The Dig Tree

by Sarah Murgatroyd

  Nineteen

  The Continent Crossed

  ‘The Australian comes in the end to the mysterious half-desert country…And the life of this mysterious country will affect the Australian imagination much as the life of the sea had affected that of the English.’

  C. E. W. Bean

  The coach from Swan Hill thundered into Bendigo late on Saturday, 2 November 1861. People crowded around as passengers and luggage spilt out on to the main street, but one man slipped away from the confusion, hurried to the local cable office and demanded to send an urgent message. Minutes later, the click of the telegraph machine sent his sensational story to Melbourne.

  The continent had been crossed. Burke and Wills were dead. There was one survivor and he was on his way to the city. Within a few hours, the whole colony was talking about the ‘thrilling news’. Melbourne was stunned. No one could believe that such a well-equipped party could have met such a desolate end. The grief and gossip penetrated every corner of the city—even managing to dominate conversation at the running of the Melbourne Cup. In Beechworth and Castlemaine, miners downed tools and gathered in the streets to hear that their former police chief had died a heroic death in the desert. By late evening the scandal had spread to Sydney and Adelaide. It sparked international interest with articles appearing in Britain, Ireland, Holland, Germany and America. News of the tragedy shocked readers:

  THE

  VICTORIAN

  EXPLORATION

  EXPEDITION.

  THE CONTINENT

  CROSSED.

  DEATH OF BURKE

  AND WILLS.

  THEIR REMAINS FOUND.

  The Argus Office,

  Sunday Morning.

  The following despatch has been received from our Sandhurst correspondent :—

  “SANDHURST, Nov. 2.

  “Mr. Brahe, of the Exploration Contingent, arrived here this afternoon, from Cooper’s Creek.

  “The remains of Burke and Wills, who both died on the same day from starvation [supposed on or about the 28th of June,] near Cooper’s Creek, have been found.

  “Gray, another of the party, also perished.

  “King is the only survivor.

  “They had crossed the continent to the Gulf of Carpentaria.

  “All Burke’s books, &c., have been saved.”

  For several days Melbourne’s newspapers printed special editions, and plans were under way for commemorative portraits, diaries and maps. In the midst of its collective grief, Victoria was strangely exultant. It was a society that had inherited so many peculiar British obsessions, and there was nothing the public celebrated more than a dead hero. Sensing the popular mood, the Argus realised that Burke’s death had given the colony something it had been searching for since its inception a decade earlier: ‘The name of Robert O’Hara Burke is henceforth of the people of Victoria. The glory of his deed, and the sorrow of his death, will each render that name memorable in the annals of our country. And well may Victoria be proud of this, her first hero.’

  Victoria’s champion had solved the mystery of the ‘ghastly blank’ and opened up territory of enormous potential:

  The sufferings and death of the first white men who crossed the Australian continent will be household words in Australia, when the iron horse has extended from the southernmost point of Australia to the shores of Carpentaria; a country large enough to absorb the surplus population of the world has been discovered. In years to come cities will arise where the explorers rested, and plenty will be found where the explorers perished. All honour then to the gallant four, of whom three died and one survives.

  As more details emerged, the scale of the tragedy only increased. No one could believe that the expedition had fallen foul of so many coincidences and lost opportunities:

  Among all the chances which it was imagined might have overtaken the absent explorers, the dreadful reality never could have entered into the mind of anyone. That they should have reached Cooper’s Creek upon the day on which BRAHE deserted it—that the track which the latter mistook for those of the natives should have been those of the missing men—that BRAHE and WRIGHT should have walked over the ground where lay concealed the precious document which would have told of the whereabouts of BURKE and his companions—who in his wildest dreams could have supposed?

  Burke’s story, which at times had descended towards the ridiculous, was now elevated to the sublime. The Irishman was far more popular in death than he ever had been in life:

  The story of his great achievement, if it is the saddest, is also one of the highest in the history of manhood. No fiction was ever half so romantic—no hero more valiant, bold or loyal. The age of chivalry is restored in an achievement equal to all that war has shown us of hardihood, courage, and devotion. For this our hero was a soldier, in all the highest points of soldiership. No conqueror dying on the field of battle could earn a fame more pure or glorious.

  Few dared suggest that the expedition was a failure. The original objectives, scientific endeavour and geographical discovery, were overshadowed by Burke’s glorious death. He had conquered a continent—and Victoria had proved itself to the world. Sir William Stawell was anxious to harness the public enthusiasm. He lobbied Victoria’s chief secretary John O’Shanassy, who announced his intention to apply to the British government for the annexation of the territory Burke had discovered. The press reacted eagerly, expressing the hope that this would be the start of a northern commercial empire and a base for the overland telegraph. For a time it seemed a real possibility that Australia might gain a new colony—a sort of ‘Northern Victoria’—to be governed from Melbourne.

