Bynoe River
Little Bynoe River Crossing
Who you know is the odds-on favourite when the powers-that-be appoint a leader.
Focused more on the glory that would accompany the first transcontinental crossing of the continent than on the nature of the undertaking, the powers-that-be appointed Robert O’Hara Burke as leader of the Victorian Exploring Expedition that set out from Melbourne on August 20th 1860.
Thirty-odd kilometres south of Karumba as the crow flies but more than a hundred by road, Henry’s campervan pulled into the site of Burke and Wills’ camp #119. In Starvation in a Land of Plenty Michael Cathcart provides the following details: on Saturday February 9th 1861, with the camels on their last legs, the Victorian Exploration Expedition’s four-man advance party established its northernmost camp, #119;
Burke and Wills’ Savannah Way Memorial
they were on the banks of Little Bynoe River; the leader (Robert O’Hara Burke) decided to leave the two subordinates (John King and Charles Gray) to look after the camels while he and the second-in-command (William Wills) went to set foot on the southern coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria – the saltiness of the river water having alerted Wills to the fact that their camp was in the area that Augustus Gregory and other European explorers had traversed years before.
The celebrated Augustus Gregory had led a successful expedition from the Victoria River through the Gulf Country in 1856 and, earlier still on July 23rd 1845, Ludwig Leichhardt had crossed the Bynoe River not far downstream from Burke and Wills’ camp 119.
Little Bynoe River – upstream from where Ludwig Leichhardt crossed on July 23rd 1845
Patrick White’s megalomaniac explorer, Voss, was modelled on Leichhardt; the fictional character’s ill-fated outback expedition was born of Leichhardt’s 1848 debacle. Soon after arriving in Australia as a would-be outback explorer in 1842, Leichhardt had gone to the Hunter Valley (where White’s forebears were already well-established) to learn bush skills; the German displayed extraordinary incompetence, losing his way as well as his horse. His being financed to lead hazardous expeditions was yet another instance of the judgment of the powers-that be.
Patrick White had not been to remotest Australia before completing Voss in December 1956, David Marr tells us in his biography of the Nobel Laureate, but relied instead upon Sidney Nolan’s outback paintings depicting the lunatic nature of the Burke and Wills expedition. Nolan, in turn, suggested Alan Moorehead write Cooper’s Creek – the journalist’s 1963 book about the Victorian Exploring Expedition.
Augustus Gregory had been instrumental in Burke and Wills being in the Gulf Country: in Claiming a Continent, David Day writes that Victoria’s powers-that-be had taken particular note of that explorer’s extraordinary achievement in crossing Northern Australia because it dovetailed with their expectation of being able to exploit the business opportunities accompanying the arrival of steamboats (Francis Caddell’s prominent among them*) on remote reaches of the Murray-Darling River system. The Victorian Establishment anticipated being able to dominate outback trade in NSW and Queensland and to that end the Royal Society proposed an expedition to follow the Tropic of Capricorn across the continent. Augustus Gregory cautioned against an east-to-west trek and suggested instead that it be south-to-north. The exploration committee accepted that recommendation but, as signage at camp #119 tells us,
“Colonial rivalry was rife. Victoria wanted to beat South Australia in the quest to cross the continent. John MacDouall Stuart had tried twice and been turned back. His skills were unquestionable and he was about to make a further attempt. Could Victoria win?”
Focused more on the glory that would accompany the first transcontinental crossing of the continent than on the nature of the undertaking, the powers-that-be appointed Robert O’Hara Burke as leader of their expedition. What he lacked in bush skills was more than made up for by the fact that he was a Victorian – one who understood the importance of that colony being the first to mount a successful crossing. With McDougall Stuart already planning a third attempt at a continental crossing from Adelaide, the Victorian Exploring Expedition set out from Melbourne on August 20th 1860. Six months after their departure and seemingly unaware of possible lurking danger, Burke and Wills struggled through the mangroves and reached the Gulf twenty-five kilometres from Camp 119. It being the saltwater saurian breeding season, they were lucky not to have been attacked. They “reached the sea, but … could not obtain a view of the open ocean, although we made every endeavour to do so.”
That stretch of the Gulf coastline is no more accessible in the modern era. During its sixteen year operation until it closed in 2015, for example, Lawn Hill’s Century mine conveyed zinc and lead three hundred kilometres to the Normanton port by an underground slurry pipeline rather than transport the ore directly to the Gulf.
In the normal course of events, who you know is the odds-on favourite when the powers-that-be appoint a leader; any second-rate hanger-on will do. The Victorian Royal Society Exploration Committee’s selection of mounted police officer Robert Burke instead of an accomplished bushman like Alfred Howitt was tragicomic. The dark cloud’s silver lining, says Alan Moorehead in Cooper’s Creek, was that Burke and Wills’ disappearance galvanised the Establishment to put aside regional politics and call upon the nation as a whole in organising search parties. The powers-that-be finally did what should have been done in the first place with respect to exploration of the continental interior: taking up The Age newspaper suggestion that the rescue operation include a ship anchored in the Gulf of Carpentaria, Captain W H Norman in the sloop steamer Victoria was dispatched to the Albert River; Victoria’s Governor Barkly (a member of the Royal Society) wrote to Governor George Bowen asking for co-operation in the search for Burke and Wills and two Queensland rescue parties were provisioned: Frederick Walker with mounted Native Police black trackers overland from Rockhampton and William Landsborough aboard the brig Firefly to accompany Norman’s Victoria and head south from the Albert in search of Burke. A further two rescue missions – John McKinlay’s South Australian and Alfred Howitt‘s Victorian – pushed north. Adopting John McDouall Stuart’s unencumbered exploration technique, the four compact, highly mobile search parties converged on the area where Burke and Wills had gone missing. It was the Dry season; moored in the Albert River, the sloop Victoria served as base camp and the four leaders – all of them experienced bushmen – could rendezvous on Cooper’s Creek. Petty jealousies born of pride in one’s own colony had been put aside in favour of co-operation and co-ordination facilitated by modern technology – the telegraph.
The ‘blazing a trail’ cliché takes on a poignancy at Camp 119. Explorers marked trees by ‘blazing’ them and according to the signage at the Victorian Exploring Expedition Little Bynoe River campsite, John King and Charles Gray marked “no less than fifteen trees as proof they had reached north Australia.” David Hillan surveyed the site in 2004 and noted that
“All the blazes at 119 of Burke and Wills could be described as timid; they do not demand attention, the very purpose of a blaze. (Walker’s does not meet this criticism.)”
Frederick Walker had followed the Barcoo and Thomson Rivers to the Norman River (which he named after the Captain of the Victoria), found Burke’s tracks and the blazed trees at Camp 119. According to Hillan:
“Walker marked a tree FW/12 Jan/1862 and that tree is the feature of the site now and is the sole focus of tourist attention. It is generally thought to be the Burke and Wills tree.”
*According to an April 1880 Western Australian newspaper report, the former Murray River steamboat entrepreneur, Francis Cadell, was believed to have been
“engaged in the nefarious practice of kidnapping human beings, known technically as ‘blackbirding.’
The evidence on the point, while not conclusive, is unfortunately too circumstantial not to amount to a very grave suspicion.”
The content of today’s blog is taken from Chapter 13 (Normanton to Julia Creek, Qld) of the ebook.
