Burke and Wills, and Lewis
and Clark
delivered
at the Chicago
Literary Club
April 10, 2006
Francis H. Straus II
In the mid-nineteenth century, one hundred years after Australia began
to be a prison colony for Great Britain, there were three cities that developed
on the southern and eastern shore; they all had good harbors: Sydney,
Melbourne, and Adelaide. Each wished to grow and become the leading
commercial center of the growing country. To succeed in this each had to
develop and maintain their harbor and organize exploratory expeditions which
would associate each of them with a large inland expanse of the continent. Sydney chose to explore
north up the east coast in the 1840's. In 1858 Gregory started from Brisbane, halfway up the east coast, exploring straight
west to Cooper Creek,
a fresh water area, then south across rocky desert to Mt. Hopeless,
then on south to Adelaide.
Mount Hopeless was named by trekkers from Adelaide
in 1840, as the furthest north they could reach coming from the south.
Gregory's exploration still left 1,300 kilometers of unknown country north of Cooper Creek,
extending to the body of water on the north shore of Australia,
the Gulf of Carpentaria.
Sailing ships
bringing news, goods and new colonists from Europe had
to sail half way around the world and far to the south to reach any of
these three potential commercial cities in Australia. Both Adelaide and Melbourne
conceived the idea that if they could explore north across the continent and
then could build a telegraph line across the mountains and desert expanse, news
would then be delivered much more easily and quickly from a northern port to
the southern city. This would allow that city to be one jump ahead
hearing the latest news; it could then sell such information to the other
cities. This would allow this information source to become the greatest
commercial center in Australia.
Adelaide was fortunate to have
attracted a small young Scotsman named John Stuart. Both his parents died
when he was twelve years old. He was a loner, and went through school
finishing as a civil engineer, then going off to Australia by himself. He
lived in a tent and tried sheep farming, surveying, and mapping land for new
settlers. In 1844 he joined the
exploratory party of Charles Sturt heading north of Adelaide toward Cooper
Creek. Little
Stuart showed great stamina and resourcefulness and ended up being appointed
the chief surveyor. Next, two wealthy Adelaide businessmen hired him to find
agricultural lands and they supported his many exploratory expeditions to the
north. Stuart did not believe in big expeditions with many wagons and
heavy loads of supplies. He moved
fast with a few horses, one or two other Europeans, and an aboriginal
guide.
In 1858 he traveled north through the Flinders
range and salt lakes reaching sheer rock
walls guarding the desert beyond. He continued on northward over these
walls with six horses, two companions, one month of food supplies, and a compass,
looking for freshwater. The indigenous
population kept saying water was five "sleeps" away. Many days
later in the bleak, barren, desolate land they came to a small fresh water
course, now called Chambers Creek. After rains and floods they went further
north into hot bleached stoney plains, called Coober pedy, the site of present
day black opal mines. Even now it is too hot to live on the surface and
miners must live underground. He continued further north, stopping short
of Alice Springs in the very middle of Australia. When Stuart got
back to the south coast, his friends said all that was left of him was his
voice as he was so thin. Yet he had accomplished a lot, keeping a good
journal and only using a compass to set his route. Once he returned he
began to plan his next northern trip.
In the summer of 1859
Adelaide tried
to interest Sydney and Melbourne in covering some of the cost of sending Mr.
Stuart north again to get all the way across the continent. Neither was
interested in helping Adelaide
set the path and gain the spoils. Then Adelaide
business interests offered a prize of two thousand pounds to anyone succeeding
in crossing the continent west of 143rd degree of east longitude, sufficiently
far west to be of benefit to Adelaide and not much help for either of the
two cities which were further east. The one thing this did was to awaken Melbourne's realization that Adelaide was well underway in the aim of
becoming the most important Australian city.
Melbourne
businessmen gathered to form the Royal Society of Victoria with a six thousand
pound fund to support exploration of central and northern Australia.
An exploration committee of seventeen members was appointed to choose an
expedition leader. No one on the committee had any exploration experience
and few had any scientific knowledge. No proven explorers were
available. Stuart was committed to Adelaide.
Leichhardt had disappeared inland eleven years
before. Sturt had returned to England.
Gregory had become surveyor-general of Queensland.
