by Tim Flannery
Dec. 9—The natives came to our camp at break of day, and Bilge introduced several old warriors of a different tribe, adding always the number of piccaninnies that each of them had; they appeared very particular about the latter, and one of the gentlemen corrected Bilge very seriously when he mentioned only two instead of three. Bilge had promised to go with us to Balanda but, having probably talked the matter over during the night with his wife, he changed his intentions; but invited us in the most urgent manner to stay a day at their camp. Although no place could be found more favourable for feed and water, and a day’s rest would have proved very beneficial to our cattle, yet our meat bags, on which we now solely depended, were so much reduced that every day of travelling was of the greatest importance; as the natives told us that four days would bring us to the peninsula, and two more to Balanda.
We crossed the plain to the westward, in order to avoid the low rocks and rocky walls which bounded this fine country to the north and east. After about three miles, however, we turned to the northward, and travelled with ease through an open undulating forest, interrupted by some tea-tree hollows. Just before entering the forest, Brown observed the track of a buffalo on the rich grassy inlets between the rocks…
Dec. 10—We travelled about seven miles to the northward, but kept for the first three miles in a NNW direction from our camp, when we came to a small plain with a mangrove creek going to the westward; scarcely two miles farther, we crossed a drooping tea-tree swamp, of which a pandanus creek formed the outlet; and, two miles farther still, a large plain opened upon us in which we saw a great number of natives occupied in burning the grass, and digging for roots. All the country intervening between the creeks and the plain was undulating stringybark forest.
I left my companions in the shady belt of drooping tea-trees, and rode with Charley towards the natives in order to obtain information. They were, however, only women and children, and they withdrew at my approach, although I had dismounted and left my horse far behind with Charley. They had, however, allowed me to come near enough to make them understand my incessant calls for obeit, water, adding occasionally, ‘Balanda; very good; no good.’ When they had disappeared in the forest, Charley came with the horse, and we reconnoitred along the boundaries of the plain to find water but, not succeeding, we returned; and, when opposite to the place where I had left my companions, I cooeed for them to come over with me.
My cooee was answered by natives within the forest, and shortly afterwards four men came running out of it, and approached us most familiarly. They spoke English tolerably, knew the pipe, tobacco, bread, rice, ponies, guns etc., and guided us to a fine lagoon which I named, after the leading man of their tribe, Nyuall’s Lagoon. Two of them promised to pilot us to Balanda and to rambal, which meant houses. They were very confiding, and women and children entered for the first time freely into our camp.
They examined everything, but made not the slightest attempt to rob us even of a trifle. When the women returned at night, they did not bring allamurr or, as it was here called, murnatt, but plenty of imberbi, the root of convolvulus, which grow abundantly in the plain. They gave us a very seasonable supply of it, but would not taste our dried beef, which they turned, broke, smelled, and then with a feeling of pity and disgust returned to us. Nyuall gave an amusing account of our state: ‘You no bread, no flour, no rice, no backi—you no good! Balanda plenty bread, plenty flour, plenty rice, plenty backi! Balanda very good!’
He, Gnarrangan and Carbaret promised to go with us; and the first intended to take his wife with him. They imitated with surprising accuracy the noises of the various domesticated animals they had seen at the settlement; and it was amusing to hear the crowing of the cock, the cackling of the hens, the quacking of ducks, grunting of pigs, mewing of the cat etc, evident proofs that these natives had been in Victoria.
A heavy thunderstorm passed over at six o’clock and the natives either crowded into my tent, or covered their backs with sheets of tea-tree bark, turning them to the storm, like a herd of horses or cattle surprised by a heavy shower in the middle of a plain. Imaru lay close to me during the night and, in order to keep entire possession of my blanket, I had to allow him a tarpaulin.
