Just what was the ‘main object’ of the expedition? All pretence of scientific research had been abandoned. Somehow, between Melbourne and Menindee, the expedition had metamorphosed into a unit strikingly similar to the lightweight outfit employed by Stuart. Did the impracticability of the enormous original party mean that such a transformation was inevitable, or was it a deliberate policy to whittle down the group once it was beyond the public gaze? If so—was it Burke’s idea alone or was there a secret official plan?
The answers lie strewn around in the contradictory objectives of opposing factions in the Royal Society, in Burke’s loyalties to certain powerful members of the Exploration Committee and in his desire to play the role of the hero. Science was rarely a route to glory. If Burke was to fulfil his perceived destiny he had to be first across the continent. He was brave, ignorant and had nothing to lose. It would be easy to take advantage of such a dangerous combination.
Early in 1860, a small group of men began to recognise the expedition’s potential role in opening up northern Australia for commercial exploitation. Chief amongst them was Sir William Stawell, the man who had secured Burke’s position as leader. Stawell had an eye for opportunity and a broad knowledge of Australian politics. He and other committee members such as Thomas Embling, Richard Eades and John Macadam wanted to develop an overland route to a northern port. Aside from the telegraph, it would also allow a direct commercial link to south-east Asia and the construction of a trade centre similar to Canada’s Hudson Bay. And there were other opportunities waiting to be explored.
When Queensland was declared an independent colony in 1860, its newly formed parliament also began drawing up plans for a settlement on the north coast. The scheme was abandoned, however, when it was discovered that a large area of land (now western Queensland) between the 141st and 138th meridians had not been included in the colony when it was first proclaimed. Queensland’s governor George Bowen wrote to the Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of State for the Colonies, requesting that the land be added as soon as possible. Newcastle replied that ‘the government of South Australia had proposed the annexation to that colony of part of the territory which Queensland wanted. Also a certain group of gentlemen in Victoria wanted to form a settlement on the north coast of Australia.’
The ‘unclaimed land’ in the Gulf country was a rich prize for the first colony that could lay claim to it.
The leader of the Victorian group was the merchant and Royal Society member Thomas Embling. He was backed by Sir William Stawell.
Stawell was an expert in constitutional law—he had drafted Victoria’s constitution in 1850. It would not have escaped his notice that a large portion of northern Australia still technically belonged to New South Wales and that, in the absence of that colony’s interest in the area, there was a significant tract of land waiting for the first group to establish a route to the Gulf of Carpentaria on Australia’s north coast. This realisation may have accounted for the sudden change to the expedition’s instructions in June 1860, from a north-western route towards to the Victoria River to a more direct journey north towards the Gulf.
Embling and Stawell pondered the possibilities and developed an ambitious scheme. They enlisted the tacit support of several other politicians including the chief secretary John O’Shanassy for the expedition to explore more than just the flora and fauna of northern Australia. Victoria was rich but small. Perhaps its future lay in the annexation of a northern territory? An expedition cloaked in scientific respectability might also make a secret push for the Gulf and secure the prize before another colony got a chance. Burke was the perfect leader—bold, enthusiastic and naive enough to go as hard as he could to make the north coast first.
It has always been assumed that it was Burke’s decision to split his party at Menindee, a rash gesture to get away before the consequences of his mismanagement caught up with him. Conclusive evidence now shows there had always been a secret plot to divide the expedition. Certain members of the Exploration Committee had never intended the whole party to cross the continent. The proof is contained in a letter, written the day before the expedition left Melbourne, from prominent Royal Society member Alfred Selwyn asking his friend Harry if he wishes to join the expedition as a surveyor. In it, Selwyn admits the party will divide at Cooper Creek.