The committee advertised locally hoping to attract a well born individual who
had little connection with Adelaide or Sydney. Fifteen men
responded to the advertisement, only four with any experience in adventurous
travel, many being unrealistic dreamers or military men who thought the only
important thing was managing the people in the traveling group, not all the
other elements which would determine the success or failure of an
expedition. Within the exploration committee there was political
infighting, indecision and too much drinking. By April 1860 the Royal
Society of Victoria had no leader-designate, and no mapped out route. But
the trained camels coming from India
to help cross the dry desert were on their way to Melbourne. In June twenty camels, four
Indian Sepoy camel handlers and Mr. Landells, the purchaser and leader of the camels for the
expedition, came ashore and marched triumphantly through downtown Melbourne. The
committee realized that selection of an expedition leader was now urgent.
The short list of possible expedition
leaders included Robert O'Hara Burke, a former Austrian army officer who had
been police chief in several towns near Melbourne.
Burke was the second son of a Galway Irish landowning family. At twenty
years of age he became a cadet in the Seventh Hussars in the Austrian
army. He was promoted to be an officer and enjoyed youthful indulgences
when on leave- gambling, hunting, dancing and chasing women. At
twenty-seven he was on the brink of a successful career when he went absent
without leave because of extensive gambling debts. The Austrian army
allowed him to resign instead of facing a court marshal and prison. He
went back to Ireland,
working briefly for the county Kildare police and the Dublin police.
In 1853, aged thirty three, he immigrated to
Australia landing in Melbourne, and joined the nearby gold rush which he soon
gave up as too hard work. He went back to police work in nearby
towns. His frequent activity was to sit in his outdoor bathtub wearing
his police helmet over his unkempt black hair and beard, while filling out
police reports. Then he would jump out of the water, dress and take long
walks or chop wood for exercise. He really wanted to make an impression on
the world as had his younger brother who had shown heroic courage and bravery
in an early battle of the Crimean War. A rich Irish railroad
businessman befriended Burke thinking he personified masculine energy and was
convinced that he should apply for the position of exploration leader offered
by the Royal Society. Burke had no exploration experience, was not a
surveyor, or a scientist, and had a reputation of always losing his way and
getting to his journey's end hours late. The railroad man introduced
Burke to much of Melbourne's higher society and
Burke moved to Melbourne
in order to become a candidate for expedition leader. He was personable
but impulsive and headstrong without the persistence and eye for detail found
in successful explorers.
Tempsky, the other main
candidate, had fought blacks, whites, and redskins in North American. He
started a strenuous exercise program and studied astronomical formulas while
Burke was sitting in the Melbourne Club bar making friends or gambling which
raised good sized debts but made more friends. The exploration
committee of the Royal Society in June of 1860 chose Burke as the expedition
leader.
Now in July 1860 many bush
men, who claimed they could work with minimal food and deal effectively with
the most difficult aborigines, applied to join the expedition. Little
attention was paid to these abilities. Burke ignored them and chose
friends from Ireland and Melbourne, none of whom
were knowledgeable explorers.
The next question was
what route to follow and the Royal Society was quite vague in its directions.
It suggested a route north to Cooper
Creek where a depot of
stores and provisions was to be left. The expedition was then to continue
north to the Gulf of Carpentaria staying east of Stuart's track north from Adelaide and west of the eastern lands explored by Gregory
from Brisbane
in 1855-56. The Melbourne
press was very disheartened by the selection of Burke, by the lack of
experienced participants, and by the vague expedition route. There
were predictions of disaster with loss of lives.
The Melbourne
expedition was to set out for the north on August 20th, 1860, already several
months late which meant wasting the best weather. It began in a crowded
park with camels, horses, and wagons everywhere. Horses do not like
camels and tend to act up and run away when camels come into view or their
aroma comes to them. The park was crowded with fifteen thousand Melbourne citizen
spectators so that the expedition members could not pack and organize
efficiently. The third in command was
William Wills, a twenty six year old scientist who really wanted to record
route, animals, and plants and geology encountered along the way. He was
born in Devon, England, was quiet and serious,
assisted his physician father and then turned to mathematics and physics in
school. The lure of increased income caused the family to immigrate to Australia where
Wills worked as a shepherd and fell in love with the bush. Later he
became a surveyor and self taught scientist. He then became assistant
at the new Melbourne Observatory. He bought a sextant, chronometer,
barometer, thermometers, anemometer, telescope, notebooks, specimen jars, and
preserving fluids and had the scientific instruments packed in custom built
mahogany boxes. All this and the supplies required horse drawn wagons,
horses, and camels to carry heavy loads. Burke hired two American covered
wagons to carry some of the excess load. The expedition left the park
four hours late and only reached the edge of town by the end of the first
day. Members of the expedition all wore large brimmed hats known as
cabbage tree hats.
The copious baggage severely displeased
Landells, second in command and the camel
director. He was an Englishman who had procured the twenty trained camels
and six more circus camels which were not trained to be used as pack
animals. He was most knowledgeable about caring for and maintaining the
camels, as well as communicating with the Indian Sepoys.
