Despite this behaviour Burke proved himself a popular and capable police chief. He had a knack for imposing strict discipline yet remaining friendly with his subordinates. While improving the efficiency of the Beechworth force, Burke still found time to share stories and jokes with the locals and became famous for his extravagant tales of adventure in Europe. He took an active part in town life, joining the local orchestra and helping to establish a Literary and Science Institute. He was so well-liked that, when he later applied for a transfer to the town of Castlemaine, the residents of Beechworth petitioned him to stay on.
Whatever freedom Burke had to indulge his eccentricities in the Australian bush, the tedious life of a country policeman failed to satisfy his aspirations for adventure. He told colleagues that he was desperate for ‘something to take the sting out of him’.
Then, in 1854, Burke’s younger brother James became the first British officer to be killed in the Crimean war. His heroic death was reported in the Age:
As he leapt ashore, six soldiers charged him. Two he shot with his revolver, one he cut down with his sword, the rest turned and fled. Then he had charged a group of riflemen with headlong gallantry. As he got near he was struck by a ball, which broke his jawbone, but he rushed on, shot three men dead at close quarters with his revolver, and cleft two men through helmet and all into the brain with his sword. He was then surrounded and while engaged in cutting his way with heroic courage through the ranks of the enemy, a sabre cut from behind, given by a dragoon as he went by, nearly severed his head from his body; and he fell dead, covered with bayonet wounds, sabre gashes, and marked with lance thrusts and bullet holes.
Burke was profoundly affected by this glorious (if exaggerated) account and could often be found staring at his brother’s portrait and weeping. The tragedy continued to weigh on his mind, for in March 1856 he obtained leave of absence and left to join the British army. He arrived in Liverpool to find his services were not required. The fighting was over and a peace treaty had already been signed.
Disappointed, Burke returned to Australia and by the end of 1856 he was back in his old position at Beechworth where he found life just as mundane as before. With the gold now beginning to run out, the only real excitement was a riot staged by European and American miners who set about trying to drive their Chinese counterparts away from the diggings. At gunpoint, they herded their Asian neighbours like sheep until some fell down a gorge into the Buckland River. When Burke heard of the trouble, he took twenty men and rode the eighty kilometres to Buckland in just twenty-four hours. As they neared the scene, there was talk of an ambush but Burke refused to turn back. Placing himself in front of his men, he charged into the miners’ camp—only to find it deserted. The unrest was over. Just as he had missed the height of the gold rush and the fighting in the Crimea, Burke turned up at Buckland a little too late to take part in the real action. It seemed he had a talent for bad timing.
It wasn’t until 1858, when a travelling theatre company came to town, that life began to liven up in Beechworth. Its star performer was a sixteen-year-old actress described by the critics as ‘sparkling, gay and bewitching’. Julia Matthews was born in London, the daughter of a music teacher and a sailor turned artificial-flower maker. Their daughter was precociously talented and made her debut in Sydney in 1854 in a play aptly named Spoiled Child. She had been entrancing audiences ever since.
As a music and theatre lover, it was no surprise that Burke went to see Julia perform, and even less of a surprise that he fell uncontrollably in love with her. Each evening his passion increased as he sat transfixed in the front row. On her last night he went backstage and asked her to marry him. Even by Burke’s standards, it was an outrageous proposal. He was a thirty-eight-year-old Protestant police officer and she was a Catholic actress less than half his age (actresses in those days being considered of dubious reputation however scrupulous their conduct).
Julia Matthews was a seductive actress and singer who captivated Burke until he was prepared to risk everything to win her love.
The offer horrified Julia’s mother, who saw Burke as yet another ‘Stage Door Johnnie’. Her daughter was already earning the vast sum of £60 per week (of which Julia received just 2s 6d) and Mrs Matthews envisaged a long and lucrative career, not an early wedding to a country police officer. But her opposition could not deter this lovestruck Irishman. On the ingenious pretext of tracking a gang of dangerous horse thieves, Burke spent the next few weeks charging around Victoria to watch his beloved’s every performance. Julia may have been susceptible, but all the Irish charm in the world could not persuade her mother, who took her daughter back to Melbourne to star in a new opera. Burke had no option but to return to his lonely life of bachelorhood in Beechworth.
