The Dig Tree

by Sarah Murgatroyd

  These baffling orders only reinforced the growing sentiment that the Exploration Committee was not capable of organising a Sunday picnic. The rumours surrounding Burke’s appointment had intensified until he was forced to defend himself, insisting he had used ‘only fair and honourable means’ to secure his position. But the Age still suspected the public was not being told the whole story:

  If Mr B’s scientific attainments are equal to the task, let the public know them, if they are not, the public will protest against a piece of cliqueism in which the interests of the country are again sacrificed to please and serve the purposes of an unscrupulous and dangerous party.

  Some columnists predicted that the expedition would be a disaster. One forecast that lives would be lost.

  Six

  The Honour of Victoria

  ‘The wild charm and exciting desire that induce an individual to undertake the arduous tasks that lie before an explorer, and the pleasure and delight of visiting new and totally unknown places, are only whetted by his first attempt.’

  Ernest Giles

  On its first day, the Victorian Exploring Expedition with its twenty-six camels, twenty-three horses, nineteen men and six wagons travelled just eleven kilometres. It was seven-thirty in the evening on 20 August 1860 before the cavalcade straggled into Essendon on the outskirts of Melbourne. The camels stood incongruously on the green in front of the church and, smelling their arrival, all the local horses promptly bolted.

  The laborious business of unpacking then began. No one knew where anything was, who was responsible for what, or how the camp should be organised. To compound matters, the wagons still hadn’t arrived. Even Burke was not sure what was going on. Spectators recalled him marching around the camp, telling his men that if he found anyone guilty of disobedience or idleness ‘he would nail the culprit up by the ears to the nearest gum tree’.

  As the Irishman tried to impose some sort of order, an elderly man approached him and introduced himself as Dr Wills—the father of the expedition’s young surveyor, William John Wills. Grasping Burke’s hand, the doctor launched into a plea for his son’s safety. ‘If it were in my power, I would even now prevent his going…If he knew what I am about to say, he would not, I think be well pleased; but if you ever happen to want my son’s advice or opinion you must ask it, for he will not offer it unasked. No matter what course you may adopt he will follow without remonstrance or murmur.’

  The chaotic first night’s camp at Essendon. Burke is in the centre in his cabbage-tree hat. Landells is just to the left of him. Becker stands in front of the tent.

  ‘There is nothing you can say will raise him higher in my estimation than he stands at present,’ Burke replied. ‘I will do as you desire.’ With tears in his eyes, the doctor turned away.

  Twenty-six-year-old William Wills had been appointed surveyor with a minimum of fuss. Since neither the leader nor the deputy could navigate, he held an unusually important position, but as the protégé of Professor Georg Neumayer, he was proposed and seconded without debate.

  Wills was born in Totnes, Devon, in 1834. Nicknamed ‘Old Jack’ or ‘Gentleman Jack’ as a child because of his rather serious outlook on life, he contracted ‘remittent fever’ at the age of seven and suffered afterwards from a slight speech impediment. Always precocious, Wills spent his spare time helping out at his father’s medical practice. ‘In all cases his caution was extreme,’ wrote Dr Wills senior, ‘and we had no fear of his making mistakes. The ordinary operations of extracting a tooth, or breathing a vein when a bumpkin presented himself as a patient, he speedily mastered.’

  After passing his school exams with ease, Wills went to London where at the age of seventeen he demonstrated his extraordinary sense of direction by unravelling London’s Hampton Court maze in less than ten minutes. Friends described him as a serious, unassuming young man whose affable manner belied his strong opinions. Wills had intended to study as a surgeon but he was never truly enthusiastic about medicine and soon turned to the purer sciences of maths, geometry and physics, where he excelled in every subject.