Dec. 11—We travelled about seven miles NNW over an immense plain, with forest land and rising ground to the eastward, in which direction four prominent hills were seen, one of which had the abrupt peak form of Biroa in Moreton Bay. The plain appeared to be unbounded to the westward. When we approached the forest, several tracks of buffaloes were seen; and, upon the natives conducting us along a small creek which came into the plain from the NNE, we found a well-beaten path and several places where these animals were accustomed to camp. We encamped at a good-sized waterhole in the bed of this creek, the water of which was covered with a green scum.
As the dung and tracks of the buffaloes were fresh, Charley went to track them, whilst Brown tried to shoot some ibises, which had been at the water and were now perched on a tree about 300 yards off. At the discharge of the gun a buffalo started out of a thicket, but did not seem inclined to go far. Brown returned, loaded his gun with ball, went after the buffalo and wounded him in the shoulder. When Charley came back to the camp, he, Brown and Mr Roper pursued the buffalo on horseback and, after a long run, and some charges, succeeded in killing it. It was a young bull, about three years old, and in most excellent condition. This was a great, a most fortunate event for us; for our meat bags were almost empty and, as we did not wish to kill Redmond, our good companion, we had the prospect of some days of starvation before us.
We could now share freely with our black friends, and they had not the slightest objection to eat the fresh meat, after baking it in their usual manner. They called the buffalo anaborro, and stated that the country before us was full of them. These buffaloes are the offspring of the stock which had either strayed from the settlement at Raffles Bay, or had been left behind when the establishment was broken up. They were originally introduced from the Malay islands. I was struck with the remarkable thickness of their skin (almost an inch) and with the solidity of their bones, which contained little marrow; but that little was extremely savoury.
We had a heavy thunderstorm at ten o’clock at night from the southward.
Dec. 12—Part of the meat was cut up and dried, and part of it was roasted to take with us; a great part of it was given to the natives who were baking and eating the whole day; and when they could eat no more meat, they went into the plains to collect imberbi and murnatt to add the necessary quantum of vegetable matter to their diet. The sultry weather, however, caused a great part of the meat to become tainted and maggoty. Our friend Nyuall became ill, and complained of a violent headache, which he tried to cure by tying a string tightly round his head.
CHARLES STURT
At Noon I Took a Thermometer, 1845
In 1844, aged forty-nine and partially blind from earlier expeditionary work, Charles Sturt left his beloved wife Charlotte and started on a third and final expedition—this time aimed straight at the heart of the continent. There, he believed he would find ‘a large body of inland waters’, so he equipped the expedition with a boat for sailing on this mythical sea. Instead, he discovered a sea of seemingly endless sand dunes—the Simpson Desert—and temperatures so extreme they shrivelled his supplies, prostrated his horses and burst his thermometer.
Sturt was possessed by an almost manic obsession. Scurvy was turning his men’s skin black, and large pieces of spongy flesh hung from the roofs of their mouths. They were rotting where they stood, but still Sturt, now all but blind, pushed on. He wrote that he preferred death to defeat by this terrible land.
Sturt survived. At midnight on 19 January 1846, ten days in advance of the rest of the party, the defeated and skeletal explorer rode up to his isolated seaside house in Adelaide and knocked on the door. Charlotte, answering the unexpected call, had all but given him up for dead.
This account begins with Sturt’s thoughts about the grand quest he w
as to undertake. We then join him in November 1845 retracing his steps towards where Innamincka is today.
To that man who is really earnest in the performance of his duty to the last, and who has set his heart on the accomplishment of a great object, the attainment of which would place his name high up in the roll of fame; to him who had well nigh reached the topmost step of the ladder, and whose hand had all but grasped the pinnacle, the necessity must be great, and the struggle of feeling severe, that forces him to bear back, and abandon his task.
Let any man lay the map of Australia before him, and regard the blank upon its surface, and then let me ask him if it would not be an honourable achievement to be the first to place foot in its centre.
Men of undoubted perseverance and energy in vain had tried to work their way to that distant and shrouded spot. A veil hung over Central Australia that could neither be pierced or raised. Girt round about by deserts, it almost appeared as if nature had intentionally closed it upon civilised man, that she might have one domain on the earth’s wide field over which the savage might roam in freedom.
