The Dig Tree Read online

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  SARAH MURGATROYD was born in England in 1967, and grew up on a farm in Sussex.

  After a year spent wandering through China, India and the Himalayas, she gained an honours degree in philosophy and literature at Warwick University and then studied broadcast journalism at Cardiff University.

  Murgatroyd’s journalism career began with local radio in Bournemouth; it was interrupted by her diagnosis with breast cancer at the age of twenty-five. She entered a stage of aggressive treatment and then, in her unstoppable way, joined the BBC Radio 5 Live network.

  In 1993, she resigned and moved to Australia with her future husband. She travelled extensively, providing news and current affairs coverage for the BBC. To research The Dig Tree, Murgatroyd retraced the footsteps of Burke and Wills. Under normal circumstances this is a difficult journey but she completed it three times while enduring chronic pain. She carried an emergency jar of morphine with her on her travels.

  Sarah Murgatroyd died of cancer in March 2002, a few weeks after The Dig Tree was published to universal acclaim.

  GEOFFREY BLAINEY was professor of economic history and then Ernest Scott professor of history at Melbourne University. He has written more than thirty books, and many focus fully or partly on the outback.

  Proudly supported by Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.

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  Ccopyright © Sarah Murgatroyd 2002

  Introduction copyright © Geoffrey Blainey 2012

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  First published by The Text Publishing Company 2002

  This edition published 2012

  Designed by WH Chong

  Typeset by J&M Typesetting

  Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press, an Accredited ISO AS/NZS

  14001:2004 Environmental Management System printer

  Primary print ISBN: 9781921922268

  Ebook ISBN: 9781921921865

  Author: Murgatroyd, Sarah, 1967-2002.

  Title: The dig tree / by Sarah Murgatroyd ; introduction by Geoffrey Blainey.

  Edition: 1st ed.

  Series: Text classics.

  Subjects: Burke and Wills Expedition 1860-1861. Australia—Discovery and

  exploration.

  Other Authors/Contributors: Blainey, Geoffrey, 1930-

  Dewey Number: 919.4043

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  About the Author

  About the Introducer

  Title Page

  Copyright

  With No Map in Front of Us by Geoffrey Blainey

  The Dig Tree

  Dedication

  Photograph of The Dig Tree

  Map

  One Terra Australis Incognita

  Two Marvellous Melbourne

  Three The Fertile Island Theory

  Four An Affair of Cliquery

  Five A Trifle Insane

  Six The Honour of Victoria

  Seven No Tea, No Fire

  Eight Ruinous Work

  Nine An Excess of Bravery

  Ten The Dead Heart

  Eleven A Sense of Perspective

  Twelve Anticipation of Horrors

  Thirteen Never More Severely Taxed

  Fourteen Beneath the Veil

  Fifteen The Awful Truth

  Sixteen Dig

  Seventeen This Extraordinary Continent

  Eighteen From Inertia to Overkill

  Nineteen The Continent Crossed

  Twenty From Absolute Necessity

  Twenty-One An Unmanly Action

  Twenty-Two A Bloodless Triumph

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Select Bibliography

  Text Classics

  With No Map in Front of Us

  by Geoffrey Blainey

  BURKE and Wills were the first explorers to cross the Australian continent, and that makes them famous. In world history they should also be famous because they are probably the first known explorers to cross any continent. We do not know who were the first people to cross Asia, the first to cross Europe, or the first to cross Africa. America must have first been crossed somewhere near the narrow Isthmus of Panama, but who crossed it we do not know. As each of these journeys probably took place before the invention of writing, no record remains. In contrast the first crossing of Antarctica was performed in the age of photography. Some observers might suggest that in Australia, long before 1788, an individual Aboriginal could have walked across the continent from north to south or from west to east; but such a journey is unlikely. If it were actually made, it has not been recorded.

  The story of Burke and Wills, as told in this book, has an intrinsic magnetism. Robert O’Hara Burke, the official leader, was a Victorian police officer of Irish birth and William John Wills a surveyor of English birth. They set out from Melbourne in August 1860 with a skilled team of men, fifty camels and horses, some wagons and drays, and a small mountain of supplies and equipment. No other Australian land-explorers had set out with seemingly the answer to almost every conceivable emergency. On the way north they divided their team: it was too slow and unwieldy. After establishing a base camp or depot at Cooper’s Creek in south-west Queensland, a point about half way along their intended route, Burke and Wills and two of their assistants began a quick journey with pack camels towards the north coast of Australia. By then the summer heat was intense, and sometimes they walked by moonlight and slept during the day.

  Finally they reached marshy land near the Gulf of Carpentaria, though they did not see the sea. On the return journey they were short of food and often exhausted, and their experienced bushman, Charlie Gray, died after a contentious incident. At last in April 1861 the three survivors approached their depot at Cooper’s Creek, only to learn that their colleagues, camped there for months, had loaded their fresh camels and commenced their long homeward journey that very morning. It will spoil the suspense of Sarah Murgatroyd’s story, vividly told in this book, to say much more. Two months later Burke and Wills died. Eventually the sole survivor John King was rescued.