  It was the lure of gold that drew the Wills family to Australia. Dr Wills wanted to emigrate with his two eldest sons and secure the family’s financial future, but in the end William and his younger brother Tom went on ahead, sailing for Melbourne on the Janet Mitchell in 1852. Wills was fascinated by his new surroundings. He kept a daily log of the weather and sea conditions as well as learning how to set the sails and catch his own supper:

  Monday, November 1st. Begun the month well, caught a fine young shark this morning. It was about five feet long. We soon cut him up between us. I got a fine piece about 3 or 4 pounds and some one who did not like it gave us about as much more, so I cut it in slices and put plenty of butter, pepper and flour and bake it as you would a hake, and it is first rate.

  Wednesday, December 1st. Small breeze this morning, which soon increased to a gale. I was up furling top gallant sails only half dressed after breakfast. Had to double reef our top sails and furl main sail, main spencer, spanker, jib and cross jack. The sea here looks beautiful but the waves do not look as large as I expected owing to the swell being so gradual. It is amusing to see the birds pitch about on the waves.

  The brothers arrived in Australia in January 1853 at the pinnacle of the gold rush. They were shocked by the exorbitant prices and the shortage of accommodation. Nineteen-year-old Wills was not impressed. ‘I do not like Melbourne in its present state,’ he complained, ‘you are not safe out after sundown…there were two or three men taken out of the river drowned and several attempts at robberies while we were there.’ Determined to leave town as soon as possible, William and Tom found work as shepherds near the town of Deniliquin, 250 kilometres away. After a three-week walk to start work, the brothers soon settled in and seemed to relish their new lifestyle. Wills told his family:

  We are very comfortable in a hut by ourselves, 4 miles from the home station, and with between 13 or 14 hundred rams to look after; by far the smallest and easiest flock on the station. The hut is a very nice one built of split wood roofed with bark. I assure you we make ourselves quite comfortable here…We are very well off in the way of food; as much mutton as we like and we can make sure of getting a duck, pigeon or cockatoo at any time almost without going out of sight of the hut, besides plenty of fish in the creek. There are also plenty of mussel fish.

  He got to know the landscape, the animals, birds, and even the finer points of sheep farming. It wasn’t long before the Australian bush had captured his imagination:

  You cannot think how glad I am that you let us come out here. If you had only let us come out without a shilling it would have been worth more than a thousand pounds in England, one is so free. This is a beautiful country, the more I see of it the better I like it.

  In August 1853, Dr Wills joined his sons and took them to the gold-mining town of Ballarat, where he set up a surgery amongst the wooden shacks and maze of muddy trenches. Wills junior started a successful business analysing specimens of quartz and gold but his father recalled that ‘he was ever pining for the bush.

  Engrossed by his scientific studies, Wills was unaware of the public interest in the expedition and reluctant to pose for an official portrait.

  The “busy haunts of men” had no attraction for him. He preferred the society of a few to that of many, but the study of nature was his passion. His love was fixed on animals, plants, and the starry firmament.’

  Wills soon began to dream of exploring further afield. In 1855, he walked 160 kilometres in the hope of joining an expedition led by a Dr Catherwood. Before he left he told his mother not to worry about the dangers because, ‘if everyone had such ideas we should have no one going to sea for fear of being drowned, no one would go in a railway train for fear the engine would burst, and all would live in the open air for fear of houses falling in’. The expedition was a fraud. By the time Wills caught up to him, Dr Catherwood had bolted, taking with him several hundred pounds i
n public subscriptions.

  In 1856 Wills found work as a junior surveyor measuring out new leases, but science was still his major obsession. While many young men were out in the pubs and brothels of Ballarat, Wills was poring over books such as Chambers’ Mathematics or The Twelve Planispheres. While they blew their wages on liquor and prostitutes, he collected astronomical tables and scientific instruments.

  Wills’ studies convinced him that it was science, not God, which would explain the universe and everything that happened within it. As his opinions about life crystallised, his letters home reveal a rather sanctimonious young man, quite sure of his beliefs, and not afraid to express them:

  My dear Mother,

  I have at length found time to write to you. You will no doubt say it ought to be a long letter after so much delay, but I am afraid you will be disappointed as it is quite against my nature; you know how I hate writing. In the last letter I received from you, you asked me to send Bessie any information I could, I can assure you I shall be most happy to do so and to encourage a taste for science as much as in my power.