In the weeks that followed, neighbours noticed that his cottage was filled with music. He had bought a piano and was playing out his grief through Julia’s songs. Later, when the heartbroken policeman remembered that his next-door neighbour was expecting a baby, he worried that his constant practising might be disturbing the family. He gathered up as many blankets as he could and draped them over the piano to dampen the noise, then continued playing the same songs for hours on end. When the baby was delivered, Burke told the proud father, with tears in his eyes: ‘Ah, if I had such ties as you have, I think I should be a happier and better man.’
The Irishman’s life had stalled. In November 1858, he transferred to the larger Castlemaine district, where along with two hundred others from the town, he subscribed two shillings and sixpence to the ‘Exploration Fund’—little knowing that one day he would be leading the expedition. In the meantime, he fell in with a new group of friends including the town jailer John Castieau.
Castieau’s boisterous diary of life in Castlemaine reveals a long series of rowdy parties and poker games often conducted ‘at my friend Burke’s house’. On Sundays, the two men would set out for walks in the countryside to clear their heads, before Burke began to grumble that the journey was too arduous or the weather too hot and insist that they retire instead to the pub for lunch. On one occasion they conducted running races in the beer garden with Castieau reporting later, ‘Came home and was so sick I could eat no dinner, my racing days are over!’
The opportunity to escape presented itself with the arrival in Castlemaine of a railway tycoon named John Bruce. Like Ambrose Kyte, Bruce was a businessman of dubious methods. He often used the local police to quell disturbances staged by his disgruntled workers and, in the course of his dealings with Burke, was impressed by his ‘manliness of character and determined energy’. The two men became friends and it wasn’t long before Bruce began to smarten up his protégé and introduce him to the ‘right people’ in Melbourne. When the Royal Society announced it was looking for an expedition leader, Bruce encouraged Burke to apply.
It was a tantalising prospect and Bruce made it seem all the more attractive by embellishing the endeavour with stories of fame, glory, knighthoods and grants of land. In fact few explorers ever received much financial reward for their efforts. Only one, the irascible Sir Thomas Mitchell, received a knighthood and that was only to keep him quiet. But for a disillusioned policeman desperate for an opportunity to distinguish himself, this was the chance to fulfil all his dreams. After all, what woman could resist an offer of marriage from a rich and famous explorer?
The idea of Burke leading any expedition anywhere at all was ludicrous. He was neither a surveyor nor a scientist and had no exploration experience. His talent for getting lost was legendary, prompting his bank manager, Falconer Larkworthy, to observe:
It was said of him as a good joke but true nevertheless, that when he was returning from Yackandandah to Beechworth he lost his way, although the track was well beaten and frequented, and did not arrive at his destination for many hours after he was due. He was in no sense a bushman.
Beechworth’s police officers often had to retrieve their chief from ‘his latest confusion’ and the Mount Alexander Mail r
evealed, ‘he could not tell the north from the south in broad daylight, and the Southern Cross as a guide was a never ending puzzle to him’. How would he cope in the wilderness with no roads or signposts? How could he travel in a straight line when he couldn’t even measure latitude and longitude?
There was also a question mark over Burke’s temperament. He had energy and passion in abundance, but was such an exuberant daredevil the right man to lead a large party of men into unknown territory? Did he have the tenacity of Charles Sturt, the methodical persistence of Augustus Gregory or the eye for detail of Ludwig Leichhardt?
Exploration might seem a glamorous occupation, but it was often a laborious test of stamina and organisation. Burke was popular, charming and intelligent but excitable, impulsive and headstrong. He responded to situations emotionally and seemed to lack the composure to think through the consequences of his actions.
