The delightful thing in this landscape is the graceful grouping, the roundness and opulence of the trees and shrubs. The peace, the tranquillity that is poured over this landscape and the parklike neatness of the whole area so satisfies our innermost souls that we revel in beholding it. Not one barren spot, no stony ground (scarcely even a solitary stone), no tree skeletons, barely even single dead tree-trunk disturb the impression of a landscape filled with exuberant life.
Swan Hill seemed reluctant to relinquish the explorers to the desert—the next morning there was another rowdy farewell as the party was bombarded with old boots and handfuls of rice for good luck. One observer noticed that Burke wiped his eyes and seemed ‘visibly affected by the genuine kindness he had met with from all ranks’.
The party that crossed the Murray was very different from the one that had rolled out of Melbourne three weeks earlier. Only fourteen of the original nineteen members remained. At Swan Hill, Burke discharged the sepoy Esau Khan, who had become too ill to work. He also let go Brooks, Lane and John Polongeaux, a Frenchman, whom he had enthusiastically hired near Bendigo a few days earlier. Four new men joined the expedition. Alexander MacPherson was a blacksmith and saddler, William Hodgkinson a journalist, and Charley Gray an ex-sailor. Robert Bowman had previously accompanied both Augustus and Charles Gregory on expeditions in northern and central Australia. Bowman had tried to join the expedition in Melbourne. Aside from the Gregory brothers he was probably the most experienced explorer in Australia and a valuable addition to Burke’s outfit.
With so many people coming and going, it was difficult to establish any sense of unity. In particular, the men disliked their high-handed foreman Charles Ferguson. Sensing that there was an ‘underhand current’ working against him, the American made things worse when he publicly dismissed his subordinates as ‘knowing nothing of hard work…ignorant of bush life, and conseqently wholly unfit for an expedition of any kind’. When Ferguson began to complain about his pay, Burke retaliated by attempting to reduce his salary even further. A row ensued in which the foreman threatened to resign. Burke backed down. Ferguson stayed on.
It took the remodelled party three days to reach the hamlet of Balranald in New South Wales. The journey had been dogged by bad weather yet again and the roads were now so bad that the wagon drivers insisted their loads be reduced or their horses would collapse in their harnesses. The result was an impromptu public auction. After hauling his supplies at great expense for more than 400 kilometres, Burke chose to sell off a valuable selection of his equipment in the middle of nowhere. Some things (two full sets of blacksmiths’ tools, assorted firearms, the camel stretcher) had always been superfluous but many explorers would have regarded other items as essential. In particular, supplies of lime juice were jettisoned, which had been purchased to prevent scurvy.
To cut costs further, Burke decided to discharge six more men at Balranald, yet for all his military training, he had trouble confronting anyone with bad news. Wills recognised that he was ‘human and tender hearted as a woman’ but hid it with a ‘brusquerie wholly external’. Instead of paying the men and letting them go, Burke fudged the issue. He told Becker, Ferguson, Brahe, Langan, McIlwaine and Belooch to stay behind at Balranald, assuring them he would send for them later on.
For several hours the camp was on the brink of mutiny. Ferguson challenged his leader to a fight and had to be restrained. At first, Burke insisted that he wanted the American to stay, but later he called Ferguson aside and told him, ‘I cannot on my conscience deceive you. You surmised right; it was just as you thought. I intended to leave you before but I could not tell you of it.’ Burke then offered to retain Ferguson and Langan at reduced salaries. When they refused, he issued their wage cheques—but since shopkeepers and bank-tellers knew that the expedition was in financial trouble, no one was willing to cash them.
Burke must have changed his mind again because a few hours later Becker, Brahe and Belooch rejoined the main party and no more was said about their dismissal. He was, however, determined to rid himself of Ferguson, Langan and McIlwaine, who chased the party for thirty-five kilometres to beg for enough money to return to Melbourne. When the trio turned south, they were united in their threats to sue Burke for wrongful dismissal. Revealing a prodigious talent for denial, Burke wrote later to the committee: ‘In conclusion, I beg leave to state that the best possible spirit animates both officers and men, and that we shall do everything in our power to bring the enterprise to a successful conclusion.’