My dear Harry,
Would you like to join the Exploring Party? Another surveyor is wanted and I think you would be just the man if your wishes are that way inclined. The pay would be less than you make now and you would of course have to go second to Wills, who is already appointed and be under him while you were together, but that would probably not be for long—as the party will have to divide after leaving Cooper’s Creek and a surveyor be attached to each—If you like the idea and feel ambition of the honour and I hope glory to be gained by being attached to such a party, let me know by return of post. [italics added]
Selwyn had been looking out for a second surveyor for some time but no one seemed keen to take up the job. One prospective candidate expressed his doubts about Burke’s capabilities as a leader:
Do you think Mr. Burke has all the qualities that a leader ought to have? Everyone gives him credit for being a kind hearted man with plenty of pluck and determination and with great powers of endurance but some who know him predict disturbance in his party from his too hasty temper and say he acts too much from impulse.
Selwyn’s response was ominous. ‘I have not much faith,’ he confided, ‘in the success of the Expedition as at present constructed.’
The secret plan to divide the party and allow Burke to ‘make a dash for it’ is reinforced by a letter to the expedition leader from Georg Neumayer in Melbourne, written on 25 October 1860 a few days after Burke had left Menindee. Obviously Burke and Neumayer had been discussing the necessity for a second surveyor but Neumayer admitted the plan was proving impossible to implement, ‘I tried in vain to get another surveyor sent after you…There is underground work going on—I am sure about it. I have done my duty. You may be sure about it.’ The professor went on to say that he had also tried to arrange a ship to meet Burke when he reached the north coast so far without success. But Neumayer’s letter never reached Burke, a fact that influenced his plans in two important areas. First, Burke set out knowing that he couldn’t rely on a rescue vessel and would therefore have to cross the continent in both directions. Second and more important, he departed under the misguided impression that Neumayer could procure a second surveyor to join the rearguard party in Menindee.
In dividing his party, Burke acted with the full knowledge and official backing of some of the most powerful members of the Exploration Committee. He guessed correctly that all they wanted was for him to reach the north coast first. Given his transport problems on the way to the Darling, Burke probably thought his best chance of success lay in slimming down the expedition sooner rather than later. This accounts for his decision to disobey his official orders and split the expedition at Menindee instead of the Cooper. The desperation of some committee members for Burke to succeed is evident in a packet of letters sent to Burke at the end of October. Royal Society secretary John Macadam urged him on, saying:
My dearest Burke,
Every success; all well—one especially—you know who! Everyone wishes you well. The honour of Victoria is in your hands. We know and feel assured that you will vindicate the confidence reposed in you. May God bless and preserve you.
This veiled reference to Julia Matthews was designed to fire up the impassioned Irishman even further. Richard Eades told Burke he expected him to be ‘first to cross from sea to sea’ and Thomas Embling exhorted Burke to make sure that Victoria triumphed over South Australia. ‘The two colonies are in jealous rivalry,’ he wrote, ‘and I want you to win your spurs.’ In a final scurrilous paragraph, he warned Burke to be careful in dealing with the Aboriginal tribes. ‘I should like your work not to be sullied with blood as Stuart’s is.’
This remark, falsely accusing Stuart
of killing Aborigines during his journey north, was part of a smear campaign designed to undermine the Scotsman’s credibility. Several members of the Exploration Committee had already recruited their friends in Adelaide to dig up dirt on Stuart. The result was a series of ‘tip offs’ to the newspapers and a report compiled by the Royal Society’s assistant secretary Robert Dickson, which suggested Stuart’s last northern expedition might have been a fake. ‘His whole trip is still enveloped in impenetrable mystery,’ wrote Dickson, adding that the Scotsman was so ‘fearfully subject to the Demon Drink’ that he spent most of the journey swigging bottles of preserving fluid and drinking alcohol from his scientific instruments. The committee’s efforts to rouse Burke were all in vain. The packet of letters never reached him.
