Hell's Gates

by Paul Collins

The others were at first very worried that the two bolters would give information that would lead to soldiers being sent in pursuit of them, and they were fearful that their information about the murder and cannibalism would hang them all. Their concern was exacerbated by the knowledge that they were close to a large river and they feared that Cuthbertson might send soldiers in a boat in pursuit. Pearce says that they decided not to give chase to Brown and Kennerly for they reckoned the two would not make it back to Macquarie Harbour and would die on the way. Why waste the energy?

  So they pushed on. They were now about 28 kilometres (17 miles) north of the confluence of the Franklin and Gordon rivers and, although they thought it was the Gordon, immediately ahead of them was the Franklin, which at that stage had not been named. Crossing it proved to be very difficult as there were few places to ford the river, its banks ‘being so rough and steep’, as Pearce correctly puts it. Both Terry Reid and Geoff Law agree that they probably approached the Franklin somewhere close to the northern end of the Great Ravine, a series of cliffs, gorges and rapids into which the river flows near the southern end of the Engineer Range. Reid says that the Franklin ‘is very narrow, very sheer on both sides.You can get yourself down onto the banks of the river via the little creeks’. Law concurs, saying that, ‘Trying to get down to the river, let alone cross it, would have been horrific. Given September, the river would have been very high.The rocks on the sides of the gorges are very slippery.’

  Rising on the western side of the King William Range in central Tasmania, the Franklin runs for much of this part of its length through deep gorges and over dangerous rapids and shallow waterfalls. In early spring it is usually running high and very fast. Nowadays it is one of the premier rafting rivers in the world.

  James Erskine Calder, who traversed this area in 1841, describes the Franklin as ‘a beautiful stream, of considerable width, depth and rapidity. Its banks are mostly high, and often perpendicular, overhung with handsome myrtles, and many fine pines; the branches of the latter, like those of the willow, often drooping to its surface in a manner which much contributes to the beauty of the stream’. It is still like this but, as the Pearce party soon found out, the beauty was deceptive. First, how were they to get down to the river? And secondly, how were they to get across?

  The rain had started again and it was only ‘with great trouble [that they] effected a passage to the river’ through the tangled maze of rainforest and scrub that surrounded it. After much searching, probably in the area somewhere south of what is now called the Sideslip and probably inside the northern end of the Great Ravine, they eventually found a possible crossing point. It was the evening of the eleventh day out from Macquarie Harbour. Pearce takes up the story: ‘Early the next morning they arose and consulted among themselves respecting the manner in which they could be able to cross the river with safety as two of them could not swim’. The non-swimmers were Travers and Bodenham.To try to get them over they cut down two large trees, hoping to use them as a bridge across the swiftly flowing river. But the current was so strong and fast that it swept the trees away immediately. After some further exploration they found a place ‘where a rock projected from the other side to the middle of the river’.The three swimmers dived in and swam across to the rock, towing behind them ‘a wattle pole of some 30 or 40 feet in length’, which they then used to pull the two non-swimmers across. It must have been a hair-raising experience for them all, but especially for Travers and Bodenham. In these slower, broader parts of the river the water looks black and seemingly bottomless. Plunging into the raging river required rare bravery and, whatever else they lacked, these men certainly had courage.

  Reid thinks that they must have found a spot in the northern part of the Great Ravine where the river widens out and settles down sufficiently for them to have found calmer water. It would have been impossible to cross in the narrower parts of the river where it is 4 to 7 metres (12 to 18 feet) wide and raging. The Franklin is generally about 15 metres (about 50 feet) across – not crossable either for the non-swimmers unless they had a very long pole or, as Pearce says, there were rocks sticking right out into the middle to foreshorten the distance. But even with all this in their favour, Reid warns that ‘The current is very strong. Once you’ve been caught by the current you’re going to get swept away into the rapids and never be seen again. We [the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service] would not recommend that anyone would contemplate going down the river at that time [of the year]’. The Franklin carries a vast volume of water, especially in September, which averages twenty days of rain, to be added to by the melting snows coming down from the mountains.

