5 The Franklins’ Journey

The gigantic Frenchman unveiled his mighty head, affording us a distant view of his remarkable cap.

John Franklin was an honest man: solid, hard-working and devoutly religious. A much-feted, if somewhat over-rated Arctic hero, explorer and sailor, the good natured but politically naive Franklin was less successful in navigating the intrigues of office that followed in the wake of Sir George Arthur’s governorship.

Sir John’s wife, the spirited and questioning Lady Jane Franklin, was the perfect foil for her stolid and persevering husband. Contemporary drawings reveal a not unattractive woman, her face framed with ringlets of hair in the style popular in mid-Victorian society. However, Jane Franklin’s high public profile and keen interest in the affairs of state tended to polarise many people accustomed to the more passive role expected of a Governor’s wife.

Sir John Franklin. The good-natured, controversial and adventurous lieutenant-governor of Van Diemen’s Land, 1837–1843. A rare daguerreotype taken in early 1845 on eve of Franklin’s departure on his ill-fated North-West Passage voyage. (Scott Polar Research Institute)

Soon after arriving in Van Diemen’s Land the new governor announced his intention ‘to cause an exploration to be made at an early period of those districts in the interior which are as yet almost unknown’.33 However Franklin’s adventurous spirit was suppressed by the weighty demands of everyday office. The journey was delayed for several years.

When it was finally taken up in early 1842, the Governor’s administration found itself enmeshed in turmoil. With unemployment high and settlers no longer able to take advantage of labour freely available under the previous assignment system, the economy of Van Diemen’s Land was sliding into depression. The blame was being laid squarely, and unfairly, at Franklin’s feet.

Worse still, both Sir John and Lady Franklin were reeling in the aftermath of a series of vitriolic attacks from Colonial Secretary John Montagu, which culminated in the Governor’s dismissal of the latter. The Franklins’ journey, therefore, came as a welcome and timely diversion from a period of particularly high personal anxiety. One suspects that the journey had as much to do with satisfying Sir John Franklin’s thirst for adventure as the search for new lands for settlement.

Jane Franklin. A sketch made by Thomas Bock about 1840. (Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office)

The vice-regal party was greeted at Lake St Clair by guide James Calder. David Burn, a Scottish journalist and playwright, was invited to record details of the journey. Burn’s subsequent narrative, florid, verbose and often entertaining, provides a valuable record of daily happenings.

The party also included Lady Franklin’s maid, a surgeon, two soldiers and twenty convicts — ‘a party of willing volunteers’ enlisted to carry Lady Franklin about half the distance (where open country permitted) in a blackwood chair fitted with carrying poles.

This chair is on display at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart. It takes the form of a collapsible sedan chair, with side rings to accommodate carrying poles. It was made specifically for the 1842 overland journey at Lady Franklin’s request at Port Arthur. Built from blackwood and mahogany, the chair appears to have served the dual purpose of a commode. The cumbersome nature of the chair, particularly in steep terrain and entangling scrub, must have made it a liability to efficient bush travel, and the fact that it was used for less than half the journey tends to bear this out. The chair was believed lost until 1935, when it was unexpectedly presented to the Museum by Sergeant George Twitchett.

Burn’s narrative makes no mention of Lady Franklin’s loathing of snakes, for which she held an obsessive, almost biblical hatred. She went so far as to offer a bounty of one shilling for every dead snake produced, an expensive and ultimately impossible quest to exterminate the species in Van Diemen’s Land.

At Lake St Clair, the party prepared for departure. ‘From the cart our necessaries had to be transferred to a dozen large heavy knapsacks,’ wrote David Burn, ‘these to be borne by as many sturdy carriers, each pack averaging 66 lbs.’34 A good proportion of this weight was contributed by Lady Franklin. James Calder recalled the episode.

