Seven
No Tea, No Fire

‘I feel that failure would, to me, be ruin; but I am determined to succeed, and count on completing my work within a year at farthest.’

Robert O’Hara Burke

As Burke led his cavalcade through the towns and villages to the north of Melbourne, the ‘Australian Sahara’ must have seemed a million miles away. The rain was heavy and prolonged. Some days the hailstones were the size of billiard balls. At night, frost crept into the valleys, freezing the water in the billycans and leaving the camels dejected and shivering. The men huddled around their campfires, smoking and sipping tea—but no matter how close they sat to the flames, their flannel trousers and woollen tops never really dried out. The canvas tents were saturated, and their sodden equipment was twice as heavy to lift.

Every day the roads deteriorated and the wheel ruts deepened. While the camels slithered through the bogs, the wagons ground to a halt. The expedition was in black soil country, a seemingly innocuous geographical feature, which is still responsible for many an abandoned vehicle across Australia. In dry conditions the dark earth bakes like concrete but rain transforms it into a natural skating rink. In the worst areas, the wagon wheels disappeared and the drivers were forced to wade into the quagmire, dig the axles free and lay branches in the wheel ruts to provide traction. If that didn’t work, they had to unhitch the horses from the wagons behind and attach them to the stranded vehicle. This back-breaking routine resulted in an average speed of between one and five kilometres an hour.

The camels’ progress was faster but equally precarious. The horny pads on their feet were designed for deserts, not swamps, and they slipped constantly. Fearing for their safety, Landells ordered that they were not to be ridden, prompting Ludwig Becker to complain that ‘it is very tedious and tiring work to lead on foot a camel through such ground and at the same time taking good care that no branch overhead or on the ground interferes with walking or rather skating’. On 22 August as the party headed for the village of Lancefield, sixty kilometres from Melbourne, Becker trudged for ten hours through the mud. That evening he wrote in his diary: ‘No tea, no fire; we slept in the wet.’

Ludwig Becker had not expected to rip his hands to shreds leading camels and loading boxes each day. He was an officer, a biologist and a painter charged with recording the expedition’s progress for posterity. He was also an early victim of the Royal Society’s muddled objectives. Scientists and trailblazers tended not to mix. Even Captain James Cook struggled to contain his displeasure when he saw the botanist Joseph Banks heading for the Endeavour with trunks full of scientific instruments, an entourage of servants and a couple of pet greyhounds. Scientists travel slowly—their deviations infuriate the pioneers determined to conquer as much new territory as possible before the supplies run out. In general, the magnitude of an explorer’s tolerance towards a scientist was inversely proportional to the hostility of the terrain being traversed. Augustus Gregory grew so frustrated with the botanist Ferdinand Mueller that he vowed never to take a scientist out in the field again.

With its enormous procession of wagons and camels, the Victorian Exploring Expedition had all the appearances of a genuine scientific survey party. Indeed, many Royal Society members were still under the impression that a thorough investigation of the continent was about to take place. Others realised that Burke’s appointment as leader had already destroyed any veneer of scientific credibility. If it hadn’t been for the Royal Society’s German contingent, Burke would have dispensed with the scientists altogether. But as a compromise he agreed to take Ludwig Becker to serve as ‘artist and naturalist’ and Hermann Beckler, a doctor and amateur botanist who could fulfil a dual role.

Hermann Beckler was born in the Bavarian market town of Höchstät in 1828. After studying medicine in Munich, he arrived in Australia in 1856. Inspired by the travels of his compatriot Ludwig Leichhardt, Beckler dreamed of a career as a biologist and botanist. For many years he tried to establish a medical practice to fund his passion but he struggled to earn a living, let alone undertake any journeys of his own. After a poorly paid but otherwise rewarding stint collecting specimens for Melbourne’s botanical gardens, Beckler secured the backing of Mueller and applied to join the expedition. He wrote in his application that, in addition to his duties as a medical officer, he ‘would be gratified to serve further in the capacity of botanical collector’.

Hermann Beckler, doctor and botanical collector, feared that the expedition’s scientific achievements would be ‘few and ambiguous’.