He also brought King, a medically discharged English soldier, from India. Landells was in charge of the camels as well as setting up
the camps and organizing the next day's trek. Landells
asked for and received six hundred pounds yearly salary, 100 pounds more than leader Burke. He insisted on packing
nearly three hundred liters of rum to use for medicinal purposes in treating
the camels.
Besides
Burke, Wills and Landells, there were sixteen
others. King was the ex-British Army soldier who came as a camel handler,
four Sepoys (one Hindu, two Muslims, and a
Parsee). An American rogue who came through the California gold rush and the Australian gold
rush joined the expedition as foreman in charge of camps and had a record of
shady arrangements in previous positions. Then there was Herman Beckler, the doctor and botanical collector, and Ludwig
Becker, the artist, asked to record the expedition visually with paintings and
drawings. Ludwig was older than all the others, being in his early
fifties. All the expedition members with supervisory or scientific
recording activities were urged and later ordered to be laborers, which meant
packing, unpacking and leading camels with minimal riding and no time except
the middle of the night to complete their observational or recording
functions. These orders from Burke were to speed the expedition
northward.
The weather was terrible with constant rain
and frequent cold spells as it was still the end of winter. The camels traveled
poorly in muddy wet surroundings and the wagons constantly sank deep in the mud
embedding their axles. The men had to unload the vehicle and use several
teams of horses and branches under the wheels to pull the wagon out. The
men and their tents and blankets were constantly wet. Progress was slow
and miserable. Burke was always riding out ahead on his horse thinking
how he could move the expedition faster as each day cost so much with little
advancement. Soon the Hindu Sepoy who could not
eat salt beef went back to Melbourne.
Burke had fired three expedition members. Four recruits had now left and
three general laborers were hired on a casual basis as they went along.
Basically the expedition had too many supplies and not enough
transport. It took hours each night to unpack and feed the animals
and themselves, before bed or work on recording what had been seen or
happened.
Settlements began to
thin out and the trail passed through flat grass land with lines of
trees. This was the "bush" Finally
sixteen days after starting they reached the Murray River at Swan Hill, a town
180 miles north of Melbourne.
It was green with big trees. Here Burke received a message from the
expedition committee to abandon his wagons so he could move faster and less
expensively. The committee did not comprehend the weight and volume of
the supplies. Burke called his officers together, proposed to them that
they retain the wagons until they reached the Darling
River at Menindee where they would
establish a depot. This was a new idea, since the original direction from
the committee was to form the depot at Cooper Creek
which was six hundred kilometers beyond Menindee.
Leaving Swan Hill the expedition was down to fourteen.
Four new men were hired. One was Bowman who had had expedition experience
with Gregory in northern Australia.
A few days later Bowman left the expedition, noting Burke's poor leadership
compared with that of Gregory, his previous expedition leader. Three days
north after much more rain, stuck wagons and exhausted horses, Burke held a
quick public auction in Balranald, New South
Wales. After carrying this equipment all this way he sold blacksmith
tools, firearms, the camel stretcher, and all the lime juice supply brought to
prevent scurvy. Burke also dismissed Ferguson, the American who was not getting
along with anyone and two other laborers. Local settlers were unimpressed
that the expedition did not set up their night camp during daylight so they
could see where animal grazing could occur and where night floods would not
wash them away. At each camp site the expedition
left many individual tools like shovels and axes.
Now Burke decided to leave the known track and cut
across Mallee Scrub Wasteland where shrubs and wet
sand immensely slowed the wagons' progress while Burke rode on ahead with Wills. It often took three round trips for the
laboring men to get all the horses and wagons over a stretch of this difficult
scrub land.
One week north of Balranald
Burke dismantled what was left of the scientific portion of the
expedition. The scientists were directed always to walk, never ride, work
like laborers and to reduce their packs to fifteen kilos, essentially just
clothes and no instruments. Each camel would be required to carry an
extra 180 kilos. Many camels now had to carry two 200 pound bags of sugar
or flour, one on each side. The men had to lift the 400 pounds up onto
the camel which was backbreaking effort. Becker, the artist, described
getting up at 5 a.m., having tea, biscuit, and a little cold mutton and then
catching, harnessing, and packing the animals. Their days were walking
twenty four miles over sand hills through the heat of the day with no
stops. Landells said that if the camels stopped
and set down they would not get up again that day. Burke hoped that
Becker, the oldest in the group, would not be able to maintain the stressful
progress required and drop out.
