‘He who does not travel does not know the value of men.’
Moorish proverb
Nearly all Swan Hill’s 140 residents turned out to greet the explorers as they rode in triumph past the town’s twelve buildings. Burke’s euphoria was short-lived. He dismounted to find the telegram threatened him with imprisonment for a dishonoured personal cheque for £96. A bounced cheque was a serious matter. It could endanger Burke’s standing with the Royal Society and particularly with Sir William Stawell. In panic, he scribbled two letters to his friend Richard Nash, apologising and explaining that he had not expected ‘that infernal cheque’ to be presented for at least six months. Burke asked Nash to stand security for his debt (which he did), but since his letters would take several days to reach Melbourne he had no way of knowing if the matter had been resolved.
Swan Hill was not a happy town for explorers. Thomas Mitchell named it in temper after the birds kept him awake at night. Burke’s stay was plagued by indecision. He fretted about the cheque and worried that gossip about the expedition’s sluggish progress and soaring costs would find its way back to Melbourne. The wagons were still three days adrift, their drivers were demanding more pay by the hour and Burke was becoming more and more disorganised. Charles Ferguson remarked later:
He was kind and generous to a fault but let anything happen out of the routine he was confused, then excited until finally he would lose all control of his better judgement. Then again when he had made up his mind to do something he never considered the consequences. He had thorough discipline and no one dared to presume to contradict him.
The arrival of the Royal Society’s Georg Neumayer only increased Burke’s paranoia. The professor joined the explorers in Swan Hill as part of his survey of the earth’s magnetism. He intended to travel with the party towards Menindee, a small settlement by the Darling River.
During the next five days, Burke wrote four dispatches to the committee, each one more defensive than the last. Desperate to prove he was economising he announced that ‘any man in future joining the party will supply themselves with clothing at their own cost and any additional article of clothing requested by any member of the party will deducted from their pay’. The bestequipped expedition of its age was now asking its men to pay for their own trousers.
Nearly three weeks into the journey, Burke began to realise that his party was being crippled by the weight of its supplies. He pondered his dilemma. The committee was insisting that he get rid of the wagons as soon as possible but, having refused Cadell’s offer of river transport, how else was he to carry all his supplies to the proposed depot at Cooper Creek?
Having placed himself in an impossible situation, Burke needed to cover his back. He called his officers together to secure their support, then wrote to the committee justifying their ‘joint decision’ to retain the wagons as far as Menindee:
I am well aware that our baggage is cumbersome and that a time will I hope soon come when we shall be obliged to have the greater part of it behind us, but to do so now, before having established our Depot upon the Darling, where every article may be of the greatest service, would I think be a most dangerous injudicious proceeding.
If I had lost this opportunity of conveying the stores, it would have retarded the progress of the expedition and might prove fatal to it; it would be impossible for us to move them without assistance; within the next month or six weeks the road will be impracticable for drays for want of feed and water and will continue so in all probability for the next eight or ten months.
The idea of a depot on the Darling River was new. In suggesting it, Burke was deviating from his instructions to form the expedition’s base camp at Cooper Creek. So was the Darling camp an addition to the original plan or a replacement for it? Burke most likely realised that it would be as much as he could do to drag his entire outfit as far as Menindee. After that, he would have to improvise.