So why was such an unlikely candidate chosen to lead the most prestigious project Victoria had ever undertaken? The answers lie buried deep in the preoccupations of a colonial society convinced of its own superiority, and in the Machiavellian motivations of a small group of rich and powerful men who were developing a strong influence on the expedition.
The higher echelons of Melbourne society had been weaned on a diet of British class-consciousness. Many commentators accepted Burke’s appointment because he came from an ancient and honourable family and was ‘accustomed to command’. Never mind that he could hardly read a compass—he had the right blood flowing through his veins and as far as the Herald was concerned that was enough:
We may add here that a brother of Mr Burke’s, an officer in the Royal Engineers, made himself very conspicuous for his gallantry at the beginning of the Crimean War and is celebrated in Russell’s history of the campaign. Such is the man, his qualification and his antecedents. That these are such as will induce public confidence in Mr Burke there cannot, we think be any doubt.
One reporter was impressed with Burke’s physical attributes. ‘He was tall, well-made with dark brown hair; his broad chest was decorated with a magnificent beard; he had fine intelligent eyes, and a splendidly formed head’. Another described him as ‘a gentleman in the prime of life’ who was ‘a perfect centaur as to horsemanship’. Then, there was Burke’s dashing history and his mysterious scar, all of which proved immensely appealing to the ladies of Melbourne. The chief justice’s wife Mary Stawell gushed:
When we first met Mr Burke we called him ‘Brian Boru’; there was such a daring reckless look about him which was enhanced by a giant scar across his face, caused by a sabre cut in a duel when he was in the Austrian service; he had withal a very attractive manner.
In 1859 Burke had joined the Melbourne Club, allowing him access to the rich and powerful. He quaffed red wine with men like Sir William Stawell, who was as impressed by Burke as his wife had been, and would become a strong advocate.
As the leadership battle dragged on through April and May of 1860, Gustav von Tempsky embarked on a rigorous training program, improving his cardiovascular capabilities and poring over astronomical formulae. Burke took a rather different approach. He was normally to be found in the bar of the Melbourne Club losing vast quantities of money at cards but winning plenty of friends. At times his debts reached up to £450—nearly two-thirds of his annual salary.
As Burke’s losses mounted, John Bruce and his associates manipulated matters shamelessly in the background, leaning on friends, calling in favours, even conspiring to stack the Exploration Committee with members sympathetic to the cause.
John Macadam, secretary of the Royal Society, was influential in the leadership battle to ensure Burke’s victory.
Their most important conquest was Sir William Stawell. Once he had indicated his support for his fellow Irishman, several committee members including Georg Neumayer and John Macadam followed suit.
Burke’s cosmopolitan past was also proving a powerful asset. He hailed from Galway so he identified with the Irish contingent, and his fluent German went some way to mollifying the scientists on the committee. Best of all, he was not South Australian. Despite his lilting accent and his Irish ancestry, Burke’s seven years’ service in the colony made him as Victorian as the next man.
Burke enjoyed every minute in the limelight. Perhaps in his more romantic moments he imagined himself like the knights of old—he had been given a quest, a chance to prove himself and perhaps to secure the woman he loved. In the meantime he set about reversing the effects of his somewhat dissolute leadership campaign. Reports began to appear in the newspapers of a red-faced man jogging around Melbourne’s Royal Park. It was Burke, tackling ‘the severest of physical privations’ to ready himself for the journey ahead.
On 4 July 1860 a ragtag assortment of prospective explorers queued outside the headquarters of the Royal Society. Seven hundred men applied to join a venture that would ‘constitute for long years if not ages to come, the highest glory of the colony of Victoria’. Many men offered to go for minimal wages; some said they would go for none at all.