Another element of discooperation developed at this time. Burke became
more and more disenchanted with the camels because they ran away at night, were
hard to load and slower than the horses. On the other hand Landells felt his camels were being over loaded and worn
out even before they reached the desert where the camels would be most able to
carry on.
The expedition reached Bilbarka
on the Darling River south of Menindee. Here a steamer was headed north and Burke
saw his chance to ditch the wagons and ordered eight tons of supplies aboard
the steamer. Burke got into a big argument with Landells
who intended to bring his 300 liters of rum needed to encourage the camels or
maybe he wanted the rum as alcohol to toughen the camels' feet when they came
to rocky desert. In any case the rum was left behind as Burke
ordered. Landells described Burke as always
carrying loaded firearms and was worried that in a dangerous passion would use
the firearms against members of the expedition.
The camels and horses
had to walk the 250 kilometers up to Menindee.
At Menindee Berke ordered
that the camels swim across the Darling, against Landells
direction that they be ferried across. Upset by
this contradiction of his authority Landells resigned
and went back south. Now twelve of the original men had resigned
and only eight hires had been brought in as replacements. The deputy
leader Landells was the most prominent loss.
Wills was promoted to deputy leader as well as surveyor. The expedition
had come only 600 kilometers in 56 days which in fact was a ten day horseback
ride and they were still in grazing lands with occasional towns, not yet in the
true mountainous desert. From this point onward for 2200 kilometers there
would be no tracks or towns, only indigenous people. The next point to
aim for was the banks of Cooper
Creek, 600 kilometers ahead.
It was suggested that
the cool season being over a three month rest in Menindee
would be sensible but Burke felt postponement would be admission of
defeat. He did realize he must reduce the expedition size. This
might be trying to get closer to Stuart's successful expedition size, or it may
have been an original secret plan coming from the Royal Society to speed up the
exploration. Burke chose the "best" elements, Wills as deputy
and surveyor, King as camel organizer, Grey an ex-sailor, two other
Europeans and one Sepoy along with some of the
remaining camels and horses. That would leave the doctor, the artist and
the rest of the of the men, with 10 camels and 7
horses in Menindee. While still in Menindee a news report had come from Adelaide that said Stuart had just returned
there and described his getting to less than 650 kilometers of the north
coast. Burke was also worried about being recalled, so now thinking of
this and his two month lead over Stuart, he ordered the expedition north toward
Cooper Creek.
Burke's smaller group
was more harmonious, including a newly hired sheep station bush man, Wright, with two aboriginal guides. The track toward Cooper Creek
had periodic water available and was in an area of aboriginal hunters who moved
from water source to water source following game. It had become clear
that Burke believed the aborigines to be inferior people that were not
intelligent, or able to help him to exist in
these unusual surroundings, so he never sought their help.
One third of the way to Cooper Creek
at Torowoto Swamp Burke promoted Wright, the
sheepherder, to third in command and sent him back to Menindee
to bring up more dried meat and the remainder of the men, animals and stores
left there. There was, however, no understood timetable for this
retrieval of supplies.
Further on the expedition came to desert with clay beds
and rock strewn patches. On the horizon a greenish appearance came into
view as they approached Cooper
Creek. This was an
area of interlacing fresh water channels and small lakes situated in sandy
dunes with lush green foliage, huge red gum trees and grass carpeting the red
earth. In drought times it can be reduced to a few mud holes and in flood
times the water way became a massive lake. Now it was well watered with
fish, many birds, frogs, turtles, water rats, wallabies,and kangaroos. Several tribes of aborigines
lived here. They lived in small groups as hunter gatherers and only congregated
on ceremonial occasions.
Burke's expedition followed a stream until it opened up
into a small lake with surrounding trees, grass and game where they set up
their camp. The aborigines when approaching a water source knew that a
family considered the water source their home and waited to be invited in to such
a valuable site. The explorers did not wait for invitations but just took over
the site and ignored the gesticulating aborigines at the periphery. The
aborigines were trying to use sign language which was usual for them when there
was a lack of communication between tribes. The native people did gather
and give fish and greens to the expedition in hopes of receiving knives and
axes in return. They had no metal tools. Both Burke and Wills were
cruel, throwing a few trinkets to them.
The expedition members reported in their journals that the aborigines were
mean-spirited and contemptible people from whom nothing worthwhile could be
obtained or learned.