  Once across they made a fire and remained all night. At this stage Mather must have been acutely constipated because Pearce says that ‘Mather took a purging and begged that we remain a little longer’, presumably waiting for his bowels to move. The most common purgative in the early nineteenth century was calomel (mercurous chloride), but it is unlikely that convicts would have access to this unless it had been given to them by the Sarah Island surgeon, James Spence. We can only speculate that Mather might have had it because he had had previous problems with constipation. Perhaps he had saved it, purposely smuggled it over from Sarah Island for the escape and brought it with him. Their state of near-starvation would have affected all of their bodily functions. So they rested on the east bank of the Franklin for another day and night.

  Ahead of them was what Pearce calls ‘very mountainous country’. The Deception Range, as it was to be named two decades later by Calder, is a southern spur of the snow-covered Frenchman’s Cap massif, which they could see to the north of them on the occasions when the sky cleared. Calder explains: ‘I called these hills collectively Deception Range, from the frequency with which I was foiled, or deceived in my attempts to lead the path across them. This locality presents no other view but that of a sterile wilderness, and scenes of frightful desolation’. From the 600-metre (1960-foot) ridge the escapees could see back to Macquarie Harbour and estimate how far they had already come: in a direct line it was about 28 kilometres (about 18 miles), but they had probably walked a lot further. When they looked east they saw barren ground, mainly buttongrass plains, for miles ahead of them. This is what Calder was later to name the Lightning Plains because he got caught there in the open one night during a terrible electrical storm.

  The ascent of the Deception Range was no less arduous. There were only a few places where they could ascend, and they probably did so somewhere near Mount Lyne (880 metres/2860 feet). At times the grade was so steep that it would have been a near vertical rock-climb. There are 500-metre (1640-foot) cliffs on this range.They would have been trying again to get high and keep to the ridge-lines using Frenchman’s Cap as their reference point. Their aim would have been to avoid constantly having to drop down and climb out of valleys and gullies full of rainforest and impassable vegetation. Along the ridge-lines of both the Engineer and Deception ranges, and around the higher mountains above 1000 metres (3500 feet), you come upon the south- west’s extraordinary alpine vegetation, another survival from Gondwana. Rain, hail, high winds, ice, poor soil and deep snow make life difficult for all but the hardiest plants. There are tough shrubs and herbs that survive in these conditions, some of them with rather beautiful flowers. Perhaps the most unusual is the pandani tree, a kind of giant grass-tree which tends to be found in the wetter areas. It can grow to a height of 12 metres (almost 40 feet). It is also found in a stunted form in alpine herbfields. The nastiest vegetation at the higher levels is scoparia, a flowering coniferous shrub. It has sharp leaves that tears at clothing. There is also the stunted deciduous beech which, as Terry Reid says, ‘is not called tangle-foot for nothing’. There is no water on the ridge-lines so you have to descend through the gorges to the creeks for water. But you can’t see what you are getting into as the country keeps dropping away, and as it get steeper the vegetation gets thicker. Geoff Law says, ‘You keep wondering what’s coming next. You fool yourself t
hat it’s not going to get any steeper, but inside you know that it is.’

  Physically the escapees would have now been in very poor shape. Besides starvation, they would have been suffering from cuts, scratches, bruises, sprains and abrasions, many of them quite serious, from frequently falling over. In the type of country they had traversed you regularly slip and slide and fall over, both backwards and forwards, many times every day. Many of these wounds would have become infected, especially those caused by cutting grass. Often on slippery ground they would have fallen over in filthy slime which covers your clothes and hands and any exposed surface and just sticks there. They would also have been bitten by insects and had their blood sucked by leeches that get under clothing and attach themselves to the body. The men had been working in cold water for a long period before their escape, and on the trek they would have been constantly in mud, so trench foot (or immersion foot) would have affected them. This results in a loss of sensation in the feet and an abnormal sensitivity to cold. Their poor physical state would have engendered depression. Every morning they would have woken up and thought, ‘What obstacle will we have to face today?’, knowing that every step on the journey would involve pain.