  I would recommend you to let the children learn drawing. I do not mean merely sketching, but Perspective Drawing, with scale and compasses, for it is a very nice amusement, and they may some day find it very useful. There is another thing that would do them a deal of good if they should have a taste for it: this is Euclid. Not to learn it by heart, but to read it so as to understand it. In fact Mathematics generally, and Euclid and Algebra in particular, are the best things young people can learn, for they are the only things we can depend on as true. There is no disputing that Christians and all heathens and Mormons; all, no matter what their faith agree in Mathematics. In nothing else do all men agree, in nothing else can there be perfect truth. Of course I leave the Bible out of the question.

  But I suppose I must tell you some thing about your undutiful Son. I am now learning surveying with Mr Fred Byerly—a nice man indeed. In fact I could not have had a better master had he been made to order, for he is a first rate Surveyor, and we are exactly suited as regards general ideas, which, to tell the truth, is a very rare chance for me. The only point we are at issue on is of course religious, as he believes rather strongly in Mesmerism and Clairvoyance. He belongs to the Sect they call New Church or Swedenborgians and certainly, leaving Clairvoyance and Spiritualism out of the question, I think theirs is the most rational and Charitable Religion I have met with. They are greatly opposed to the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith alone.

  But to resume, I am at present getting £150.00 a year and board, but I hope in twelve months to have a party of my own, and then I shall get double as much. Surveying is just the sort of life for me—nearly always in the bush marking out land for sale or surveying unknown parts. It is very different from Surveying in England.

  Glenaruel is 15 miles from Ballarat. I saw Tom and the Doctor two or three days ago; they were quite well. I hope you are all so. Give my love to all; if I do not mention names no one can be jealous.

  Wills’ reward for his diligent scientific study came in 1858, when the head of Melbourne’s new Flagstaff Observatory, Professor Georg Neumayer, offered him a post as an assistant. Neumayer was the archetypal eccentric scientist. His passion for measuring the earth’s magnetic fields was so engrossing that he found it difficult to converse on any other subject. Evidently Wills found the subject just as fascinating because he moved into the observatory to spend more time on his experiments.

  For two years Wills did almost nothing but work. Even his leisure time was devoted to improving his mind by taking brisk walks or swimming in the bracing waters of Port Phillip Bay. On occasion he allowed himself an outing to the opera and although he admitted he sometimes enjoyed dancing, none of his letters ever mentioned women. Instead his correspondence revolved around education, science, literature and above all religion, something he rejected ever more vehemently as his rationalist beliefs grew stronger.

  Wills was thrilled when he discovered he had been chosen as the expedition’s ‘Surveyor and Astronomical Observer’. He told his mother:

  You need not work yourself up to such a state of excitement at the bare idea of my going, but should rather rejoice that the opportunity presents itself. The actual danger is nothing, and the positive advantages very great. Besides, my dear mother, what avails your faith if you terrify yourself about such trifles? Were we born, think you, to be locked up in comfortable rooms, and never to incur the hazard of mishap? If things were at the worst, I trust I could meet death with as much resignation as others, even if it came tonight. I am often disgusted at hearing young people I know, declare that they are afraid of doing this or that, because they might be killed. Were I in some of their shoes I should be glad to hail the chance of departing this life fairly in the execution of an honourable duty.

  The boy who scanned the horizon from the crow’s nest of the Janet Mitchell was now about to cross an entire continent. Wills saw it as an opportunity to put all his scientific skills to the test and he was determined to conduct a thorough survey of the unknown country that lay ahead.