I had traced down almost every inland river of the continent, and had followed their courses for hundreds of miles, but they had not led me to its central regions. I had run the Castlereagh, the Macquarie, the Lachlan, the Murrumbidgee, the Hume, the Darling and the Murray down to their respective terminations, but beyond them I had not passed—yet—I looked upon Central Australia as a legitimate field, to explore which no man had a greater claim than myself, and the first wish of my heart was to close my services in the cause of Geography by dispelling the mists that hung over it…
The drought had now continued so long, and the heat been so severe, that I apprehended we might be obliged to remain another summer in these fearful solitudes. The weather was terrifically hot, and appeared to have set in unusually early.
Under such circumstances, and with so many causes to render my mind anxious, the reader will believe I did not sleep much. The men were as restless as myself, so that we commenced our journey before the sun had risen on the morning of the 10th of November, to give the horses time to take their journey leisurely. Slowly we retraced our steps, nor did I stop for a moment until we had got to within five miles of our destination, at which distance we saw a single native running after us and, taking it into my head that he might be a messenger from Mr Browne, I pulled up to wait for him; but curiosity alone had induced him to come forward.† When he got to within a hundred yards, he stopped and approached no nearer. This little delay made it after sunset before we reached the upper pool (not the one Mr Browne and I had discovered), and were relieved from present anxiety by finding a thick puddle still remaining in it, so that I halted for the night. Slommy, Bawley and the colt had hard work to keep up with the other horses, and it really grieved me to see them so reduced. My own horse was even now beginning to give way, but I had carried a great load upon him.
As we approached the water, three ducks flew up and went off down the creek southwards, so I was cheered all night by the hope that water still remained at the lower pool, and that we should be in time to benefit by it. On the 11th, therefore, early we pushed on, as I intended to stop and breakfast at that place before I started for the depot.
We had scarcely got there, however, when the wind, which had been blowing all the morning hot from the NE, increased to a heavy gale, and I shall never forget its withering effect. I sought shelter behind a large gum tree, but the blasts of heat were so terrific that I wondered the very grass did not take fire. This really was nothing ideal: everything, both animate and inanimate, gave way before it; the horses stood with their backs to the wind, and their noses to the ground, without the muscular strength to raise their heads; the birds were mute, and the leaves of the trees, under which we were sitting, fell like a snow shower around us.
At noon I took a thermometer, graduated to 127°, out of my box, and observed that the mercury was up to 125°. Thinking that it had been unduly influenced, I put it in the fork of a tree close to me, sheltered alike from the wind and the sun. In this position I went to examine it about an hour afterwards, when I found that the mercury had risen to the top of the instrument, and that its further expansion had burst the bulb, a circumstance that I believe no traveller has ever before had to record. I cannot find language to convey to the reader’s mind an idea of the intense and oppressive nature of the heat that prevailed. We had reached our destination, however, before the worst of the hot wind set in; but all the water that now remained in the once broad and capacious pool to which I have had such frequent occasion to call the attention of the reader was a shining patch of mud nearly in the centre. We were obliged to dig a trench for the water to filter into during the night, and by this means obtained a scanty supply for our horses and ourselves.
About sunset the wind shifted to the west, a cloud passed over us and we had heavy thunder; but a few drops of rain only fell. They partially cooled the temperature, and the night was less oppressive than the day had been. We had now a journey of eighty-six miles before us: to its results I looked with great anxiety and doubt. I took every precaution to fortify the horses, and again reduced the loads, keeping barely a supply of flour for a day or two. Before dawn we were up, and drained the last drop of water, if so it could be called, out of the little trench we had made and, reserving a gallon for the first horse that should fall, divided the residue among them.