This was now Australian summer and the day
temperature was 90 to 105 degrees in the shade and up to 140 degrees in the
sun. Burke and Wills took brief treks north looking for a path and
sources of water but found none. A swarm of rats moved into their camp,
eating everything that was not hung from tree branches. The expedition moved up
the water way to a large Coolibah tree where they set
up camp 65, on Cooper
Creek. Here they
continued to wait for Wright to rejoin them from Menindee
with supplies and transport animals. Unfortunately Wright never received
Exploration Committee approval of his promotion to third in command and the
horses and camels left in Menindee were in such bad
shape they could not make the 600 kilometer trip up to Cooper Creek.
Several bullocks were slaughtered and their meat dried, but it was difficult to
keep the flies and maggots from consuming the drying beef. For these
reasons Wright did not start up toward Cooper Creek
for many months.
In mid-December, a
month after arriving at Cooper Creek, Burke was restless and decided to move
north without waiting any longer for Wright and the depot in Menindee. He further diminished his exploration crew
to himself, Wills as surveyor, the soldier King and sailor Gray. Burke
then promoted the German laborer Brahe to be in
charge of the remaining four men which included a
blacksmith, the last Indian camel handler, and one laborer who had lost three
camels by releasing them without hobbles when they seemed to be so tired, but
right after the release the camels livened up and trotted away. The group
slaughtered two horses for dried meat. Brahe
was to welcome Wright whom they thought would get to Cooper Creek
any day. Burke wanted Brahe to wait three
months or until supplies were running low before heading back to Menindee. The four men going north took hardly enough
food to last them for ninety days without any regard for the need for extra
nourishment towards the end when they would be weaker and debilitated.
Besides food they took some firearms, a little spare clothing, and a few
scientific instruments, bed rolls and no tents. Of the twelve camels and
the thirteen horses left on the Cooper, Burke took six camels and one horse
north.
The
first week of travel north was along creeks and water ways getting to the edge
of the desert. Then they were in sand dunes with greenery in the valleys where
the ground was boggy. Their days were similar: up at dawn, break
camp, pack, catch and load the animals, start walking
using the cooler morning. Then stop for breakfast in midmorning.
Continue on until dusk. Unpack, feed the animals,
cook dinner, and go to sleep. Wills stayed up sighting stars and working
out his locations using dead reckoning and the noon sextant reading. They
averaged about 24 kilometers progress each day. Good grazing patches were
available for the hobbled camels and horse at each camp site.
Four days north of Cooper Creek they came to a group of
milky orange fresh water lakes, Coongie Lakes,
which is a fertile area surrounded by miles of sand. Fish were excellent
additions to their diet. The native people did help to show them water
holes, but were treated with indifference or hostility as the expedition wished
no interference in their progress.
Nine days north of Cooper Creek
they reached Greys Creek which was also a beautiful
oasis in the desert, where they celebrated Christmas. Each day they
traveled 10 to 12 hours through dry clay, lightly timbered plains, boggy plains
or monotonous red sand dunes. Patches of hot rocky areas were only rare
regions along their course. The camels could pick their way among the
rocks while the men stumbled along with shortened strides. The men
carried three or four liters of water to use during the hot day march but
probably were losing fifteen liters in perspiration and excretions. This
meant the digestive system closed down its circulation preventing them from
gaining the most from the limited food they were eating. At the evening
camp they could drink more and catch up from their dehydration but digestion
was slower to recover. The camels could withstand the heat and
dehydration much better but were accustomed to breaking up six days of long
march with one to two days of rest and eating, which this expedition did not
give them, so they steadily became weaker and thinner.
The trek continued with dry plains
and scattered scrub vegetation until they reached the Selwyn Mountain
range where the ground became very rocky with a labyrinth of gorges and steep
slate ridges. It took most of a week to cross them and reach the northern
side. A group of hostile aborigines was about to attack the expedition in
the mountains until they saw the giant roaring "supernatural beasts",
the camels, and withdrew to observe.
North of the Selwyn Mountains
the expedition got into the northern watershed and followed river systems
straight north towards the Gulf of Carpentaria.
When 200 kilometers from the ocean the expedition crossed
Gregory's previous track across northern Australia. Burke had
now used up half of his ninety day food allotment which was being consumed at a
faster rate than planned. Burke still chose to continue northward to the
Gulf.
The dry heat was
behind them and the steamy tropics lay ahead. The landscape was waving
yellow grasses beneath gray threatening skies with numerous electrical storms
signaling the beginning of the rainy season.
On the Flinders
River they saw turtles and crocodiles. There were now five
camels and the horse. Travel down the Flinders River
got wetter and wetter. The camels, with their big feet having to be
lifted up out of the boggy soil with each step, finally gave up and would go no
further. This damp muddy site became camp 119, which was the northernmost camp
of the expedition. They were on an estuary which showed a little tidal rise and
fall and the ocean must have been quite close. Burke and Wills took the
horse and went looking for the ocean, leaving Gray and King with the
camels.