Beckler’s appointment should have been straightforward but there was some anti-German feeling in the press at the time. The appointment of a foreigner ‘bestows little credit upon the scientific qualifications of our own people’ sniffed the Leader. Since Beckler couldn’t afford a medical licence, he had to suffer the ignominy of having his abilities vetted by Professor McCoy from the Royal Society and Victoria’s chief medical officer. Both pronounced him ‘a well educated medical man’ and the controversy subsided but it left Beckler in a defensive mood as he embarked on the expedition.

The only member of the Royal Society to join Burke’s party was Ludwig Becker, the man who suggested all the leadership candidates should sit an ‘exploring exam’. Born in Darmstadt in 1808, Becker was a charming eccentric who spent several years in the goldfields armed with a sketchpad and a pet bat. He was the kind of ‘universal man’ whose armoury of talents delighted friends like Lady Denison, the wife of Tasmania’s lieutenant-governor:

He is a most amusing person, talks English badly but very energetically. I have sometimes great difficulty in keeping my countenance when I see him struggling between the rapidity of his ideas and the difficulty of giving them utterance, repeating to himself…and helping all out with an abundance of most expressive gesticulation; but I would not for the world let him see me laugh, poor man, for he is rather shy and sensitive; but with all that he is very pleasing. He is one of those universal geniuses who do anything; is a very good naturalist; geologist etc., draws and plays and sings, conjures and ventriloquises and imitates the notes of birds so accurately that the wild birds will come to him at the sound of the call. He is very fond of children, amuses and astonishes us to a great extent by his conjuring tricks and ventriloquism, and being very oddish-looking besides, with a large red beard.

Becker might have been an entertaining genius but he was always broke. He dabbled in the production of drawings and lithographs for various scientific publications in Melbourne and, when he got desperate made a little extra by drawing likenesses and caricatures.

Burke was not impressed by Becker’s character or his talent. He saw the fifty-two-year-old German as an encumbrance foisted on him by Mueller. After all, if a middle-aged scientist could cross the continent, Burke could hardly claim it was a colossal physical achievement. It was only the influence of Victoria’s governor Sir Henry Barkly that persuaded Burke to accept the appointment at all.

The Royal Society’s instructions to the scientists were as daunting as they were unrealistic. Hermann Beckler was expected to keep a diary of all the flora he observed, collect specimens in various stages of development, detail plants used by Aboriginal tribes as food and medicine, and undertake as many side-trips as possible to record the maximum number of new species. Ludwig Becker was to sketch the general terrain (with particular reference to watercourses and mineral formations) and collect and sketch specimens of all mammals, birds, fish and fossils found en route. Presumably he was expected to forgo sleep—the instructions also suggested he should pay particular attention to nocturnal mammals.

William Wills bore the heaviest burden. By day he was to keep detailed records: of distance travelled, general terrain, watercourses, water quality (including samples), geological formations, soil types (including samples), and occurrence of minerals or gems (including samples). He was to sketch specimens, draw updated maps daily, measure compass variations and record meteorological conditions, including rainfall, temperature, wind speeds, whirlwinds, thunderstorms, dust storms, mirages, refraction and magnetic observations. By night, while Becker was up collecting bats, Wills was expected to make astronomical observations including the ‘paths of meteors’ and the ‘patterns of twinkling stars’.

Ludwig Becker was appointed against Burke’s wishes as naturalist and artist. Forced to work in secret, he nevertheless produced a series of exquisite paintings and sketches.

Just in case Wills found himself with an idle moment, he also had to navigate the party across the continent. He was, after all, the only member of the party fully conversant with taking star sightings and the only man practised in using a compass and sextant. Undeterred by this impossible workload, Wills soon devised a way of working as he rode:

Riding on the camels is a much more pleasant process than I anticipated, and for my work I find it much better than riding on horseback. The saddles, as you are aware, are double, so I sit on the back portion behind the hump, and pack my instruments in front. I can thus ride on, keeping my journal and making calculations; and need only stop the camel when I want to take any bearings carefully; but the barometers can be read and registered without halting. The animals are very quiet, and easily managed, much more so than horses.

Not everyone found the camels so appealing. According to Charles Ferguson the merest sniff of the new creatures caused havoc along the route:

The caravan caused no little commotion in traversing the settled portion of the country embraced in the first few hundred miles. Cattle and horses along the route stampeded from terror at the sight, and even at the smell of the camels, wafted on the breeze in advance of their appearance. It was said that some wild horses on the ranches ran thirty miles before stopping, such is their instinctive aversion to and terror of the camel.

