Four
An Affair of Cliquery

‘Why explore? It is as well for those who ask such a question that there are others who feel the answer and never need to ask.’
Sir Wally Herbert

When John McDouall Stuart returned to Adelaide in July 1859, he found the drawing rooms of the rich and the powerful more accessible to him than ever before. South Australia’s politicians were delighted. Stuart had broken the stranglehold of the ‘Fertile Island Theory’ and proved that sizeable patches of fertile land lay beyond the salt-lake country to the north. It opened up vast agricultural opportunities and strengthened the case for bringing the overland telegraph line down to Adelaide.

Sensing the public mood for further expeditions, William Finke and James Chambers offered to make Stuart available for an attempt to cross the continent. Their terms were simple: the government would have to cover part of the cost and offer a bonus for reaching the north coast. Governor Richard MacDonnell was enthusiastic. On 19 July, he wrote to the South Australian treasurer, William Younghusband, saying, ‘It would settle forever the practicability of carrying the wire, as well as sending horses for export to India by that route…I strongly recommend immediate action.’ The treasurer was not so sure. He was eager for glory but reluctant to pay for it. Perhaps, he suggested, the gold-rich colonies of New South Wales and Victoria might like to make a contribution?

But New South Wales was still not interested in exploration. Even though much of the ‘ghastly blank’ was technically within its jurisdiction, the Sydney government had plenty of land and was committed to building an expensive railway network. The Victorians also declined, only less politely. Months of caustic Adelaide newspaper editorials, pouring scorn on their exploratory efforts, had made them more determined than ever to mount their own expedition.

South Australia was forced to switch tactics. In August 1859 it announced a prize of £2000 for the ‘first person who shall succeed in crossing through the country lately discovered by Mr Stuart, to either the north or north-western shore of the Australian continent, west of the 143rd degree of east longitude’. Closer inspection of this ‘generous’ offer reveals it was little more than a crafty ploy to induce the Victorians to plan their route for South Australia’s benefit. If they wanted the prize they would have to travel through the country ‘lately discovered by Mr Stuart’, which was just the territory Adelaide needed to open up the overland telegraph.

Whatever the motives that lay behind it, the prize succeeded in jolting Melbourne’s Philosophical Institute out of its summer somnolence. When the Exploration Committee meetings resumed, there was renewed enthusiasm for crossing the continent, but now the original scientific and philanthropic intentions were replaced by politics, intercolonial rivalry and greed. It had become a race between South Australia and Victoria—with £2000 waiting for the winner.

Still short of money, the Exploration Fund Committee tried to speed up proceedings by starting a false rumour that Ambrose Kyte’s offer of £1000 was in danger of lapsing. The Argus predicted that Stuart would win the race before Victoria had even saddled its camels.

With Melbourne society alive with talk of northern ports, acres of pastoral land and the chance to build a telegraph line, Victoria’s new chief secretary William Nicholson realised there was more to the proposed expedition than a few jars of pickled animals and a couple of new flower species. On 20 January 1860 he announced that parliament had agreed to make £6000 available for the purpose of exploring central and northern Australia. Shortly afterwards the Philosophical Institute received another boost. It was granted a royal charter and became the Royal Society of Victoria, housed in a new building on La Trobe Street.

On 23 January, the Exploration Fund Committee dissolved itself and the Exploration Committee managed to slim down to seventeen members. It now comprised five doctors, four scientists (including Ferdinand Mueller, John Macadam and geologist Alfred Selwyn), the chief justice, Sir William Stawell, the surveyor-general, Charles Ligar, his deputy, a vicar, a journalist, an ironmonger, a publican and a pastoralist, Angus MacMillan. Stawell was appointed chairman. There were still only three men (Mueller, MacMillan and Selwyn) who had any experience of exploration. With only this shallow pool of expertise to draw upon, the committee began to choose an expedition leader.

Victoria was hardly bursting with suitable candidates. In fact, by 1860 Australia itself was somewhat deficient in battle-hardened explorers. To everyone’s relief, Thomas Mitchell had retired and was now annoying the British with his constant demands for a knighthood. Charles Sturt had returned to England a physical wreck and Ludwig Leichhardt had disappeared altogether. Augustus Gregory was the obvious choice and, although the leadership was informally offered to him, he accepted an offer from Queensland to become its new surveyor-general.

In the absence of any seasoned contenders, the naturalist William Blandowski, who had been so vociferous at previous meetings, put his own name forward. He had a reputation for controversial behaviour. A few months earlier he had decided to settle a few personal scores by naming several grotesque species of fish after particular members of the Royal Society. Dr Richard Eades was assigned to a specimen with a ‘receding forehead and a large belly’ and the Reverend John Bleasedale was given a fish described as ‘slippery, slimy…lives in the mud’. When the names were published, Blandowski realised his career was unlikely to progress much further. He sailed to Europe soon afterwards.