  From his long experience of walking in this type of country, Geoff Law describes how you begin to feel as you try to get through the bush the escapees were facing: ‘Often the problem is that you have little choice, and the only option is to go forward. But by doing so you face a ravine full of horizontal. Then you have these route-finding difficulties: often the easiest way is in the completely opposite direction to the one in which you need to go.The right way is to push straight ahead, but it is the hardest option of all. This is frustrating and depressing. So you have to slow your brain down. Instead of deciding that you have to get to this or that point by the end of the day, you have to modify your expectations. That’s fine if you’ve got plenty of food on board, and you’re actually doing it for fun anyway. But these men in the Pearce party were starving to death, thinking how much longer will this go on? It must have been a hideous prospect.’ Their physical and no doubt psychological state would have made it difficult to think clearly, and this led directly to the next crisis.

  Mather had been entrusted with the task of carrying the tinder that was used to light the fires at night. He had it in his shirt to keep it dry, but somehow it dropped down his trousers. Searching for it frantically – dry tinder was vital if they were to have a fire at night – he couldn’t find it. Watching him looking for it, Travers raised his axe in a sudden fit of violence and said he would kill Mather if the tinder wasn’t found immediately. Fortunately Mather managed to find it down his trousers and a fire was made that night under a cliff. But the men were scarcely able to rise the next morning because of starvation and the cold, wet weather. This incident also illustrates the problem they must have had throughout the trip trying to carry things. They had set out inland almost impulsively and, unlike contemporary bush-walkers, they would have had no backpacks in which to carry food and other necessities. Even carrying an axe tied up one hand and left the man unbalanced as he struggled through the bush.

  Up until now we can be generally sure of the route that they took. But once they descended the Deception Range and emerged onto the buttongrass of Lightning Plains they were faced with a choice of route.

  In describing the landscape of the south-west there is one element that I have omitted. Much of the area is flat, open, but-tongrass plains. Buttongrass, which can also be found in valleys and on mountain slopes, is a kind of reddish-brown-green in colour, growing up to about a metre in height, and it can be found in many environments, but usually on waterlogged plains and in and around eucalypt forests. Growing in peaty soil, it is unsuitable for cattle, and this has fortunately protected the southwest from a destructive invasion of hard-hoofed animals. Buttongrass is extraordinarily hardy; it is fire- and drought-resistant, and regular burning promotes its growth.The extent of buttongrass across the south-west indicates that there has been a regimen of regular burning in the whole region over a long period, resulting either from lightning or regular Aboriginal burning. Dr Jon Marsden-Smedley, an expert on the fire regimen in the south-west and fire officer for the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service, says that the evidence is that the Aborigines mostly used low-intensity fires on the moorland when forested vegetation was too wet to burn. Their aim was to flush out game and make access tracks.

  The choice the Pearce party faced at the Deception Range was simple: should they head east–north-east or east–south-east? They had had a chance to survey the country from the ridge-line of the Deception before they descended, and they would have seen that directly across their path to the east was the central section of the King William Range, with peaks like Mount King William II rising to 1359 metres (4460 feet). To the north was Mount Arrowsmith (981 metres/3180 feet) and the 1324-metre (4300-foot) Mount King William I, and to the south Mount King William III (1172 metres/3800 feet). This range has a steep escarpment on the western side and an average height of 1200 metres (3900 feet) at the ridge-line. Given their experience, they obviously decided not to tackle the range head-on. We are not certain if they headed east–north-east or east–south-east to try to find a pass through the mountains or a way around them.