  The news of Burke’s demise was broken to Julia Matthews on 2 November just before she was due to appear at the Princess Theatre in the acclaimed comic drama Handy Andy. There are no reports of her reaction but she performed as usual that night, and later expressed her ‘great regret’ at Burke’s death. The next day, she went for a walk in the botanical gardens and lost the miniature portrait Burke had given her before he left. An advertisement appeared in the Melbourne papers on Monday morning, offering £5 for its safe return. Some believed she was genuinely upset over the loss; others speculated that casting herself as the grief-stricken sweetheart of a dead explorer was a publicity masterstroke. No one knows whether she ever recovered her keepsake.

  Preparations began for the reception of John King. Still fragile, he was now travelling by coach towards Melbourne. The further south he went, the more bewildered he became. By day, spectators lined the streets and cheered as his carriage went past; by night the local dignitaries plied him with sumptuous banquets and fine wine, but the excitement and the food suited neither his mood nor his digestion. Everyone wanted to hear his story but, each time he rose to speak, he broke down in tears and had to be led sobbing from the table. So many women offered to ‘look after him’ that he was locked inside his bedroom at night ‘for his own safety’.

  As the procession neared Melbourne, the celebrations became more exuberant. There were street parades, welcome banners and showers of rose petals. Everyone wanted to catch a glimpse of the returning hero. Some got closer than others. One onlooker reported that while ‘one matron was kissing him, two were vigorously fanning him, and most of his hair had been cut off’. Burke might have relished the attention, but King retreated further into an unreachable silence. Edwin Welch tried to help his companion but confessed, ‘I could not torture him out of his passive, dead-and-alive manner.’

  Even before King reached Melbourne, the theatrical impresario George Coppin (who had supplied camels to the expedition from his circus) offered him £1000 to star in a panorama, which would tour Australia telling the story of the expedition. King later refused the offer on the grounds that:

  I am totally unable to endure excitement, much less to appear before crowded audiences—to mentally travel over scenes so full of distressing reminiscences. I require absolute rest and if possible the diversion of my thoughts into other channels…
my wonderful deliverance and ultimate preservation from death, is such that I am a wonder to myself. The Almighty has been so gracious to me, and I feel humble at His great mercy, that I cannot believe that it would be right for me to present myself under Mr Coppin’s direction for any pecuniary advantage…I beg therefore, to leave myself in the hands of a paternal and just Government, to be rewarded by it as it may deem proper for my services as one of the members of the late ill-fated expedition.

  It was obvious that King had not written the letter himself. The meticulous grammar and staged references to a ‘paternal and just’ government revealed he was already being manipulated by the Royal Society. The lone explorer was a vulnerable and dangerous commodity who must not be allowed to say anything that might prove damaging to the committee.

  By the time King reached Melbourne on 25 November, the mood was at fever pitch. Anyone who has lived through the return of the Apollo 13 crew or the death of Princess Diana will have some idea of how one event can so consume the public imagination. And so it was in Victoria in 1861. People couldn’t wait to see the man who had lived through such unimaginable hardships, who had trekked across a continent, witnessed the deaths of two heroes, lived among the ‘savages’ and then been snatched from the jaws of death.

  The Exploration Committee had made detailed arrangements for King’s return, but they underestimated both the public feeling and the determination of a grief-stricken Dr Wills. When the explorer arrived at North Melbourne station on his special train decked with garlands and bouquets, an overwrought William Wills senior barged into his compartment and demanded an interview. Total chaos ensued.

  With King cowering in the corner, Edwin Welch intervened and insisted that everyone was to remain on the train to meet the Exploration Committee at the main Spencer Street station. Dr Wills delivered ‘a volley of abuse’ and then burst into tears. Unmoved, Welch thrust the doctor into the corridor and ordered the stationmaster to let the train continue towards the city.

  Meanwhile, John Macadam had arrived at Spencer Street to escort King to an official reception at the Royal Society Hall. He soon found himself being crushed by several thousand wellwishers intent on seeing the famous explorer. The crowd surged forward, knocking over the police guards and surrounding the train. No one knew what King looked like, so people charged through the carriages, accosting strangers and demanding to know if they were with the expedition. King hid behind Welch, who locked all the windows and doors to their compartment and swore at anyone who approached. John Macadam was lost in the crush.

  After several minutes of mayhem, police reinforcements cleared a path to the correct carriage. Welch slung King over his shoulder, marched through the station and shoved him inside a cab. As Dr Wills scrambled inside, the mob surrounded the vehicle. King sat white and shaking as Wills’ father insisted they make for Government House instead of the Royal Society Hall. While he and Welch argued, the police managed to push the crowd to one side. The cab lurched forward and then sped away, pursued by more than thirty carriages and a hundred or so spectators.

  And so the ordeal continued. The explorer was bundled inside Government House to be reunited with his sister, Mrs Anne Bunting. She was anxious to take her brother home but, before he could leave, King had to meet the governor. As the mob descended on Government House, Sir Henry Barkly was experiencing some difficulty getting into the building at all. By the time he arrived, King could barely stand to shake the governor’s hand. He proved incapable of answering any questions.

  Somehow the crowd had to be placated. The dazed explorer was led onto the balcony for a brief appearance, before slipping through a back entrance and away to his sister’s house in the seaside suburb of St Kilda. ‘John King,’ the Herald observed, ‘is regarded with feelings similar to those which made the people say of Dante, “There goes the man who has been in Hades.”’ He could be forgiven for wishing that he were back there.