Just as the morning was breaking, we left the creek and travelled for thirty-six miles. I then halted until the moon should rise, and was glad to see that the horses stood it well. At seven we resumed the journey, and got on tolerably well until midnight, when poor Bawley, my favourite horse, fell; but we got him up again and, abandoning his saddle, proceeded onwards. At a mile, however, he again fell, when I stopped, and the water revived him. I now hoped he would struggle on, but in about an hour he again fell. I was exceedingly fond of this poor animal, and intended to have purchased him at the sale of the remnants of the expedition, as a present to my wife. We sat down and lit a fire by him, but he seemed fairly worn out.
I then determined to ride on to the depot and, if Mr Browne should still be there, to send a dray with water to the relief of the men. I told them, therefore, to come slowly on, and with Mr Stuart pushed for the camp. We reached the plain just as the sun was descending, without having dismounted from our horses for more than fifteen hours and, as we rode down the embankment into it, looked around for the cattle, but none were to be seen. We looked towards the little sandy mound on which the tents had stood, but no white object there met our eye; we rode slowly up to the stockade, and found it silent and deserted.
I was quite sure that Mr Browne had had urgent reasons for retiring. I had indeed anticipated the measure: I hardly hoped to find him at the fort, and had given him instructions on the subject of his removal, yet a sickening feeling came over me when I saw that he was really gone; not on my own account for, with the bitter feelings of disappointment with which I was returning home, I could calmly have laid my head on that desert, never to raise it again. The feeling was natural, and had no mixture whatever of reproach towards my excellent companion.
We dismounted and led our horses down to water before I went to the tree under which I had directed Mr Browne to deposit a letter for me. A good deal of water still remained in the channel, but nevertheless a large pit had been dug in it as I had desired. I did not drink, nor did Mr Stuart—the surface of the water was quite green, and the water itself was of a red colour, but I believe we were both thinking of anything but ourselves at that moment.† As soon as we had unsaddled the horses, we went to the tree and dug up the bottle into which, as agreed upon, Mr Browne had put a letter; informing me that he had been most reluctantly obliged to retreat; the water at the depot having turned putrid, and seriously disagreed with the men; he said that he should fall back on the old depot along the same line on which we had advanced, and expressed his fears that the water in Strzelecki’s Creek would have dried
, on the permanence of which he knew our safety depended.
Under present circumstances the fate of poor Bawley, if not of more of our horses, was sealed. Mr Stuart and I sat down by the stockade, and as night closed in lit a fire to guide Morgan and Mack on their approach to the plain. They came up about 2 p.m., having left Bawley on a little stony plain, and the colt on the sand ridges nearer to us, and in the confusion and darkness had left all the provisions behind; it therefore became necessary to send for some, as we had not had anything for many hours. The horses Morgan and Mack had ridden were too knocked up for further work, but I sent the latter on my own horse with a leather bottle that had been left behind by the party, full of water for poor Bawley, if he should still find him alive. Mack returned late in the afternoon, having passed the colt on his way to the depot, towards which he dragged himself with difficulty, but Bawley was beyond recovery; he gave the poor animal the water, however, for he was a humane man, and then left him to die.
We had remained during the day under a scorching heat, but could hardly venture to drink the water of the creek without first purifying it by boiling, and as we had no vessel until Mack should come up we had to wait patiently for his arrival at 7 p.m. About nine we had a damper baked, and broke our fast for the first time for more than two days.
While sitting under a tree in the forenoon Mr Stuart had observed a crow pitch in the little garden we had made, but which never benefited us, since the sun burnt up every plant the moment it appeared above the ground. This bird scratched for a short time in one of the soft beds, and then flew away with something in his bill. On going to the spot Mr Stuart scraped up a piece of bacon and some suet, which the dogs of course had buried. These choice morsels were washed and cooked, and Mr Stuart brought me a small piece of bacon, certainly not larger than a dollar, which he assured me had been cut out of the centre and was perfectly clean. I had not tasted the bacon since February, nor did I now feel any desire to do so, but I ate it because I thought I really wanted it in the weak state in which I was.