With the rain continuing to pelt down, no one was giving much thought to science. On the third day one of the sepoys, Samla, resigned. As a Hindu he was not allowed to eat the salt beef that was a staple of the explorers’ diet. The poor fellow had suffered in silence for two days on bread and water, before asking Landells if he could be discharged. Ludwig Becker watched as Samla ‘touched with his fingers mother Earth and then his fore-head, and blessing Mr Landells and the men near him, this good man went his way towards Melbourne, his eyes full of tears’. Four of the original recruits had now left. Burke’s response was to hire general labourers on a casual basis. Three men, Brooks, Lane and McIlwaine joined the party after it left Melbourne.

As the expedition inched north, the wagons broke down daily and the semi-submersible dray developed ‘an alarming lean to the right’. During the first week alone, it cost £83 in repairs. Everyone who watched the expedition totter past reached the same conclusion: Burke’s party had too many supplies and not enough transport. The expedition carried eight tonnes of food but this was not an excessive amount considering it had to last nineteen men between eighteen months and two years. Although Burke had the final say, it was Ferdinand Mueller who drew up the original list of supplies, based on a formula devised by Augustus Gregory. He had discovered that the minimum daily ration required to keep his men healthy was: 500 grams of salt beef or pork, 500 grams of flour, twenty-one grams of coffee or seven grams of tea, eighty-five grams of sugar and a small measure of vinegar and lime juice to prevent scurvy. Mueller’s list allowed for much the same nutritional intake but with more variety.

It was the other twelve tonnes that really slowed things down. The mounds of useless equipment were the result of an inexperienced commander with a free hand and an open chequebook. Were twelve sets of dandruff brushes and four enema kits really necessary?

Stores had been ordered in such an ad hoc manner that no one could be sure the expedition had what was essential. Even the prisoners at Melbourne’s Pentridge jail were set to work making clothing, harnesses and ironmongery. In addition, there were six tonnes of firewood, 200 kilograms of medications for the camels and horses and enough ammunition to win a small war. Luxuries were well catered for: a large bathtub, an oak and cedar table with two oak stools and forty-five yards of gossamer for fly veils. Yet the party took just two sets of field glasses, two watches and only twelve water bottles.

The most successful explorers keep meticulous records of their stores—their diaries are peppered with calculations about what remains and how long it will last—but Burke did not have the patience for such detailed analysis. Even before the expedition left, he turned the management of the stores over to Hermann Beckler, who was appalled at the indiscriminate acquisition of so much equipment:

In every respect the preparations reflected the grandiose scale intended for the expedition, but, with the exception of our victuals, our requirements were ordered and purchased on a scale out of all proportion to our means of transport. We could not tell whether this or that article was necessary or superfluous…when I returned to the hotel where Mr Burke and I were staying, he was in the habit of saying: ‘What are we going to do with all this? How are we going to move it?’

It had been intended to convey the bulk of the stores by ship via Adelaide and the Darling River as far as Menindee. Royal Society member and steamboat pioneer Captain Francis Cadell offered to provide the service free of charge. This generous proposal would dispense with the need for wagons and save the horses and camels for the more arduous terrain further north.

But just forty-eight hours before the expedition was due to depart, Burke overturned the plan. He decided that transporting the supplies via Adelaide would give the South Australians an opportunity to interfere and delay proceedings. Also, Cadell had supported Warburton in the leadership battle and Burke didn’t want to entrust the stores to a staunch opponent. The alternative was to carry everything by wagon at vast expense. Beckler protested, yet Burke was adamant. He wanted full control and he was prepared to drag twenty tonnes of equipment along 750 kilometres of unmade roads to get it. Every day for the next fifty-seven days, the men of the Victorian Exploring Expedition had to live with Burke’s decision, which meant more work, more mud and less sleep.

After the first few chaotic days a routine began to emerge. Each morning the men woke at dawn to the sound of a Chinese gong echoing through the gum trees. They crawled from their clammy woollen bedrolls and stoked up the campfire. As smoke filled the air, tea was brewed and they breakfasted on hunks of damper filled with salt beef. If the horses and camels had been tethered or kept in paddocks the night before, little time was wasted catching them, but if they had been hobbled or let loose, it might require a walk of a few kilometres to recapture them before loading could begin.