After wet travel through quicksand and bog as
well as forest Burke and Wills came to an aboriginal track and an abandoned
aboriginal camp site. Further on they came to a large marsh which was
much too difficult to cross, so they turned back to Camp 119. They had not seen
the ocean but had gotten very close to it, being blocked by swamp and mangrove
thickets.
At camp the hot humid monsoon
atmosphere with extensive mosquitoes made life miserable. There was only
one quarter of their food reserve remaining and they had the whole way back to Cooper Creek
to survive on it, approximately 1600 kilometers. They halved their daily
food ration and started back on February 13, 1861, after lessening the load by
leaving instruments and books.
The monsoons continued, making headway
in the wet ground very difficult, some days achieving only a few
kilometers. They walked whenever they could between the rain
storms. Burke divided the daily rations giving each their share.
Eighteen days south they came upon a large eight foot python which they cooked
and ate. Subsequently Burke and Gray got severe dysentery. Burke
recovered but Gray started a long decline. Their route was following
their camp sites backward. Coming to the Selwyn Mountains
they found an easier gap back over them. Now on March 15th the three
months since leaving Cooper
Creek was up and they
were still eleven hundred kilometers north of the Creek. They reduced
rations even further. The days dragged past and the names they gave their
camps are illustrative: Humid Camp, Muddy Camp, and Mosquito Camp.
Gray was caught stealing and eating a thin broth of flour and water without
permission. This selfish act by one of the starving four men made the
others watch him very closely.
Much further south, and a month later, Billy
the horse finally gave out with his legs buckling under him. He was shot
and made into stew plus dried meat. Despite this source of protein all
the men were suffering from malnutrition and Vitamin B deficiency leading to
early signs of beriberi with leg weakness. Sailor Gray was much the worst of
the four. When they were 150 kilometers north of Cooper
Creek at Coongie Lakes, Gray became semi comatose and was
strapped on a camel's back. Several days later he died and was
buried. It took all day to dig a shallow pit grave in the hard
dirt. The three remaining men were now too weak to walk and rode the two
strongest camels on to Cooper
Creek and Camp 65.
There was no one there, only a sign carved into the big Coolibah
tree saying "dig under" and the date April 21, 1861. Brahe and his men had left that morning to return to Menindee. After digging up the buried container the
three men found the few stores that Brahe had buried
and sat down to a wonderfully needed meal of porridge
with sugar and tea.
Next morning the three men
realized that in their depleted condition they could not catch Brahe even though he was only one day ahead, and Burke
devised an alternate plan to follow Cooper
Creek southwest to Mount Hopeless
and on south to Adelaide as Gregory had done in
1858 coming from Brisbane.
So they put their journals and letters in the container and reburied it under
the big tree and left, but unfortunately left little above ground evidence of
having gotten back to camp 65. Wills tried to convince Burke to follow Brahe south on the known trail but did not succeed so the
three went southwest on an unknown track. This is one
example of sensible advice from Wills not being accepted by Burke who was not
willing to listen to other members of the expedition, nor did Wills have a
personality strong enough to be insistent.
At this time three
parts of the expedition were within 150 kilometers of each other.
Burke, Wills and King were leaving camp 65 but on the unknown track, not
retracing their steps south. Brahe was two days
south headed for Menindee, and Wright's party,
including a very sick Becker and Dr. Beckler, was
halfway up from Menindee with replenishment supplies
and animals, but was caught in the desert in a severe drought where most water
holes were only mud or completely dried up.
Wright camped at "Rat Point", a
site over run with hungry rodents and several members of his group were
seriously ill. Becker, the artist, died
here. The aborigines found them and tried to help but were shooed away
when they also tried to steal dishes, pots and knives. A dispute
developed between the dehydrated sick Europeans and the aborigines leading to a
one-sided gun fight where the aboriginal leader who had tried to be diplomatic
was killed.
The native people pulled back and Wright continued
north. Many men had severe dysentery, probably from drinking water from
nearly dried up water holes. Finally they got to Bulloo Lake where Brahe
coming south joined them. Not only was the dysentery bad, but now scurvy
and beriberi were also serious problems. A sensible plan would be to
return as fast as possible to Menindee on the Darling
River but Brahe believed that he needed to be sure
Burke had not come back to Camp 65 at Cooper Creek so he and Wright, traveling
on the best horses, went back the 150 kilometers to Camp 65 and the Coolibah tree. It seemed exactly as Brahe had left it seventeen days before with the same sign
cut into the tree, and the earth apparently not disturbed over the buried
container, so after a few minutes they rode back south to catch up with the group
heading to the Darling River. They had
not seen that the rake had been moved, a broken bottle had been added to a
spike on the stockade fence,and
a circle of leather cut out of the stockade door.