  A host of poems, prized paintings by such celebrated artists as John Longstaff and Sidney Nolan, plays and films and musical compositions, an excellent historical novel by Alan Attwood, and many history books have centred on Burke and Wills. Of comparable themes, perhaps only Gallipoli and Ned Kelly have attracted as many Australian writers and artists. The first bestseller about Burke and Wills was written by Frank Clune in 1937. A Gallipoli veteran, he had the common touch and was able to attract many Australians who in a normal year did not read a book. In Dig he had no hesitation in making up conversations and attributing with no evidence certain thoughts to the explorers; but he wrote a valuable and gripping story. Even more popular was Alan Moorehead’s Cooper’s Creek, which appeared a quarter of a century later. He followed Burke’s route in a Landrover, but he was too hurried in his researches in Melbourne. It was left to Tim Bonyhady, in his impressive big book of 1991, Burke & Wills: From Melbourne to Myth, to show how many vital records had been hitherto unread.

  Alan Moorehead was one of the most charming prose writers of his era, and skilled in narrating a story. His book, of only 209 pages, probably sold more copies than any other work previ
ously written on Australian history—except maybe for school textbooks—and caught the imagination of a new generation of general readers in Australia as well as crowds of readers in the British Isles, Europe and North America.

  Sarah Murgatroyd’s book, written nearly forty years later, is fuller and more thorough than Moorehead’s and displays some of his gifts. Her prose is lucid, her arrangement of the material is clear, and her analysis of events is engaging and sometimes novel, though a few historians think she is perhaps a shade too critical, overall, of Burke and Wills. In being critical, however, she is in a long tradition. It is easier for each of us to judge explorers harshly when we are sitting in a cool library or a Landrover than if we were walking into unknown and arid country, far from help, and with no map in front of us.

  There will always be debate about these explorers. Burke is incompetent to some: a hero to others. Those who take pride in Aboriginal traditions will point out that he died in terrain where the local Aborigines were actually flourishing in 1861. Those who regret the role of class and status as too important will deride Burke as a favourite of his friends in the Melbourne ‘establishment’, a leader chosen for the wrong reasons. Likewise those who relish interstate rivalries, especially the South Australians who had sent their own brave explorers on a frugal transcontinental mission at the same time, will view Burke’s fate as almost a well-deserved rebuff to the proud Victorians who despatched him. Against all these arguments can be marshalled rival theories and viewpoints. Other historians will regret that Burke was really a ‘new chum’, trying to do a difficult task where bush skills were all-important, while others will reply that early Australian exploration is peppered with failures, no matter who led the expedition. Some of the most successful explorers of Australia on sea and land were new chums. Meanwhile new or overlooked evidence will periodically appear, fanning the flames of debate. And so the discussion will flicker and fade, and then be vividly ignited again.

  Hovering over this field of arguments is one undisputed fact. If Burke, on his return journey towards Victoria, had arrived at Cooper’s Creek just a few hours earlier he would have been a hero. His life would have been saved by the relief party still waiting at the depot. In Melbourne he would have been feted. Thereafter most books, music and plays would be written explaining why he succeeded and not how he failed. It is fair to say, too, that if he had succeeded, and returned in triumph to Melbourne, he would not be such a well-known name in Australia’s history.

  Recent research, carried out after The Dig Tree appeared, reveals that the expedition in one vital aspect was not such a failure. One of its major aims was to advance the sciences: after all, it was organised by a scientific academy, the Royal Society of Victoria. It included experts in astronomy, geology, botany and other sciences, and many of the official instructions given to them were fulfilled diligently. Thus the German, Hermann Beckler, collected specimens of some 900 plants, many of which had not previously been seen by Europeans, let alone named. William Wills discovered at Cooper’s Creek that on certain still days the direction of the wind rotated anti-clockwise in the course of a day. Birds and reptiles were collected, some being described for the first time. The first painstaking records of the daily temperatures in many inland regions were made. Many of these records were later lost, misplaced or accidentally destroyed.

  It was widely believed that Wills had been a poor surveyor and did not know where he was, especially when he reached the vicinity of the Gulf of Carpentaria. He once imagined, reportedly, that he was 100 kilometres away from his true position. Notable explorers such as A. C. Gregory and Ernest Giles spread that criticism. In 2007 Frank Leahy of Melbourne University revealed that Wills was actually an expert surveyor who always knew where he was: his own notes and field books proved it. Eventually in 2011 the diligent and systematic conclusions of a group of scientists were published in the eye-opening book, Burke and Wills: The Scientific Legacy of the Victorian Exploring Expedition, edited by E. B. Joyce and D. A. McCann.

  Sarah Murgatroyd, following those whom she had believed were the experts in this matter, would today, if she were alive, modify several pages of her story in the light of the latest findings. But nearly all her story still stands, and it flows like a river.