As the rain dripped through the trees, the damp leather harnesses were stiff and slippery, and the buckles difficult to tighten. It took between two and three hours to organise the packs, then hoist them onto the horses and camels using a pulley system slung over a tree branch. Often it was 9.30 before the main party set off, with Burke and the horses up ahead, followed by Landells and his camels, and the wagons grinding along behind.

The party travelled for up to twelve hours a day, coaxing their animals along the rutted tracks and stopping only for lunch and the odd smoko. The men were exhausted by the time they reached camp but they still had a couple of hours work ahead, feeding and watering the animals, unloading the supplies and mending broken equipment. By nightfall the tents were pitched, the campfire was crackling, the stew was bubbling and loaves of fresh damper sat swelling in the camp ovens. The officers retired to their tents to write up their journals and the men sat in the flickering light, smoking and telling yarns.

After a week, the expedition had only covered 100 kilometres and was camped at the hamlet of Mia Mia. Since it was a Sunday and the wagons were still bogged some kilometres behind, Burke allowed a rare day of rest. Always anxious to avoid paperwork, he gave Becker the task of sorting out the expedition’s accounts. The artist spent the day crouched in his tent copying out receipts and fending off curious spectators.

For many small towns, the arrival of the expedition was the most exciting event in years. Settlers travelled from far and wide to inspect the glamorous cast of characters they had read so much about in the newspapers. One spectator reported:

As we approached the Mia Mia hotel, we saw a long line of strange looking animals squatted alongside a fence, with their legs doubled under them, and looking for all the world like so many immense fowls, trussed for cooking. Occasional peculiar snorts emitted by the animals had a strange effect on our horses, and though we had ridden them so hard already, they seemed quite disposed to turn round and rush home again.

The next day, as the explorers attempted to strike camp, an even larger crowd of ‘bedazzled spectators’ gathered to watch them set off towards Swan Hill. That day Hermann Beckler noticed for the first time that the countryside was changing:

There is nothing more interesting than this sharp frontier between the coastal land and the inland, continental regions. The alteration in the terrain, often quite sudden, shows such an extreme change in physiognomy that one might well believe one was no longer in the same country…In a word one now finds oneself in the inland, and however far one penetrates into the heart of the continent, the landscape of the coastal fringe is left behind forever.

The small farms gave way to the more ancient panorama of the Terrick-Terrick Plains. Becker was now in open country:

The effect when one sees extensive plains for the first time is somewhat very peculiar: the plain looks like a calm ocean with green water; the horizon appears to be much higher than the point the spectator stands on, the whole plain looks concave. On you go, miles and miles, a single tree, a belt of timber appeared at the horizon affected by the mirage; you reach that belt of small trees, a Wallaby, a kangerooh-rat disturbs for a moment the monotony, and a few steps further on you are again on the green calm ocean.

The expedition may have presented an impressive tableau as it marched across the plains, but tensions were already apparent. The dynamics of a successful outfit depend to a great extent on its leader. If the commander establishes a routine and a realistic set of responsibilities during the early stages, each member remains motivated while they learn about the party’s strengths and weaknesses. Cohesion and camaraderie follow, establishing a valuable reserve of goodwill for harsher times later on.

Nurturing this delicate process is difficult at the best of times and, in the case of Burke’s party, the Exploration Committee had already planted the seeds of dissension by giving Landells ‘special responsibility’ for his ‘ships of the desert’. Burke had little patience with either the camels or the scientists but provided they maintained a reasonable pace he was happy to ignore them as far as possible. He rode on ahead, leaving Landells, Wills, Beckler and Becker to travel on foot dragging their reluctant animals through the mud.

With the rain running down their shirts and little communication from their leader, morale sagged and feelings of resentment began to germinate. Burke aggravated the situation by retiring to the nearest pub or farmhouse in the evenings, instead of camping near his men. It was Landells and Ferguson who dealt with the everyday problems of loose horses, stray camels and overloaded wagons.

Landells was worried that Burke was in too much of a hurry. The camels had little time to graze and even at this early stage the heavy conditions were beginning to take their toll. Beckler confirmed his fears. ‘Within five days the camels began to show the effects of continual rain, the gradual change of feed and camping in the open. They developed catarrhs and diarrhoea and their faeces contained their hitherto customary feed, gram [an Indian fodder], in an undigested state.’