  These glimpses did little to satisfy the craving for answers. If anything, King’s appearance inflamed public opinion. How could Victoria’s favourite sons have been allowed to perish in the desert? Who was to blame? Burke was, for now, above criticism. The Royal Society wasn’t. The Argus branded its members as:

  third-rate amateurs in science, of no special knowledge or experience in exploration, and having small natural capacity for the work…We have had meeting after meeting in Melbourne, involving much waste of words and many despatches to and from the explorers and the committee; but the plain, direct and obvious duty before the committee has been entirely and grossly neglected and to this cause mainly must be attributed the disaster.

  Only the provincial newspapers dared to suggest that Burke might have been responsible for the expedition’s high death toll. The Bendigo Advertiser had been most unimpressed with his behaviour when he was alive. Now he was dead, they published a series of letters criticising his leadership: ‘Burke was not a fit man for such an expedition; and this was the general opinion of the squatters through whose runs he passed on his way…his want of judgement, or his obstinacy rather than submit to his junior led to his death.’ The Geelong Advertiser added that Wills was the real hero of the expedition:

  A distracted-looking and carefully coiffed John King poses for an official photograph in late 1861. A potentially explosive witness at the inquiry, he was kept under close watch by the Royal Society.

  Australia’s sons and daughters will speak in mournful pride, with subdued breath and beating hearts, of the fair-haired gallant youth who laid down his life in their country’s cause; of him whose advice if followed might have proved the salvation of his intrepid leader and himself, but whose sense of obedient discipline impelled him to follow the orders, which in his last hour he could not approve.

  Even Alfred Howitt pointed out: ‘Without Wills, Burke would have been absolutely helpless.’ These views infuriated Burke’s supporters, who were even more outraged when Sir Henry Barkly announced that the expedition would henceforth be officially renamed ‘The Burke and Wills Expedition’.

  For months Melbourne was drunk on hero-worship and sentimentalism. At first the transformation of Burke into a valiant martyr was promoted in official circles to divert attention from other more embarrassing interpretations of the expedition’s achievements. Memorial dinners were held, speeches were made lamenting Burke’s loss and endless toasts were drunk. But the strategy backfired on the Royal Society. The more these ‘affecting narratives’ eulogised Burke, the more public fury mounted towards those responsible for ‘sending him to his death’.

  The newspapers began to ask if the explorers’ remains were to be brought back to the city or left to rot in the desert. As usual the question provoked argument amongst Royal Society members. Should all the bodies be retrieved or just those of Burke and Wills? Would anyone care if ‘lesser men’ such as Ludwig Becker and Charley Gray were left in the wilderness ‘so dogs may pick at their bones’?

  Half the Exploration Committee thought it would be best to leave them all where they were. The other half was adamant that the bodies be reburied with full honours in the city. At one meeting, a member noted that he had taken the trouble to weigh a human skeleton that very morning, and since it was only nine pounds including the skull it would be no trouble to convey the entire remains back to the city. Resolutions were made, overturned and redrafted until a decision was made on 11 November 1861. Alfred Howitt would be sent back up to the Cooper to recover the remains of Burke and Wills for a proper funeral back in Melbourne. The others would be left to lie in the desert forever. John King offered to go back and retrieve his fallen companions. Howitt was touched but it was clear that King was not strong enough to withstand the trip.

  Every day the newspapers continued their attacks on the Exploration Committee. No one would be satisfied until an official inquiry was held. As usual it was politics that dictated the final outcome.

  Public unrest over the expedition came at a time of instability in the Victorian government. The new c
hief secretary Richard Heales was entrenched in a long-running battle with John O’Shanassy, the previous incumbent who had supported the Victorian Exploring Expedition and provided it with government funds. Heales lost power in early November when two members crossed the floor to O’Shanassy’s side. One of Heales’ last acts before he resigned was to order an official inquiry into the deaths of Burke and Wills.

  It was the political equivalent of throwing a hand grenade into Melbourne high society. O’Shanassy had no choice but to accept the inquiry. He had been involved with Stawell in plotting a more political aim for the expedition but he was less than keen for this aspect of the project to be explored in public. There was still a hope that part of northern Australia might be annexed to Victoria. If it was proved that Victoria had established a credible presence in the area and that the expedition’s failings were due to the mistakes of junior officers, advantage might still be made of Burke’s crossing. But if it emerged that the colony was incapable of organising an overland party to travel to the north coast and back, then not only would Victoria look foolish, it would also find it difficult to stamp its claim on the north coast.

  O’Shanassy also had personal reasons for protecting the Royal Society and its organisation of the expedition. He held power with a slim majority and he was desperate to ensure vital allies such as Sir William Stawell remained unscathed by the inquiry’s findings. In the small world of Melbourne politics, a finding against the Royal Society would have disastrous implications for many of its most powerful figures. On 12 November 1861, when governor Sir Henry Barkly announced a ‘full and independent’ royal commission of inquiry, there was general public approval—but most people had no idea just how much was at stake.