The Burke-Wills-King group was only 30
kilometers southwest finding their trek to Mount Hopeless
difficult. The last two of their tired emaciated camels had now died so
they had to hand carry everything. They
eventually got 65 kilometers southwest when the branch of the creek they were
following dried up. They had to turn back. They were living on
pounded Nardoo seeds, a native plant which was rich
in starch and used as flour. They ate the Nardoo
paste raw while the aborigines always pounded it with water and cooked the
paste over an open fire which made it more digestible. This was something
they could have learned from the aborigines if they had been willing to learn
from the native people. The three explorers were getting weaker and
weaker on this diet; some fish which the aborigines traded with them was not
enough and the beriberi and malnutrition worsened.
They got back to
Cooper Creek and Wills, knowing he was about to die, convinced Burke and King
to leave him and go to find the nearby aboriginal tribe, who might help them
survive. It was now mid-June. Burke and King went on for two days
northeast along the creek and Burke could go no further. He died after
giving directions to King not to bury him. King now by himself went back
to check on Wills and found him dead in his little open hut. King buried Wills'
body and then tracked the aborigines to their camp. They took him in, fed
him fish and provided him with a hut in which to sleep. The tribe had
mixed feelings about supporting King but one woman took particular care of him,
then the whole tribe accepted his presence. The tribe was very sorry to
hear of Wills' death but were not unhappy about Burke whom they felt was
hostile and arrogant yet they showed grief when taken by King to his body which
was rotting in the sun, still holding his revolver. The aborigines
covered the body with bushes. This was mid-June,
four weeks after Wright and Brahe had come back
looking for them.
By late May, in Melbourne, the lack of any word from the
expedition's northern group finally led to plans for a rescue group to be sent
north. One of the strongest proponents of this plan was Doctor Wills,
father of the explorer. At this time Burke, Wills and King were still
alive on Cooper Creek. But it took time for the
Royal Society to organize a rescue operation. They chose an accomplished
bush man, Howitt, who left on the rescue mission on
June 26th. He chose three additional men and took the train to Bondigo and a coach to Swan Hill. A little north he
came upon Brahe who told him all about Burke's
heading north and not returning. This horrified Howitt
and he was ready to go back to Melbourne
but a directive from the Royal Society said to keep on with the rescue
operation since there was no evidence that the men were not still alive.
So Howitt continued. Queensland
also sent a rescue team from Rockampton north of Brisbane towards the Gulf of
Carpentaria led by Walker, another bush man. Even Adelaide sent a rescue
mission since they had not heard from Stuart since January 186l, and that group
would also look for Burke and Wills.
Howitt
made good time to Menindee, used some of Burke's
depot provisions and headed north to Cooper
Creek taking only twenty
five days. Brahe led the way to camp 65 where
the rescue team did not dig up the container under the tree because all still
looked unchanged from the time Brahe had seen it
twice before. The team camped further north on the Creek and on September
15th, one of the rescue team found a group of aborigines among whom was
King. He looked like a scarecrow but still wore the remains of his
cabbage tree hat. It was one year and twenty five days since the
expedition had left the Royal Park in Melbourne
and three months since Wills and Burke had died. The rescue group fed him
and he regained some strength but his mind seemed very fragile. He broke
down in tears at the slightest provocation. Now Howitt
started back and while passing camp 65 did follow the direction on the big Coolibah tree to "dig" and found the buried
journals, letters and maps that told the whole Burke Wills story.
On the way south King had
to be strapped onto a horse and he became hysterical very easily. The
train from Bendigo
came into Melbourne
where the population was jubilant about the transcontinental trek of its exploration
group and had a great desire to see King, the only survivor. Burke was
considered a dead hero and beyond criticism. Wills was hardly
mentioned. Wills' father tried to force an interview with King but was
turned away. This was needless because King was so mentally deranged that he
was saying very little. One newspaper which had originally criticized
Burke said he was responsible for the expedition's death toll and that Wills
was the real hero of the expedition.
By November 1861 the hero worship of
the expedition members raised questions as to what the Royal Society and its
expedition committee had done to protect the explorers and why they had not
brought Burke's and Wills' bodies back for proper burial in Melbourne. The
formal inquiry took place in November when the investigating committee ended up
blaming Brahe for leaving Cooper
Creek and Wright for not getting back
to Cooper Creek with the reserve supplies and
animals. Here it should be noted that John Stuart, starting from Adelaide, completed the
south to north transcontinental trek on July 24, 1862, a year after Burke and
Wills' deaths.