While Burke scrambled to protect his reputation, the rest of the party enjoyed Swan Hill’s hospitality. The camels were the star attractions, especially amongst the local Aboriginal children. They seemed ‘intoxicated with joy and excitement’ at the sight of the ‘big emus with four legs’ and scampered about ‘with the delight of school children at their first circus’. The expedition had been travelling through the territories of Aboriginal people including the Boonwurrung, Yorta-Yorta, Taungurong, Wadi-Wadi and the Woiworung. Only Ludwig Becker paid them any attention. He noted down scraps of their languages, recorded their traditional songs and documented the local customs he saw along the way:
Several natives sat on the ground, among them was a couple of women whose faces were painted in such a manner as to give the head the appearance of a skull, when seen from a distance; round the eyes was drawn with white paint, a circle, an inch broad, and the hair of one woman tied up closely and covered with a piece of cloth, while the other lubra had her hair painted or rather smeared over with the same white colour, giving her head a still more skull-like appearance. I found that this mode of painting the faces is a habit met with as far as the Darling; it is a sign of mourning for relations…
The expedition’s last day in Swan Hill, 11 September, turned into something of a party. Picnics were laid out near the camp and the braver souls took rides on the camels. It was late afternoon before they made it to the Murray River pursued by a cheering crowd. That evening Beckler declared that their riverside campsite in the heart of Wemba-Wemba Aboriginal country was the most beautiful so far:
The delightful thing in this landscape is the graceful grouping, the roundness and opulence of the trees and shrubs. The peace, the tranquillity that is poured over this landscape and the parklike neatness of the whole area so satisfies our innermost souls that we revel in beholding it. Not one barren spot, no stony ground (scarcely even a solitary stone), no tree skeletons, barely even single dead tree-trunk disturb the impression of a landscape filled with exuberant life.
Swan Hill seemed reluctant to relinquish the explorers to the desert—the next morning there was another rowdy farewell as the party was bombarded with old boots and handfuls of rice for good luck. One observer noticed that Burke wiped his eyes and seemed ‘visibly affected by the genuine kindness he had met with from all ranks’.
The party that crossed the Murray was very different from the one that had rolled out of Melbourne three weeks earlier. Only fourteen of the original nineteen members remained. At Swan Hill, Burke discharged the sepoy Esau Khan, who had become too ill to work. He also let go Brooks, Lane and John Polongeaux, a Frenchman, whom he had enthusiastically hired near Bendigo a few days earlier. Four new men joined the expedition. Alexander MacPherson was a blacksmith and saddler, William Hodgkinson a journalist, and Charley Gray an ex-sailor. Robert Bowman had previously accompanied both Augustus and Charles Gregory on expeditions in northern and central Australia. Bowman had tried to join the expedition in Melbourne. Aside from the Gregory brothers he was probably the most experienced explorer in Australia and a valuable addition to Burke’s outfit.
With so many people coming and going, it was difficult to establish any sense of unity. In particular, the men disliked their high-handed foreman Charles Ferguson. Sensing that there was an ‘underhand current’ working against him, the American made things worse when he publicly dismissed his subordinates as ‘knowing nothing of hard work…ignorant of bush life, and conseqently wholly unfit for an expedition of any kind’. When Ferguson began to complain about his pay, Burke retaliated by attempting to reduce his salary even further. A row ensued in which the foreman threatened to resign. Burke backed down. Ferguson stayed on.
It took the remodelled party three days to reach the hamlet of Balranald in New South Wales. The journey had been dogged by bad weather yet again and the roads were now so bad that the wagon drivers insisted their loads be reduced or their horses would collapse in their harnesses. The result was an impromptu public auction. After hauling his supplies at great expense for more than 400 kilometres, Burke chose to sell off a valuable selection of his equipment in the middle of nowhere. Some things (two full sets of blacksmiths’ tools, assorted firearms, the camel stretcher) had always been superfluous but many explorers would have regarded other items as essential. In particular, supplies of lime juice were jettisoned, which had been purchased to prevent scurvy.
To cut costs further, Burke decided to discharge six more men at Balranald, yet for all his military training, he had trouble confronting anyone with bad news. Wills recognised that he was ‘human and tender hearted as a woman’ but hid it with a ‘brusquerie wholly external’. Instead of paying the men and letting them go, Burke fudged the issue. He told Becker, Ferguson, Brahe, Langan, McIlwaine and Belooch to stay behind at Balranald, assuring them he would send for them later on.
For several hours the camp was on the brink of mutiny. Ferguson challenged his leader to a fight and had to be restrained. At first, Burke insisted that he wanted the American to stay, but later he called Ferguson aside and told him, ‘I cannot on my conscience deceive you. You surmised right; it was just as you thought. I intended to leave you before but I could not tell you of it.’ Burke then offered to retain Ferguson and Langan at reduced salaries. When they refused, he issued their wage cheques—but since shopkeepers and bank-tellers knew that the expedition was in financial trouble, no one was willing to cash them.