Ferdinand Mueller was unwilling to lead the expedition himself but he did have a candidate in mind. Major Peter Egerton Warburton was an ex-army officer who had taken up the post of police commissioner in South Australia. In 1857, he was dispatched to recall a surveying team led by Benjamin Herschel Babbage. In recovering the errant party, Warburton had made several valuable discoveries of fertile country north of Adelaide. His triumphant return was overshadowed by his malicious public criticism of the ponderous, yet thorough Babbage, and by his failure to stay out in the field through the hot season. The newspapers branded Warburton a coward for coming home rather than ‘summering out’ in the desert. ‘Really,’ thundered the Register, ‘we are compelled to enquire what was the precise object of the Major’s trip. Was it to explore or enjoy?’ Despite this withering appraisal of Warburton’s ‘ticker’, several committee members supported his candidacy, including Mueller and the prominent artist and naturalist Ludwig Becker. But there were two reasons why the rest of the Royal Society refused to endorse Warburton.

The Major disliked working with camels. And he was South Australian. The idea of a ‘crow-eater’ in charge of a Victorian expedition was unthinkable. Chief secretary William Nicholson was especially reluctant to see a government-funded project led by a rival colonist. To Mueller’s dismay, Warburton was sidelined. Then in a bizarre departure from protocol, the committee decided to advertise the job of ‘Expedition Leader’ in the press. The Herald was appalled. ‘Men of science, of enterprise, and with some knowledge of the ways of the world,’ it exclaimed, ‘do not relish the notion of being advertised for, as the keeper of a registry office advertises for a butler, housemaid or a cook.’

The general consensus was that the advertisements had been designed to offend Warburton and to put off applicants from other states, particularly those of a ‘lower class’ like John McDouall Stuart. The Exploration Committee’s secretary John Macadam hid the advertisements in the ‘Public Notices’ column rather than ‘Positions Vacant’, and then ‘forgot’ to place them at all in Sydney or Adelaide.

This unorthodox method of finding an expedition leader was really a devious manoeuvre to ensure that Burke was offered the post.

The resulting applicants ranged from mediocre to downright hopeless. Of the fifteen men who replied, only four had any experience of adventurous travel. None had ever led a major expedition, although one, Gustav von Tempsky, was proud to say he had ‘drilled and fought Indians, Blacks, White and Redskins’ during his thirteen years in America. The others ranged from dreamers and lunatics to armchair travellers and military men. Warburton refused to respond at all. The whole process, he told the committee, was ‘repugnant’ and ‘incompatible’ with his position as a police commissioner.

Melbourne was soon awash with rumours that the appointment was simply a matter of personal favour to be handed out by the most powerful faction within the Royal Society. The Argus was disgusted:

We might ask what confidence can be placed in any body of men who could blunder so egregiously at the outset with regard to the appointment of a leader…and who if the reports of their late meetings and the announcement made in the their late extraordinary advertisement, are to stand for anything, do not up to this time, know what they are going to send an expedition to explore.

Pummelled by scathing editorials and intense public dissatisfaction, the Exploration Committee sank further into an abyss of indecision. Reports of drunkenness and factional infighting at meetings were leaked to the press and by March 1860 the situation was becoming desperate.

While the Victorians bickered, news arrived from South Australia that John McDouall Stuart had set out with two men from Chambers Creek on 2 March. His aim was to find the centre of the continent and then continue to the north coast. If there was to be a race, it seemed that one side had already started.

In Melbourne, the Exploration Committee continued to flounder. On 8 March, the Argus warned that the expedition was in danger of collapse. ‘The exploration committee are in an embarrassing position. Time presses. The season of the year in which the expedition should set out is rapidly passing away, the camels have not yet arrived; no leader has been appointed.’ The committee’s response was to form a sub-committee, which drew up a shortlist of possible leaders including most everyone who had applied for the post—plus Warburton, who hadn’t submitted his name at all.

Among the candidates was a police superintendent from Castlemaine and Beechworth, Robert O’Hara Burke. Although there is no record of a personal application for the post, Burke’s name was put forward by a senior officer, P. H. Smithe, who assured the committee he was:

a most active man and very strong—most temperate in his habits—and is kind and gentler in his manners—but possessing a strong will—ambitious and had been accustomed to command since boyhood…In conclusion, I am confident from my knowledge of Mr Burke that there is not another gentleman in this Colony possessing so many of the qualifications necessary to the success of the undertaking in question as my friend Burke.

