror. Although he provided a deathbed confession insisting he was not connected with any nationalist movement, O’Farrell was condemned as a Fenian and hastily hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol on 21 April.
The prince made an excellent recovery and, before his attacker was executed, continued his journey back to England.
There were some positive results of the affair. The people of New South Wales subscribed a great deal of money for a memorial to the recovery of the prince. These funds took the practical form of Sydney’s much-loved Prince Alfred Hospital, later known as the Royal Prince Alfred, or just RPA. Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital came from the same patriotic outpouring of money.
HARRY STOCKDALE’S LONG RIDE
The Stockdale expedition left Sydney on the steamer Whampoa on 26 August 1884. There were seven men in the group, along with 25 horses and provisions for a year. Harry Stockdale, a man of many parts and talents, had financed the venture himself. He had contracted with a number of parties to carry out a rapid survey of their unseen holdings throughout the north-west of the country. He was to report back by 14 January the following year, an agreement he would come to regret.
They landed in Cambridge Gulf, at the very top of Australia near the border of the present-day Western Australia and the Northern Territory, and on 19 September began trekking inland.
The seven men passed through terrain unknown to European settlers. It was rich with birds, animals and plant life, much of it new to the explorers. Despite temperatures of 106 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade, rising up to 115 degrees later in the journey, the expedition made good progress. Nevertheless the first of their horses died after only three weeks.
On 21 October, Stockdale left two men, Mulcahy and Ashton, at a depot on Leopold Downs. Stockdale pushed on with his surveyor Ricketson, blacksmith Carl Pottmer, and two other men, Pitt and McIllery, into country that ‘only wants to be seen to be believed in; all my party agreeing that they had never seen anything much superior to it, either in N.S.Wales or Queensland, and nothing to approach it for permanent water.’
Twelve days later the explorers encountered a group of Aboriginal people:
. . . came suddenly upon a camp of natives. The women and children remained quiet, but the men were bold and aggressive, and poised their spears, the one nearest me, about 25 yards off, was in the act of throwing when a [I] fired close past him. They all turned for the moment, but turned & faced me again. By this t
ime all the party had their firearms in readiness (I had waited till the rest came up, having come upon some ducks, and wanting a gun, having only a rifle with me) and though we hoped they would not compel us to do them violence, we were sure the victory would be with us, though one of us at so close a range might have been speared, but after the firing of the shot, they pointed in the direction we had come from, gesticulating wildly, shaking their spears, and talking loudly what seemed to us to sound so like our ‘Go away’. There were only 7 men—fine stalwart fellows they were, perfectly naked, well made, tall and strong looking. Each had a bundle of spears and a boomerang. We made several attempts to parley with them in a friendly way, but it was evident they wished us to go on, and we did so.
There was another encounter a few days later, but this group was friendly and on 6 November, Stockdale came across some Aboriginal rock art:
Came upon a native art gallery in the cliffs, with drawing by natives of Emu, Kangaroo, Opossums, frogs, platypus, and a really fine, spirited, but rather crude drawing a black fellow doing the corrobboree, the bust of a gin or native black woman, and a drawing almost the facsimile of a monkey. They were done in different colours, and shewed some artistic taste. The emu was shown as feeding, and the attitude was really good. I suppose in all there some 30 sketches in some 2 or 3 of the one kind. [Note: These drawings were shaded or filled in, not merely outlines]. I remember Captain, now Sir George, Grey, mentioning that he had discovered traces of something similar on the Western coast, but I never thought it would fall to my lot to decipher discover [sic] such a grand display of native talent. I intend to publish with my diary a facsimile drawing of some of those we saw today.
Great Australian Journeys Page 4