The problem was that Burke had so much to prove. The Melbourne newspapers had jeered at his lack of experience and as the expedition passed near Bendigo, the Advertiser increased his sense of insecurity by reserving its only complimentary remarks for the noble shape of his head. Landells was singled out as a real leader:

Mr Landells is a quiet unassuming man, who improves very much upon acquaintance. He is of course the most capable man of the party, from the extensive experience of travelling in India and his thorough acquaintance of the camels upon whom the success of the expedition greatly depends, and he seems to be the only man of the lot thoroughly at ease. A robust man with a large dark beard and black peaked California hat, and with the air of a leader about him, is pointed out to us as Mr Burke. He has a large well-shaped head, which is not unlike that of the lamented Leichhardt.

That night the town’s dignitaries threw a party for the explorers, and Burke took the opportunity to defend himself, hoping that ‘the public would be patient and allow them full and fair trial, for success could not be at once attained in such an enterprise’. He and Landells retired at ten o’clock but several of the men stayed on drinking to ‘make a night of it’. Packing the camels took a little longer the next morning.

So far the reception from settlers along the way had been friendly, although not everyone appreciated the camels’ tendency to scatter livestock and the wagons’ capacity to destroy the flooded roads. Word had spread that Burke was a man in a hurry with ‘money to burn’ so the locals retaliated by charging outrageously for fodder and accommodation en route. Costs began to escalate as goods became more expensive to the north of Bendigo. Suddenly the settlements began to thin out, leaving just a scattering of shepherds’ huts and a few Aboriginal camps. Hermann Beckler climbed a small hill to take in the surreal beauty of the natural landscape:

It was a magnificent panorama which affected the observer not by any delightful or varied detail, but by the horizontal areas of various gentle hues and unbroken, one could almost say mathematical, lines. At a distance of about six miles to the south-south-west lay an isolated cone of rock called The Pyramid; a well chosen name. On the other side of the Pyramid the country was divided horizontally by lines of trees and in the far distance lay Mount Korong, hardly distinguishable in the haze. To the north-west, the unbroken line of a distant horizon defeated the eye that tried to contain it. This expanse looked arid and burnt. Towards the horizon a sombre grey-blue colour covered most of the land. Closer to us, the yellow-brown earth was spotted with countless small, dark bushes and the remnant stumps of burnt grass-trees. Here, too, the plain was divided into horizontal strips by narrow lines of low scrub whose effect made the expanse look even greater. The play of sunlight and clouds produced wonderful effects on the wide plain; light and shadow alternated in quick succession as in a diorama. Miles of land were lit up, only to be cast into deepest shadow within a few seconds. Huge clouds sailed across the sky and their shadows rolled over the land like the tatters of a gigantic, torn veil.

The weather deteriorated again and Burke was forced to schedule another rest day after the entire expedition became saturated on a thirty-four-kilometre trek towards Mount Hope. The wagons got stuck and, on his way back to retrieve them, Charles Ferguson got lost, fell into a pit and knocked himself unconscious. It was several hours before he came to and managed to rejoin the expedition.

When the bedraggled party arrived close to dark at John Holloway’s station to the north of Pyramid Hill, Becker found to his relief that extensive preparations had been made for their arrival. ‘The comfort our inner and outer man experienced was very great, the hospitable roof protected each of us against the all night lasting torrents.’ Beckler helped to revive the animals and noted that ‘Landells gave the camels tidy doses of rum to warm them; the expedition members too partook and enjoyed the stimulant with rather more enthusiasm than the camels!’

The next day the scientists caught up on their journals while Burke entertained his hosts at the piano with a selection of love songs he had learned from Julia Matthews. That evening the god-fearing Holloways insisted on a small service to pray for the expedition’s safe return. Mrs Holloway presented Burke with some religious tracts and Wills seized the opportunity to return the compliment by ridding himself of his Bible.

Three days later, on 6 September, the party reached Swan Hill on the Murray River, 320 kilometres from Melbourne. Here Burke intended to rest for a couple of days and prepare for the next leg of the journey towards Menindee, but his composure was shaken when he arrived to find an urgent telegram waiting for him. It warned that a warrant was being sought for his arrest.