  Like Burke and Wills she herself was a ‘new chum’. She came from a farming background in England, studied philosophy and literature and journalism, arrived in Australia in 1993 as a BBC correspondent, and was soon attracted to the exotic story of Burke and Wills. Reading widely in the archives, she brought to her research the excitement of an outsider. She set out to follow the entire route of Burke and Wills and saw the Dig Tree—the title of her book—and was thrilled to hear the cockatoos screeching and Cooper’s Creek still murmuring as ‘it sweeps past the cracked red earth’.

  After reading and travelling she was even more convinced that a new narrative was needed to convey to a new generation of Australians the excitement of the explorers’ journey and to inject new evidence found in recent years. But she had cancer and was determined to finish her book. At the end of her story she expresses ‘heartfelt gratitude’ to Professor Michael Friedlander and ‘all the staff at the Prince of Wales in Sydney’. She does not indicate that this was a hospital, because she wanted no reader to know of her illness. This book—her only book—was published in Australia early in February 2002, and a few days later she flew home to die. She did not live long enough to hear the wide range of praise that The Dig Tree received. In the following month she died in England, aged thirty-four.

  The Dig Tree

  To Kevin

  For winching me out of more creeks than I deserve

  This is one of the earliest known photographs of the Dig Tree. Taken around 1911, it shows the original message carved into the trunk and the remains of the stockade William Brahe built to protect the expedition’s supplies.

  One

  Terra Australis Incognita

  ‘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.’

  Charles Sturt, 1840

  When Captain James Cook stood on the deck of the Endeavour in March 1770 and felt the hot dry winds filling her sails off Australia’s southern coast, he declared that the country’s interior would be nothing but desert. Nearly a century later, the same sultry breeze blew down from the heart of the continent, removing the morning chill from Melbourne’s Royal Park. As the sun rose, a small group of men emerged from the row of new canvas tents pitched under the gum trees. The warm air in their faces reminded them of the task that lay ahead.

  It was Monday 20 August 1860—the day that Australia’s most elaborate and audacious expedition would set out to solve a geographical mystery that had confounded the European settlers since their arrival in Botany Bay in 1788. The Victorian Exploring Expedition was charged with crossing the driest inhabited continent on earth; an island the size of the United States of America, home to such extraordinary creatures as the kangaroo, the emu and the duck-billed platypus. What other strange beasts or lost civilisations might lie hidden in a land that had rebuffed European explorers for so long?

  Despite the early hour, people were already making their way down Melbourne’s elegant boulevards, determined to catch a glimpse of the men, whom journalists had already dubbed ‘pioneers of civilisation and progress, some of who perchance might never return’. The crowds bustled towards the park expecting to see a highly organised operation. Instead, they found a scene of ‘picturesque confusion’.

  Men rushed about, cursing under their breath as they tripped over the twenty tonnes of equipment that lay scattered on the grass. Artists jostled to find the best view and newspaper journalists elbowed their way through to examine the chaos. The Argus reported:

  At one part, might be observed a couple of ‘associates’, already dressed in their expeditionary undress uniform (scarlet jumper, flannel trou
sers, and cabbage-tree hat), busily engaged in packing; at another, a sepoy might be seen occupied in tying together the legs of a sheep. Orders were being rapidly issued and rapidly executed, and there was, indeed, every indication of the approach of a movement of an extraordinary character.

  Many spectators made straight for the specially constructed stables on one side of the park. They were intrigued by the strange bellowing noises and peculiar odour emanating from the building. Those who managed to thrust their way inside were rewarded with a glimpse of four ‘Indian’ sepoys, attired in white robes and red turbans, trying to calm a small herd of camels. Mochrani, Matvala, Gobin, Golah Singh, Linda, Tschibik and their companions had been imported to conquer the deserts of central Australia. The animals were the pride of the expedition and enjoyed a level of care normally reserved for visiting English opera singers. In preparation for the journey, they had each been fitted with a waterproof rug, complete with a hole for the hump, along with two sets of camel shoes, ‘each made of several folds of leather, and shod with iron’, designed for travelling over stony ground. Even river crossings had been catered for. ‘If it becomes necessary to swim the camels,’ boasted the Argus, ‘air bags are to be lashed under their jowls, so as to keep their heads clear when crossing deep streams.’

  People milled about stroking, patting and getting in the way. Then, as the police tried to evict the inquisitive onlookers, pandemonium erupted outside. A passing horse had smelt the new beasts and, displaying the customary equine revulsion for the camel, it bolted through the crowd, throwing its rider and breaking her leg. Not to be outdone, a camel broke loose and chased a well-known police officer across the park:

  The gentleman referred to is of large mould, and until we saw his tumbling feat yesterday, we had no idea that he was such a sprightly gymnast. His down-going and uprising were greeted with shouts of laughter, in which he good-naturedly joined. The erring camel went helter-skelter through the crowd, and was not secured until he showed to admiration how speedily can go ‘the ship of the desert’.