Without wasting any words upon us, she kept handing over to us bag after bag, and bundle after bundle, until I began to wonder whether she was really serious in believing that we were able to travel under such a load of things as she had with her; about enough indeed to have made the fortune of any small rag man in Christendom. After our knapsacks were crammed almost to bursting, I made several respectful, though unsuccessful trials at persuading her that we had got quite enough of it, and that the best thing she could do with the rest, whatever it might be, was to put it all on the cart and send it back to town. I might just as well have addressed myself to Mount Olympus, which would have taken quite as much notice of my remonstrances as she did.35

The weather broke shortly after the party left Lake St Clair, bringing to an end an unusually prolonged and dry summer. The steep descent of Fatigue Hill (today’s Mount Arrowsmith36) ‘put the elastic quality of our muscles to a severe ordeal,’ wrote Burn. ‘More than once we embraced our mother earth.’37 They camped that night on the button grass of Wombat Glen and next morning saw Frenchmans Cap for the first time from the slopes of Mount Mullens. The party stopped at the Loddon River for a lunch of salt pork, tea and damper — standard fare for the duration of the trip — then moved out across the Loddon Plains.

To the beautifully verdant banks and gently swelling slopes, surmounted by crags of stupendous height and terrific grandeur, no pen could do adequate justice. We were in the centre of a circle of enchanting loveliness ... This magnificent basin is also termed Loddon Plains. Midway, close to the mountain’s base, lies an opening, guarded as it were by two emerald banks, the headlands, if I may so term them, of a land bay of transcendent loveliness, being magnificently studded, by the hand of nature, with small clumps of elegant trees and coppice, displayed in the most park-like style ... Whilst gazing upon this delicious plantation, the gigantic Frenchman unveiled his mighty head, affording us a distant view of his remarkable cap ... It is a bold, isolated, precipitously scarped crag, surmounted by a peak resembling the cap of liberty.38

The party’s views were to be fleeting. They set up camp at the southern extremity of the Loddon Plains, at the foot of Calder Pass. ‘We passed a most tempestuous night of wind and rain,’ wrote Burn, ‘the ruthless squalls bursting upon our devoted heads with remorseless fury.’ Worse was to come over the next five days, as storm driven rain, hail and snow kept the party confined to their tents. David Burn’s diary details their circumstances.

Another night of unmitigated turbulence, the wind howling like the sullen spirit of baffled revenge, the rain streaming in torrents of insatiate wrath ... To beguile the insupportable irksomeness of the weary, pluvious hours, I devoured the second volume of Master Humphrey’s Clock39 in probably the most lorn and desolate spot reader had ever sighed over the sorrows of ‘noble Nell’. After a day of distressing endurance, we again sought refuge in slumber from the miseries of ‘Detention Corner’ — a name which the Governor had most appropriately bestowed upon this odious locality.

Calder had estimated the journey would take eight days. It ended up taking three weeks, due to weather delays and the party’s continual rests, which Calder had neither anticipated nor allowed for. By the time they reached the Gordon River and inspected Sarah Island, the journey had fulfilled its purpose; the governor was finally convinced of the impossibility of opening up the region to settlement.

Calder could be a difficult person to deal with. Forthright, blunt and often downright rude, he did not suffer fools gladly. On this trip, however, the usually choleric Calder was completely won over by the Franklins. He found them excellent company, uncomplaining and in good spirits despite the difficulties of the journey. Calder later wrote of Lady Jane Franklin:

She was small in stature, but strikingly symmetrical; her head was beautifully formed, and her face was full of expression; there was a fine admixture of the intellectual and amiable; her smile was one of the sweetest imaginable ... Her daring excursion to Macquarie Harbour has no parallel, camping out at night, crossing rivers, climbing mountains, tearing through scrubs — for it was not walking — where many strong men perished in the attempt.40

Calder’s track was used again almost immediately. The delays in the overland journey led to a search party of 20 men leaving Lake St Clair to find the Franklins, who by this time were on a ship about to sail from Macquarie Harbour. When the search party failed to locate them, their own journey turned into an epic of survival in which they themselves had to be rescued. One person originally nominated for the Franklins’ journey was Sir John Franklin’s private secretary, the botanist Ronald Campbell Gunn. On the eve of departure Gunn fell off his horse, breaking a leg. He must have been greatly disappointed at missing out, for nine months later, and fully recovered, Gunn followed the track right through to Macquarie Harbour, no doubt collecting plant samples along the way.