Burke must have changed his mind again because a few hours later Becker, Brahe and Belooch rejoined the main party and no more was said about their dismissal. He was, however, determined to rid himself of Ferguson, Langan and McIlwaine, who chased the party for thirty-five kilometres to beg for enough money to return to Melbourne. When the trio turned south, they were united in their threats to sue Burke for wrongful dismissal. Revealing a prodigious talent for denial, Burke wrote later to the committee: ‘In conclusion, I beg leave to state that the best possible spirit animates both officers and men, and that we shall do everything in our power to bring the enterprise to a successful conclusion.’
This debacle did nothing to improve the Irishman’s reputation. In Balranald, the general opinion was that he was ‘thoroughly deficient in experience’. Settlers noticed that ‘Camping places were not selected until after dark, sometimes till after midnight, when it could not be seen whether there might be any food for the cattle [camels] or not. At every camp, lots of tools, axes and spades were left.’ As the expedition left for Menindee, Beckler confided that ‘Mr Burke became somewhat impatient at this point, both with the slowness and with the very difficult progress of the wagons. He therefore decided to travel ahead with the expedition party and the camels and leave the wagons to follow under my supervision.’
The plan was a disaster. Against local advice, Burke decided that instead of following the recognised track from Balranald to the Darling River, he would cut across country. Beckler was exasperated. ‘Why did we have to experiment just here? It was the “shortest route”, the straight line that once again led Mr Burke into temptation.’ Burke’s route took his party across ‘mallee country’, a vast undulating tangle of rusty sandhills, anchored by thousands of distinctive multi-stemmed mallee trees. Locals commented that ‘no one knows who invented the mallee, but the devil is strongly suspected’.
The terrain was monotonous and confusing. Beckler branded it a ‘wild wasteland…oppressive to the highest degree’ and ‘hell on earth’ for the wagon drivers:
The misery for the horses really began at this point…they were required to draw their wagons through wild desert and through deep loose sand and pathless mallee scrub…The wagon wheels sank deep into the soil as did the horses and we were often forced to come to the aid of one or the other half-buried wagon wheel with a shovel. After minutes of gradually increasing shouting and yelling, often to the point of despair, the horses were perhaps able to pull together, only then to stop exhausted again a few paces further on. The wagoners all became so hoarse that they could hardly utter an audible word.
While Burke rode on ahead with Wills, the wagons crawled through the heavy sand at just one or two kilometres an hour. The men were so worn out they could barely be bothered to set up camp. One night, a sudden thunderstorm forced Ludwig Becker to share a tent ‘rather too temporarily pitched’ with Hermann Beckler. When a strong wind sprang up the next morning:
The first gust carried our tent into the air, together with the two saplings we had used as supporters—it came down again and fell right over me; my head had a narrow escape from being crushed as one of the poles fell alongside of it. The Doctor found himself in the open air and I was nearly suffocated under the pressure of the canvas before I could extricate myself. The scene was one of great confusion, at the same time to me so ludicrous that I could not help laughing, while the Doctor held a different opinion.
By 25 September, just over a week after leaving Balranald, the draught horses were too exhausted to go any further. They were unhitched and driven on to a waterhole, leaving the wagons abandoned in the scrub. Far from saving time, Burke’s ‘short cut’ meant that the forward party had to traverse the mallee country three times in order to rescue the wagons.
No one was surprised when Georg Neumayer announced his intention to return to Melbourne. He had finished collecting his ‘magnetic data’ and was anxious to return to the city. Since the professor had ridden on ahead for much of the time, he avoided the fiasco of the stricken wagons and formed a largely positive (if misguided) impression of the expedition’s prospects. In fact Burke, Wills and Neumayer had become increasingly friendly as they rode across the mallee country together. On 28 September, as Neumayer was packing up, the three men sat up into the night, discussing the possibility of sending a relief vessel to the north coast to meet the expedition. It was agreed that Burke would write to the committee from Menindee if he decided such a ship were necessary.