It was said that Burke had powerful backers within the Royal Society but, since he had no previous experience whatsoever, he was initially passed over in favour of Gustav von Tempsky, who was questioned at length by the committee. A report was prepared. No decision was made.

To break the deadlock, Ludwig Becker came up with the idea of an ‘exploring exam’. Keen to promote Warburton’s case he persuaded the committee that each of the candidates should be called in like schoolboys to answer questions on astronomy, surveying, navigation, map-making and metrology. Since Warburton was the only man with practical experience, he was bound to win, but quite how Becker thought a man who would not answer a public advertisement could be persuaded to take a classroom test was a mystery. The scheme was soon abandoned. Just as it seemed as if every dilatory tactic had been explored, the committee made an announcement. It had decided not to make any further decisions for another three months.

The most plausible justification for this declaration was that since the camels were yet to arrive, there was no hurry to appoint a leader. The second excuse was laughable. All the remaining applicants were to be given three months to learn the art of ‘taking lunars’—that is, navigating by the stars. The committee was effectively admitting that not one of their otherwise ‘suitable’ candidates could find his way home through the bush. By now, most of Melbourne was convinced that the selection process was rigged; a candidate had been promised the appointment and he was being given time to brush up on his navigational skills.

In April, the Royal Society held its annual dinner. It was a feast of fine wine and self-congratulation. Endless toasts were drunk and long speeches were delivered invoking the Roman emperors, the glory of Victoria and the achievements of the Royal Society. In the early hours everyone rolled home red-faced and thoroughly pleased with himself. Melbourne’s gentlemen had been discussing an expedition for the best part of three years, yet they still had no camels, no leader and no route mapped out.

By the time news of these antics reached South Australia, John McDouall Stuart had been heading north for nearly three months. The Register couldn’t resist a dig at its neighbour:

Only let the Victorian explorers look out for their laurels. It is quite possible and by no means improbable that at this moment the problem of the interior is solved and that John McDouall Stuart will be back in time to show the camels a beaten track through the heart of the Australian mainland.

It was the arrival of the camels that finally stirred the Exploration Committee into action. On 16 June 1860 a small but expectant crowd gathered at Railway Pier in Melbourne. The crisp morning air was choked with steam as a large crane chugged into life and lowered a giant sling towards the decks of the Chinsurah, just in from India. People strained for a glimpse as a camel, quivering in fear, was placed inside the cradle. Under the watchful eye of George Landells, the beast was lifted into the air, swung round in a great arc and lowered to the ground. When all twenty-five camels had disembarked safely, Landells took them to St Kilda beach where, to the amazement of the families strolling along the foreshore, he trotted them up and down on the sand.

By lunchtime, the camel dealer was ready to show off his purchases to a wider audience. Resplendent in the traditional red and white robes of an Indian cameleer, he marshalled the animals into a procession and jogged triumphantly through the streets of Melbourne. The ride was disrupted for a moment when a young ‘pet’ camel scattered the crowd by ‘by taking a preliminary canter on its own account, and performing some most extraordinary antics to the terror and confusion of certain elderly ladies who stood gazing with astonishment at the novel importation’.

The citizens of Melbourne were immensely proud of their new purchases. ‘Years hence, Australia will boast of its race of camels as England does now of her horse…they certainly are magnificent animals,’ bragged the Argus. There was a sense of wonder that these exotic creatures cavorting through the city would shortly lift the ‘veil of the centre’. So many people turned out to witness the parade that the police had to clear the way to the parliament stables where the camels would recuperate from their long journey.

The new arrivals and their sepoy handlers soon became local celebrities, attracting so many visitors that the Argus worried they might not make it to the desert at all. Hundreds of people took to gathering at the stables, dropping their cigarettes amongst the straw and plying the sepoys with beer and brandy. All this unexpected hospitality was apt to make them a little ‘absent minded’ when it came to matters of safety.

With the camels ready to go, there was no excuse to delay appointing a leader. The impasse was broken at a meeting of the Exploration Committee on 20 June 1860. The three candidates left in the race were Warburton (despite the fact he had not applied), Gustav von Tempsky, and the Irish police officer, Robert O’Hara Burke.

Crucially, Warburton’s principal supporter, Ferdinand Mueller was sick and stayed away and several other committee members were so disgusted by the ‘base and shameless personal motives at work’ that they boycotted the meeting. As a result, discussions centred on von Tempsky and Burke. When the last vote was taken, no one supported Warburton and just five committee members chose von Tempsky. The clear winner with ten votes was Police Superintendent Robert O’Hara Burke.

The Victorian Exploring Expedition finally had a leader—a man who had never travelled beyond the settled districts of Australia, who had no experience of exploration and who was notorious for getting lost on his way home from the pub.