  Personally, I think that they headed east–north-east because they could see the seemingly easy-to-traverse buttongrass of the Lightning and Loddon plains, intersected only by a low range of hills. To the east–south-east they would have seen the southern end of the King William Range and its apparent continuation in Algonkian Mountain. However, before explaining the east– north-east route which I favour, I will set out the case for the alternative one.

  Jon Marsden-Smedley and Sue Rundle, also of the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service, both experienced bushwalkers, favour the east–south-east route. Their argument is that the Pearce party would have been naturally funnelled straight across the button-grass of Lightning Plains following the course of the Jane River, turning slightly more south-east to Stannard Flats, crossing to the north of Algonkian Mountain (1073 metres/3490 feet), and then eastward to the south of Mount King William III, the southern extreme of the King William Range. They would have headed due east, crossing the Frith River, the upper reaches of the Gordon, and through beautiful forest country to the Derwent River around the area of present-day Wayatinah. Marsden-Smedley says that this country is ‘pretty awful now, but it was not too bad then. The country was much more open as a legacy of Aboriginal burning’. Geoff Law agrees that the area south of Mount King William III would have been easier to traverse in 1822 because of Aboriginal burning, but he points out that the country around the northern reaches of the Gordon is terrible. He walked there in December 1987 and says that ‘it carved my legs to shreds . . .The upper Gordon breaks up into channels and you have these primeval-seeming streams choked with moss-covered logs. Even when you get down to the rivers you don’t get any sense of space; it can still be very claustrophobic. East of the river is a cutting-grass sort of scrub’.

  I quote this because I don’t think there is anything in either of the detailed accounts by Pearce that corresponds chronologically with the type of country on the east–south-eastern route. This is not to say that I think those who favour this route are wrong. In a situation like this you can never be certain. The best argument for this route is that the natural lay of the land would funnel the escape party in this direction. Viewed from the Deception Range, this way would have seemed fairly open. I would just say that, following Dan Sprod and others, it is my interpretation of the Pearce texts that the party actually took the east–north-easterly route.

  If this is correct, what happened was that they descended from the Deception Range onto Lightning Plains. They then turned north-east and somehow continued on for four more days across the northern section of these plains, which was largely buttongrass and swamp, turned east–north-east, crossed a low range with a 600-metre (1950-foot) ridge and entered more dense
forest until they came to the Loddon Plains, another area of buttongrass swamp where, Pearce says, they stopped for the night. Terry Reid says that a virgin buttongrass plain is ‘quite reasonable to cross’, but it is often bordered by bauera, horizontal, tea-tree and cutting grass. Geoff Law is not so sanguine about buttongrass. He says that ‘it looks easy, but the clumps grow up to one metre tall and then in between them you get scrubby tea-tree and other heath-type species . . . It can be frustratingly slow. You think you’ll walk across in one hour and it takes two. It is demoralising’.

  As they came to the Loddon Plains they were again suffering from severe hunger, having eaten all that was left of Dalton’s flesh. The problem with human flesh, especially that of men, is that, while rich in protein, it lacks the carbohydrates needed for energy. Desperation in the face of starvation meant that someone else would have to be killed.

  The two main narratives give different accounts of what happened next. The Knopwood narrative says that they sat down famished and exhausted, and they ‘began to intimate to each other that it would be much better for one to be sacrificed as food for the rest’ – a kind of ‘custom of the sea’ discussion. They agreed that someone would have to die and a ‘horrid ceremony’ began. They cast lots to see who it would be and the lot fell to Thomas Bodenham, who did not beg for mercy or ask to be spared. ‘The only request he had to make was that they would allow him a few minutes to implore pardon of his offended Maker for past offences’ before they killed him. They gave him a half hour for prayer. Then Greenhill again volunteered to be the executioner; he said that he had been in a similar situation before – presumably at sea. He and Travers then politely asked Pearce and Mather to go off some distance to gather wood to light the fire. It was only when the pair were out of sight that Greenhill killed Bodenham with a blow to the head and then, assisted by Travers, cut up the body.