In Melbourne George Landells’ resignation was causing a major scandal. The camel driver had rushed back to the city desperate to put his side of the story, but in the end Burke won the public relations battle by two newspapers to one. The Age was his major supporter. It decided that the Irishman had shown ‘firmness and self-reliance’ by reducing his party:
The Exploring Expedition, as it recedes from the confines of the peopled districts, and approaches the solitude of the unknown interior, is gradually casting off the ‘Barnacles’ which clung to it, so long as its progress was a mere affair of parade and holiday work. The silent wilderness has terrors for the faint of heart; and any excuse is gladly seized on by them, in order to retreat without open concession of cowardice…If Landells found he could not work in harmony with his chief officer, he should have resigned in peace and with dignified self-respect, without seeking to make himself appear an illused man, and Mr Burke a crack-brained tyrant.
The Argus agreed but the Herald, proclaiming itself ‘impartial, not neutral’, decided this was Burke’s fault, stating that ‘he had already demonstrated his total incapacity to hold his party firmly in hand, and that of itself is a very grave deduction from his concrete merits as a leader’.
As more revelations emerged, the members of the Royal Society squirmed with embarrassment. Matters reached crisis point with the publication of an ‘explanation letter’ from Landells, followed by a long and excruciatingly petty dispatch from Wills accusing the camel driver of disloyalty and duplicity:
Whereupon it came out that Mr Landells has been playing a fine game trying to set us all together by the ears. To Mr Burke he has been abusing and finding fault with all of us; so much so that Mr Burke tells me that Landells positively hates me—when we have, apparently been the best of friends. To me he has been abusing Mr Burke, and has always spoken as if he hated the doctor and Mr Beckler, where as to them he had been all milk and honey. There is scarcely a man in the party whom he had not urged Mr Burke to dismiss.
The Herald was appalled:
Mr Wills, both in his present and former communication has nothing more to tell than that there were continual squabbles about the camels. The other petty details of the small personal bickering and tattlings that went on in the camp are utterly unworthy of serious record. Mr Wills ought not to have condescended upon journalising them…the bare fact that such contemptible trifles are occupying attention in the exploring party, shows clearly enough that the spirit of elevated enthusiasm with which it was started has pretty well evaporated by this time.
On his return to Melbourne, Neumayer attempted to subdue the scandal by holding a public meeting to defend the expedition. With the skill of a spin-doctor, he emphasised Burke’s ‘wisdom’ and ‘judicious’ behaviour. ‘There was not one man who was not pleased with the excellent leader placed over him,’ he declared. The only concession to reality was an acknowledgment that ‘Mr Burke might require some assistance in some scientific matters connected with the journey’.
The committee was by now facing financial problems. An audit revealed that £4500 had been spent to equip the party, one third more than expected. The hired wagons added another £700, which left only enough to pay the men’s salaries until the end of the year. To compound matters, the committee had placed just £150 in Burke’s bank account, not realising he had been writing cheques at will, which were now bouncing back to Melbourne.
By late October, even the tiny store in Menindee was refusing credit for the back-up party. Beckler and Becker had to search their packs for loose change every time they needed so much as a stamp or a new bootlace. Stawell wrote to Burke warning that ‘The Committee was rather alarmed at finding the expense greater than they anticipated.’ The Royal Society was forced to approach the government for more funds and the chief secretary William Nicholson had little choice but to grant another £6000.
To Melburnians, the expedition had been reduced to melodrama. Charles Ferguson was threatening to sue for wrongful dismissal and rumours were circulating about the complete break-up of the party. Melbourne could not wait to hear the next instalment.
As Burke’s reputation was being dismembered in the city, he was making excellent progress towards Cooper Creek. With Landells and the scientists out of the way, it was a more harmonious group that trekked north hour after hour. Wright and his Aboriginal trackers proved to be able guides and water was readily available. Away from the framework of fences and farmland, the environment was like nothing the men had ever seen before, forcing even Wills to readjust his preconceptions. ‘This last season,’ he wrote, ‘is said to have been the most rainy that they have had for several years; yet everything looked so parched up that I should have imagined it had been an exceedingly dry one.’