This debacle did nothing to improve the Irishman’s reputation. In Balranald, the general opinion was that he was ‘thoroughly deficient in experience’. Settlers noticed that ‘Camping places were not selected until after dark, sometimes till after midnight, when it could not be seen whether there might be any food for the cattle [camels] or not. At every camp, lots of tools, axes and spades were left.’ As the expedition left for Menindee, Beckler confided that ‘Mr Burke became somewhat impatient at this point, both with the slowness and with the very difficult progress of the wagons. He therefore decided to travel ahead with the expedition party and the camels and leave the wagons to follow under my supervision.’
The plan was a disaster. Against local advice, Burke decided that instead of following the recognised track from Balranald to the Darling River, he would cut across country. Beckler was exasperated. ‘Why did we have to experiment just here? It was the “shortest route”, the straight line that once again led Mr Burke into temptation.’ Burke’s route took his party across ‘mallee country’, a vast undulating tangle of rusty sandhills, anchored by thousands of distinctive multi-stemmed mallee trees. Locals commented that ‘no one knows who invented the mallee, but the devil is strongly suspected’.
The terrain was monotonous and confusing. Beckler branded it a ‘wild wasteland…oppressive to the highest degree’ and ‘hell on earth’ for the wagon drivers:
The misery for the horses really began at this point…they were required to draw their wagons through wild desert and through deep loose sand and pathless mallee scrub…The wagon wheels sank deep into the soil as did the horses and we were often forced to come to the aid of one or the other half-buried wagon wheel with a shovel. After minutes of gradually increasing shouting and yelling, often to the point of despair, the horses were perhaps able to pull together, only then to stop exhausted again a few paces further on. The wagoners all became so hoarse that they could hardly utter an audible word.
While Burke rode on ahead with Wills, the wagons crawled through the heavy sand at just one or two kilometres an hour. The men were so worn out they could barely be bothered to set up camp. One night, a sudden thunderstorm forced Ludwig Becker to share a tent ‘rather too temporarily pitched’ with Hermann Beckler. When a strong wind sprang up the next morning:
The first gust carried our tent into the air, together with the two saplings we had used as supporters—it came down again and fell right over me; my head had a narrow escape from being crushed as one of the poles fell alongside of it. The Doctor found himself in the open air and I was nearly suffocated under the pressure of the canvas before I could extricate myself. The scene was one of great confusion, at the same time to me so ludicrous that I could not help laughing, while the Doctor held a different opinion.
By 25 September, just over a week after leaving Balranald, the draught horses were too exhausted to go any further. They were unhitched and driven on to a waterhole, leaving the wagons abandoned in the scrub. Far from saving time, Burke’s ‘short cut’ meant that the forward party had to traverse the mallee country three times in order to rescue the wagons.
No one was surprised when Georg Neumayer announced his intention to return to Melbourne. He had finished collecting his ‘magnetic data’ and was anxious to return to the city. Since the professor had ridden on ahead for much of the time, he avoided the fiasco of the stricken wagons and formed a largely positive (if misguided) impression of the expedition’s prospects. In fact Burke, Wills
and Neumayer had become increasingly friendly as they rode across the mallee country together. On 28 September, as Neumayer was packing up, the three men sat up into the night, discussing the possibility of sending a relief vessel to the north coast to meet the expedition. It was agreed that Burke would write to the committee from Menindee if he decided such a ship were necessary.