Their applications ranged from grubby scrawled notes to an eleven-page dossier detailing supplies, equipment, possible routes and probable dangers. Many of the letters were from stockmen and drovers who boasted of their capacity to work for days without food, ride the wildest of horses, shoot the wariest of kangaroos and ‘deal’ with the ‘most difficult Aborigines’. One typical applicant, Edward Wooldridge, claimed to be ready for every hardship:
I’ve often cooked my own dinner at the end of a pointed stick promoted for the occasion to the office of toasting fork. It may be suggested to an explorer that the very food itself is often wanting; be it so in such a case, my stomach would doubtless grumble but I would endeavor to bear the privation with equanimity.
Wooldridge needn’t have bothered. The inspection process was a charade. Burke spent just three hours looking at three hundred of the applicants then dismissed them all in favour of men with the ‘right’ connections. He ignored candidates like Robert Bowman and William Weddell, both of whom had travelled through the Australian deserts with Augustus Gregory and had excellent references from their former employer.
Twenty-five-year-old William Brahe was chosen largely because his brother was a friend of Georg Neumayer. Since arriving in Australia in 1852, the young German had worked on the Victorian goldfields, where he was well known for his skill in driving wagons on the muddy roads. John Macadam recommended sailor Henry Creber as a useful man in case an inland sea was discovered. Robert Fletcher’s father was a friend of several committee members. Blacksmith William Patten and labourer Thomas McDonough knew Burke back in Ireland, Patrick Langan met him in Castlemaine and Owen Cowan was a fellow Victorian police officer.
Once the men had been chosen, the Exploration Committee decided that the expedition should leave by the end of August 1860. But with just a month to go before departure its route had still not been finalised. It had been assumed that Burke’s party would leave from Melbourne and make for the north coast via Cooper Creek, but at a meeting on 17 July 1860, events took an extraordinary turn.
It emerged that some committee members favoured a bizarre scheme to load the camels back onto the Chinsurah and sail them halfway round Australia to an inlet known as Blunder Bay on the north-west coast. The expedition would then traverse the continent southwards to Melbourne. The plan was endorsed by George Landells, who was suspected of plotting with the Chinsurah’s owners to split the profits from the voyage. Burke also spoke in favour of the Blunder Bay option and in the absence of Sir William Stawell, who favoured Cooper Creek, the Exploration Committee agreed to support the new route.
When Stawell awoke the next morning to find the headline ‘To Blunder Bay’, plastered all over the newspapers, he was furious. The chief justice immediately called another meeting and, in a withering address, insisted the resolution should be overturned. As usual, he got his way. On 27 July, an announcement was made that Burke would leave from Melbourne. The Ex
ploration Committee issued Burke’s official instructions, which started clearly enough:
The Committee having decided upon ‘Coopers Creek’ of Sturt, as the basis of your operations, request that you will proceed thither, form a depot of provisions and stores, and make arrangements for keeping open a communication in your rear to the Darling, if in your opinion advisable; and thence to Melbourne, so that you may be enabled to keep the Committee informed of your movements, and receive in return the assistance in stores and advice in which you may stand in need.
After that, however, the orders became vague and confused:
The object of the Committee in directing you to Cooper’s Creek, is, that you should explore the country intervening between it and Leichhardt’s track, south of the Gulf of Carpentaria, avoiding, as far as practicable, Sturt’s route to the west, and Gregory’s, down the Victoria to the east.
To this object the Committee wishes you to devote your energies in the first instance, but should you determine the impracticability of this route you are desired to turn westward into the country recently discovered by Stuart, and connect his furthest point northward with Gregory’s furthest Southern Exploration in 1856 (Mount Wilson)…
Should you fail, however, in connecting the two points of Stuart’s and Gregory’s furthest, or should you ascertain that his space has already been traversed, you are requested if possible to connect your explorations with those of the younger Gregory in the vicinity of Mount Gould, and thence you might proceed to Shark’s Bay, or down the River Murchison to the settlements in Western Australia.
The instructions effectively allowed Burke to go wherever he chose. The next paragraph admitted as much:
The Committee is fully aware of the difficulty of the country you are called on to traverse, and in giving you these instructions has placed these routes before you more as an indication of what is deemed desirable to have accomplished than as indicating any exact course for you to pursue.
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