At the end of December 1953, six members of the Hobart Walking Club (HWC) re-traced the 1842 journey of Sir John Franklin’s party. The re-enactment journey formed part of Tasmania’s sesquicentennial celebrations. The HWC party included club president Jessie Luckman, her husband, Leo, and Jack Thwaites. Because the 1953 party had less than half the time available to Sir John Franklin’s party and no cut track, changes were made to the original route. The HWC party chose a route roughly parallel to Sir John Franklin’s party, and sought the high ground of Deception Range in preference to the forested Acheron Valley.

In the footsteps of the Franklins. Jessie Luckman on Deception Range, 1 January 1954. Frenchmans Cap dominates the skyline. (Leo Luckman)

Calder’s return to Frenchmans Cap

Calder returned to Frenchmans Cap for the last time in 1850. He was sent by the government with two companions to assess the farming potential of the region. In the late 1840s, Lieutenant-Governor Sir William Denison envisioned an ambitious scheme to develop ‘the new country’ of the west and south-west. Denison’s confidence led a number of optimistic pastoralists to apply for leases on the button grass plains near Frenchmans Cap. Calder remained sceptical of the plan. He doubted whether sheep could ever be grazed on these unproductive plains and provided Denison with samples of the plant to reinforce his belief.

The plant which predominates here grows in large tufts, and bears its seeds on a long thin stalk, in a small round head much resembling that of the onion, only not larger than a musket ball. This is mixed with rushes and low shrubs, common in fenny situations. Little that would afford sustenance to our domestic animals is to be found here. Everything is coarse and bitter ... Though the pedestrian steps over these bogs dry-footed (on the principle of stepping from root-to-root and tuft-to-tuft), yet no horse could be led across without the certainty of his being frequently up to his saddle girths, such is the natural unsoundness.41

Calder completed a thorough investigation then left the Loddon Plains for good. ‘I was not at all sorry when I crossed the Derwent; for while here, I was so continually wet-footed, that this circumstance made my sojourn very disagreeable, and I left the western districts with pleasure rather than regret.’42 Governor Denison eventually lost interest in the project and the grazing leases were never granted.

Sheep were later pastured briefly on the Loddon Plains by the pastoralist W. J. T. Clarke of Marlborough, but in the end Calder was proved correct — the region was patently unsuitable for grazing. The entire western country which at first glance appeared so promising proved to be nothing more than a wasteland of acidic peat and nutrient-poor soils. It must have baffled government officials that a country which supported such dense vegetation was completely resistant to any kind of formal agriculture.

In 1859 Calder was appointed Surveyor-General of Tasmania. For some reason Calder never conceived an overall plan for a detailed exploration and survey of the west. In later years he showed no interest at all in providing tracks to assist in the mineral exploration that would prove so vital to Tasmania’s economy. Nevertheless, he remains a key figure in opening up the Frenchmans Cap region. In 1850, from the summit of Mount Arrowsmith, Calder described a panorama of the Frenchmans Cap region which remains largely accurate today.

In almost every quarter of the horizon immense mountains form the background of the picture, and nothing can exceed the ruggedness of the outline of these stupendous barriers. Conspicuous from its comparative proximity and its excessive abruptness is the mountain called the Frenchman’s Cap — a striking object indeed, and one of a very peculiar contour ... Not the faintest trace of occupation by man is apparent. No homesteads or roads, no enclosures or cultivation attest his presence ... Such a scene of utter lifelessness is, I believe, to be found in no other country habitable, in the common acceptation of the term, except Tasmania.43

Seven years after Calder’s final visit another party came across a small cairn of stones sitting on the Loddon Plains, just beyond the Loddon River. The cairn had been built by James Calder and inside it was hidden a square piece of King William pine on which Calder had carved his name, along with those of his two companions, Crowther and McCrobie, and the date, 1850.

The party which found the cairn comprised William Tully, Frederick Spong and Charles Glover. They learnt later that Calder and his companions had intended to climb Frenchmans Cap, but had not ventured further due to closing weather. Tully, Spong and Glover were on their way to Frenchmans Cap, but not to search for new grazing lands. A phenomenon sweeping the mainland had now reached Tasmania. Tully, Spong and Glover were searching for gold.44