Despite their new closeness, Burke was relieved at Neumayer’s departure. No sooner had he disappeared over the horizon than Burke started to dismantle any remaining vestige of scientific credibility surrounding the expedition. Free at last to do as he pleased without reports being taken back to the Royal Society, Burke confronted the scientists on 1 October. It was the mild-mannered Becker who bore the brunt of his dissatisfaction:
Before we marched Mr Burke told us that, from today, we had to walk inch for inch, all the way up to the Gulf of Carpentaria, as all the camels and horses were required to carry stores etc. To Dr Beckler and me he said: ‘now Gentleman from this time you have to give up your scientific investigations but to work like the rest of the men, as long as you are on the road or not free from camp-duties; at the same time you have to limit your materials and other things required for your investigating, to the utmost, in numbers as well as in weight and size of the parcel.’
Burke told all his men that henceforth they would be allowed just fifteen kilograms of personal equipment each. For the scientists, this meant leaving behind nearly all their instruments—from now on they were little more than glorified camel hands. Hermann Beckler trimmed his medical supplies to a minimum and reduced his personal belonging to the following items:
Kit bag made of oil-cloth ½ kilogram
1 pair of shoes 1½ kilograms
3 flannel shirts 1½ kilograms
2 pairs of flannel trousers 1½ kilograms
1 pair of canvas trousers 1 kilogram
Bedding, that is:
1 double woollen blanket 3½ kilograms
1 piece of oil cloth 2 kilograms
1 poncho 4 kilograms
Assorted items:
Shoes, socks, handkerchiefs, towels, books 4½ kilograms
Total 20 kilograms
Then, Burke turned on Landells. He insisted that in order to lighten the wagons, each camel would have to carry an extra 180 kilograms. With heavy rain and thunderstorms drenching the campsite, the stores were reorganised yet again. The new regime brought nothing but misery for Becker:
Last night was very cold with hoarfrost in the morning. Having had no sleep for the last two nights but plenty of hard work during the day-time I felt somewhat unwell, however I began work as usual at 5 o’clock in the morning. We commenced saddling and loading the camels and were ready to start by 11 o’clock. As I have said already 400 lbs was nearly each camel’s share, mostly consisting of bags of flower and sugar; each of these bags weighed 200 lb, and as each camel had to carry two of them which being fastened together before they were put on the pack-saddle, it is easy to understand that 4 men were required to lift this weight into the air and then let it carefully down on the camel’s back; this had to be done a dozen times. It is the most exhausting kind of labour and the new canvas bags soon told upon our fingernails—half of mine were split and bent.
None of us was told how far or how long we had this day, or rather the rest of this day, to travel, and as nothing but tea and biscuit with a little cold mutton was served out early in the morning, and we had no food before starting, I thought, in a few hours we would halt on some waterhole to take there the required nourishment—but nothing of that kind was allowed: we marched on without rest and food for twenty-four miles over high hills covered with a deep, loose sand, and arrived at night at a plain containing some water. I had no food for nearly three days; partly in consequence of my own indisposition, and no sleep for two nights, and had to pull, in the heat of the day, three camels for 24 miles through the most wretched country—it was quite natural I should feel weak. It was about sunset when I asked Mr Landells to stop only 5 minutes so as to be able to recover myself as I felt like fainting. Mr Landells answered: I cannot stop; loaded camels won’t rise again when once allowed to lie down; give me your camels, take rest if you require it, and follow at leisure. Fortunately for me that, when leaving the camp, I had picked up a thrown-away empty gunpowder flask, large enough to hold 4 ounces of water, which I had found at noon in a small clay-pan, and these few drops now enabled me to reach Mr Landells camp just in time to hear the order ‘now then Mr Becker, look sharp, unload your camels!’ and so I did of course.
Becker’s suffering was no accident. In a letter to his friend Frederick Standish, Burke revealed:
You should have seen old B——’s face upon my announcing that all the officers would have to act as working men, and that we shall only carry 30 lb weight of baggage for each man. Loading four camels and then marching 20 miles is no joke.
The first two days of it nearly cooked poor B——, and I think he will not be able to stand it much longer.