  When he joined the expedition, Wills hardly fitted the classic image of a burly explorer. His friend Richard Birnie described him as having ‘a light clean, agile frame…and a handiness such as is often seen in a young girl’. On the other hand Wills was ‘plucky as a mastiff, high-blooded as a racer, enterprising but reflective, cool, keen and as composed as he is daring’, with ‘not a jot of effeminacy’. His professional colleagues knew him to be an intelligent, dependable, abstemious young man with a talent for surveying and a strong sense of duty. Without realising it, the Exploration Committee had chosen the perfect foil for Robert O’Hara Burke.

  On the day of departure, Wills was oblivious to the pomp and ceremony going on around him in Melbourne’s Royal Park. He spent several hours ensuring his equipment was properly loaded and arrived in Essendon a few hours later to find that Burke had already disappeared. His deputy George Landells was in charge of the camp. He shouted orders in his strong Northumberland accent and fussed around the camels. As well as the precious imported animals, Landells was also in charge of six other camels, purchased by the Exploration Committee on the spur of the moment for £50 from local circus impresario George Coppin. Untrained and undersized, they were already proving a hindrance to the smooth running of the expedition.

  Landells had been a popular choice as deputy leader. As soon as the camels arrived he had become quite a celebrity, impressing everyone including Burke with his mastery of the animals and his ability to communicate with the Indian sepoys. Aware of his value, Landells played hard to get. Whilst declaring publicly that his only desire was to ensure the expedition was a success, he submitted a long list of conditions to the Exploration Committee. These included a £600 salary and a guarantee that he would be ‘entirely charged with all matters relating to the treatment, loading and working of the camels, and to be responsible for their health’. In addition the expedition would have to carry 270 litres of rum for the camels for ‘medicinal purposes’.

  The committee was in a difficult position. Landells had asked for a salary £100 a year greater than Burke’s and by insisting on full control of the camels he was undermining the authority of the expedition leader. Burke continued to support Landells and, in a dramatic gesture, he refused to allow the committee to increase his own salary to £600 as well. Under increasing pressure to appoint someone, the Exploration Committee capitulated to Landells’ financial demands and, although they could not officially grant him authority over the camels, they told the Englishman in private that where the management of the animals was concerned he could expect Burke to follow his advice without question. By pandering to Landells’ conditions, the committee implicitly admitted that Burke was incapable of commanding all aspects of the enterprise. It broke the cardinal rule of ‘one ship, one captain’ and placed the two inexperienced, highly-strung men on a collision course from the beginning.

  Using
Landells to import camels to Victoria may have been a daring move by the Royal Society but their introduction came at a cost. Landells had trekked for thousands of kilometres in the midst of the Indian Mutiny to select the best animals available. He spent double his budget and arrived back in Melbourne seven months later than planned. The delay meant that the expedition had missed the cool winter season.

  Conventional wisdom held that it was better to travel between April and September when the temperatures were bearable and water was more plentiful. But Landells was unconcerned. He reassured the committee that his camels could perform in any climate, provided they were lightly loaded at the beginning of the journey to conserve their energy for the more demanding desert stages later on. The committee went along with his advice. In its haste to beat Stuart it ignored the wisdom of all Australia’s most experienced explorers and ordered the expedition to head out into the unknown during the height of summer. Burke had neither the knowledge nor the patience to resist.

  Landells brought six men with him on the expedition. The first, John Drakeford, was to serve as a camel handler and cook. He had worked in Africa and claimed that he could have explored with Livingstone but ‘chose not to’. The second man, John King, was a small shy character, who had been discharged from the army in India for ‘fever of a bad type’. No one was quite sure if he had completely recovered.

  The other four were ‘sepoy’ camel handlers. Their exact origin and religion is confused by the fact that they were often classified as simply ‘Indians’ or ‘Afghans’, but the expedition’s artist Ludwig Becker described Samla as a Hindu, Dost Mohomet and Esau Khan as Muslims, and Belooch as a Parsee. They were paid two shillings a week—less than a third of the wages of the other men.