Burke's exploration had cost several European
and one aboriginal lives while the rescue expeditions formed to find Burke
covered more than eleven thousand kilometers, or 6800 miles, without the loss
of any life. The reasons are clearly better leadership attitudes and
planning.
Here the comparison of the Burke/Wills trans-Australian
exploration and the Lewis and Clark trans-American
exploration fifty five years before becomes interesting. First, the
American expedition was not rushed into. Jefferson had been thinking for
some time about such an expedition and had first hired Clark's
brother and later started a Frenchman on such an exploration in the
1790's. It turned out the Frenchman was a spy and was recalled before he
got west of Pennsylvania.
After the Louisiana purchase the need for an
exploration of the Missouri River valley became paramount so Jefferson
enlisted his capable and intelligent private secretary, Lewis, who loved
trekking in the wilderness, and Clark, an experienced frontiersman and army
officer, to lead the expedition. They were supported with federal funds,
Lewis was enlisted in the Army, and they were given directions by President
Jefferson, not a committee. One potential issue was that Lewis and Clark
were to be co-commanders of the Corps of Discovery, but Clark's
commission came through as a lieutenant instead of captain, Lewis' rank.
Despite this, Clark was paid a captain's wage
and the Corps of Discovery always acted as if both were co-commanders.
Two equal and cooperating leaders bring broader leadership and this helps make
the best decisions.
The American exploratory trip had several main
purposes. One was to inform any French settlers and Indian tribes
encountered along the way that the United States now owned and
controlled the purchased area. Secondly the expedition was to endeavor to
get the numerous antagonistic native tribes long the River to accept and
cooperate with each other so that the River could become a commercial trade
route all the way to the mountains. Thirdly the Corps was to map the
River carefully and study all of its geography, animals and plants, keeping
accurate journals of these observations, as well as information about the land
west of the mountains to the Pacific Ocean.
It was also to bring back samples of plants and animals. Lewis was the
acting physician and he was the surveyor who read the sun at noon and the stars
at night to record the Corps' location. Clark
produced the maps. Not insignificantly the Lewis and Clark expedition was
to travel on the River in a large River keelboat and two pirogues or large
canoes. They carried arms, clothes, scientific instruments, tools and
four to five thousand rations of food, flour, salt, and salt pork plus ground
corn and whiskey. They also carried presents for the Indians to be used
in converting them into loyal Americans. An interesting addition to their
cargo was a foldable boat frame which they could cover with skins to produce
another boat.
When
Lewis and Clark started up the River the five mile an hour current, the spring
drift wood coming down stream and sand bars made progress difficult.
The men rowed, towed, or poled the keelboat and sailed when the wind was
favorable. Travel frequently was slow. As you can see, there were
many similarities between the expeditions of Lewis and Clark and of Burke and
Wills. The main differences were the Corps of Discovery succeeded in
making friends with most of the native tribes encountered, and got considerable
help from those tribes, including the winter cooperation with the Mandan
Indians in North Dakota, much needed horses from the Shoshone Snake Indians in
the mountains, help with directions and translations by Sacagawea, and
life-giving food (dogs and salmon) from the Shoshone and Nes
Pierce tribes west of the Rocky Mountains.
Another difference was the
Corps of Discovery starting in the best season, spring, and taking their time
resting and planning while Burke was always pushing onwards in his desire to
get north to the ocean before Stuart, knowing that Stuart always honored
Sundays as a holiday resting his animals and men. Burke did not leave
time for hunting local game to add to their diminished food supply while Lewis
and Clark ate local game which was always possible except in the mountains.
Lewis and Clark
completed their longer voyage of discovery with the loss of only one life,
Sergeant Floyd, who, on the way out, died of
fever and was buried with military honors on the riverbank north of Council Bluffs, Iowa.
So if any of you are planning a
transcontinental exploratory trek, plan carefully, do not subdivide and further
subdivide your men, take time to rest and regain momentum, maintain your
transport animals, stay friendly with the indigenous people and gather, prepare
and eat local game and vegetation along the way.
It might be of interest to
note that the railroad connection across the northern route to Montana, the Rockies and Portland,
Oregon, a distance of 2000 miles following
Lewis and Clark's path, took some seventy five
years after the Corps of Discovery's journey to complete. The rail line
from Adelaide to Darwin
on the north coast of Australia,
1800 miles, was just completed in 2004, more than 140 years after the Burke and
Wills exploratory trek.