Burke ordered Landells not to let Becker ride at all, but to ‘walk him until he gave in’, and as part of his cruel campaign, he also barred him from any scientific activities:
Now a direct order was given by Mr Burke, that I had to give up all scientific observations until further orders.—To obey these different commands I was obliged to use the night. When all in the camp were asleep or at rest, I sat them up writing or sketching till midnight; This sort of work robbed me night after night three hours sleep and many times I slept in 24 hours only four. If you further consider that in consequence of the hard and rough work I had to perform during day-time my finger and finger-nails were in a pitiable condition, it is easily understood that under these circumstances pursuing science is rather a heavy task. However, I did what I could and not less.
A beleaguered Ludwig Becker refused to give up. Despite the ‘ruinous work’ attending the camels, he still managed to complete seven beautiful sketches on his way to the Darling. He had become the unwitting object of a power struggle between Burke and Landells that was fuelled by ignorance and mismanagement. As the expedition approached the Darling River, it threatened to blow the party apart.
George Landells was incensed that the camels were fully loaded before the expedition had even reached the edge of the desert. According to Beckler:
Landells’ basic principle was to watch over and care for the camels as long as possible and not to over burden them, in order to have them as strong and fresh as possible when forced marches, principally resulting from lack of water, would become necessary. This strategy was, without doubt, correct. However, Burke was not just impatient with the progress of the expedition in general but, as he often complained to me, with the camels in particular. Because until now they had run away frequently, because they had moved more slowly than the horses and because they naturally took a greater length of time to load, he no longer placed much confidence in them.
Burke’s hostility towards the camels led to a shift in alliances. Landells was left to his own devices and at the same time, both Becker and Beckler begin to mention that ‘Mr Wills was left in charge’ of certain matters. Burke was sidelining his deputy and confiding more and more in his surveyor.
Late on 2 October the expedition reached Bilbarka on the Darling River. Here Burke learned that a steamer, the Moolgewanke, was heading north to Menindee. Better still, it was owned by a certain Captain Johnston and had nothing to do with Burke’s enemy Francis Cadell. Seizing the opportunity to rid himself of ‘those accursed impediments’, the wagons, Burke ordered his men to prepare the stores so that eight tonnes of equipment could be loaded onto the steamer. While this was being done, Burke continued to bicker with his deputy, sending ripples of tension running through the camp. Their latest disagreement centred on the 270 litres of rum that Landells had insisted on bringing as medicine for the camels.
Modern camel experts dismiss the idea of rum as a camel pick-me-up, but there is a story often told in Menindee that Landells wa
nted the liquor to preserve the camels’ feet. It is known that urine with a high alcohol content stiffens leather, and it may have been that the camel driver intended his men to drink the rum and then use their urine to toughen the animals’ feet before they reached the stony desert regions. A less elaborate explanation suggests Landells brought the rum so he could sell it on the black market en route.
Whether their urine was put to good use or not, several members of the expedition had already experimented enthusiastically with the rum’s restorative properties. Then on 7 October a group of shearers from the nearby Phelps sheep station broke into the expedition’s store and helped themselves to as much liquor as they could drink. Stories of drunkenness made their way back to Melbourne and into the Age: ‘It seems that, among the other bad habits acquired by contact with human beings, the camels are addicted to that of tippling raw spirits, and they have a special liking for rum.’ Burke was furious. He confronted Landells and demanded that the rum be left behind. ‘Early in the day I heard Mr Burke talking, in front of his tent, very loud to Mr Landells;’ Becker wrote, ‘the nature or the object of that communication seemed to me to be a disagreeable one to both of them.’ Burke accused Landells of pampering the camels, slowing down the expedition and constantly offering the wrong advice. Landells stormed off, saying Burke was a madman who would get them all killed:
His conduct throughout has displayed such want of judgement, candour, and decision, as at once to destroy my entire confidence and respect. Indeed, that conduct has been altogether of such an extraordinary character, that I have on several occasions grave doubts about his sanity. His temper was quite ungovernable. He usually carried loaded firearms, and I often was fearful that he would use them dangerously while in a passion.
The Dig Tree Page 11