A journey unconstrained by the artificial structure of tracks and settlements is free to settle into the rhythms of the natural landscape. It was a survival skill the Aboriginal people had perfected over many thousands of years. North of the Darling, tribes such as the Danggali, the Wiljali, the Bandjgali, the Karennggapa and the Kullila all moved around according to the seasons, the locations of the game and the state of the waterholes. Burke made no attempt to learn these patterns of co-existence. He marched for up to sixteen hours day, often passing excellent water in the afternoon and camping late at night. There were no rest days. For now, the favourable conditions allowed him to get away with his cavalier approach but his rapid progress also gave him a false sense of security.
One hundred and twenty-five kilometres north of Menindee, the expedition passed through the Bynguano Ranges, a striking mountainous plateau that rises high above kilometres of flat waterless plains. Known as Mutawintji or Mootwingee, the area remains sacred for the Wilyakali tribe and many other Aboriginal groups.
To wander from the flat scrubby plains into Mutawintji is to enter a haunting spiritual world. The plants, the trees, the earth, even the smell is different. Deep inside the network of red gorges, the atmosphere of secrecy is overwhelming. The narrow tumbling gullies hide dark silent pools, surrounded by some of the most sacred Aboriginal art in south-east Australia. Rocky overhangs are transformed into magnificent galleries adorned with hand stencils, emu tracks, boomerangs and kangaroos, all drawn in striking red ochres and yellow clay paint.
Mutawintji had been a place of ceremony and celebration for indigenous people for thousands of years before Burke and Wills arrived. With its permanent supply of water and game, it also provided a sort of emergency larder, a place of refuge that was not permanently occupied by any particular tribe. Its resources were never squandered and when better times returned tribes such as the Milpulo, Maljangapa and the Wanjiwalku returned to the plains beneath.
The explorers arrived with a different perspective. They spent just a few hours in one of the richest geological, biological, botanical and anthropological areas in New South Wales. Too busy to appreciate the subtleties before them, they filled their waterbags and left, describing the area as ‘dark and gloomy’.
Burke was consumed by his desire to beat Stuart. William Brahe recalled later that speed dominated the expedition’s daily routine:
Delay of any kind chafed Burke. The only angry word I ever had from him was in consequence of it. S
ome packs had shifted; the horses were delayed. He rode back, asking impatiently what was wrong. I explained, and said ‘It’s all right.’ ‘It’s not all right,’ he exclaimed angrily. ‘It’s all wrong!’ and rode away. In two hours he was back, saying kindly, ‘You must be very tired Brahe. Ride my horse for a while.’ He would blaze up into a temper very quickly, but soon got over it.
The rest of the men had no choice but to keep up. Wills continued with his special ‘camel-back’ system to record basic weather, geological and biological information. He amazed everyone with his stamina. Long after the others had crawled inside their bedrolls, he stayed up to take his nightly observations and plot the party’s position.
Burke did not keep a diary at all along this stretch of the journey, relying on his deputy to record any geographical features. Wills was surprised at the variety of the landscape they traversed. It alternated between ‘as good grazing country as one would wish to see’ and dusty clay flats ‘so arid and barren…one might almost fancy himself in another planet’.
Ten days after leaving Menindee, on 29 October, the explorers reached a low-lying fertile area known as the Torowoto swamp, 250 kilometres north of Menindee. Like ‘river’, ‘lake’ and ‘creek’, the word ‘swamp’ implies a degree of dependability that doesn’t necessarily exist in inland Australian geography. Maps in these areas can only ever be statistical averages, but this fact had not yet registered with European pioneers. Unaware of the enormous seasonal variations, the early explorers often misread the agricultural potential of the landscape. Many farmers followed these optimistic reports, driving their flocks for hundreds of kilometres towards nothing but drought, dust and despair.
The Dig Tree Page 13