Despite their new closeness, Burke was relieved at Neumayer’s departure. No sooner had he disappeared over the horizon than Burke started to dismantle any remaining vestige of scientific credibility surrounding the expedition. Free at last to do as he pleased without reports being taken back to the Royal Society, Burke confronted the scientists on 1 October. It was the mild-mannered Becker who bore the brunt of his dissatisfaction:
Before we marched Mr Burke told us that, from today, we had to walk inch for inch, all the way up to the Gulf of Carpentaria, as all the camels and horses were required to carry stores etc. To Dr Beckler and me he said: ‘now Gentleman from this time you have to give up your scientific investigations but to work like the rest of the men, as long as you are on the road or not free from camp-duties; at the same time you have to limit your materials and other things required for your investigating, to the utmost, in numbers as well as in weight and size of the parcel.’
Burke told all his men that henceforth they would be allowed just fifteen kilograms of personal equipment each. For the scientists, this meant leaving behind nearly all their instruments—from now on they were little more than glorified camel hands. Hermann Beckler trimmed his medical supplies to a minimum and reduced his personal belonging to the following items:
Kit bag made of oil-cloth ½ kilogram
1 pair of shoes 1½ kilograms
3 flannel shirts 1½ kilograms
2 pairs of flannel trousers 1½ kilograms
1 pair of canvas trousers 1 kilogram
Bedding, that is:
1 double woollen blanket 3½ kilograms
1 piece of oil cloth 2 kilograms
1 poncho 4 kilograms
Assorted items:
Shoes, socks, handkerchiefs, towels, books 4½ kilograms
Total 20 kilograms
Then, Burke turned on Landells. He insisted that in order to lighten the wagons, each camel would have to carry an extra 180 kilograms. With heavy rain and thunderstorms drenching the campsite, the stores were reorganised yet again. The new regime brought nothing but misery for Becker:
Last night was very cold with hoarfrost in the morning. Having had no sleep for the last two nights but plenty of hard work during the day-time I felt somewhat unwell, however I began work as usual at 5 o’clock in the morning. We commenced saddling and loading the camels and were ready to start by 11 o’clock. As I have said already 400 lbs was nearly each camel’s share, mostly consisting of bags of flower and sugar; each of these bags weighed 200 lb, and as each camel had to carry two of them which being fastened together before they were put on the pack-saddle, it is easy to understand that 4 men were required to lift this weight into the air and then let it carefully down on the camel’s back; this had to be done a dozen times. It is the most exhausting kind of labour and the new canvas bags soon told upon our fingernails—half of mine were split and bent.
None of us was told how far or how long we had this day, or rather the rest of this day, to travel, and as nothing but tea and biscuit with a little cold mutton was served out early in the morning, and we had no food before starting, I thought, in a few hours we would halt on some waterhole to take there the required nourishment—but nothing of that kind was allowed: we marched on without rest and food for twenty-four miles over high hills covered with a deep, loose sand, and arrived at night at a plain containing some water. I had no food for nearly three days; partly in consequence of my own indisposition, and no sleep for two nights, and had to pull, in the heat of the day, three camels for 24 miles through the most wretched country—it was quite natural I should feel weak. It was about sunset when I asked Mr Landells to stop only 5 minutes so as to be able to recover myself as I felt like fainting. Mr Landells answered: I cannot stop; loaded camels won’t rise again when once allowed to lie down; give me your camels, take rest if you require it, and follow at leisure. Fortunately for me that, when leaving the camp, I had picked up a thrown-away empty gunpowder flask, large enough to hold 4 ounces of water, which I had found at noon in a small clay-pan, and these few drops now enabled me to reach Mr Landells camp just in time to hear the order ‘now then Mr Becker, look sharp, unload your camels!’ and so I did of course.
Becker’s suffering was no accident. In a letter to his friend Frederick Standish, Burke revealed:
You should have seen old B——’s face upon my announcing that all the officers would have to act as working men, and that we shall only carry 30 lb weight of baggage for each man. Loading four camels and then marching 20 miles is no joke.
The first two days of it nearly cooked poor B——, and I think he will not be able to stand it much longer.
Burke ordered Landells not to let Becker ride at all, but to ‘walk him until he gave in’, and as part of his cruel campaign, he also barred him from any scientific activities:
Now a direct order was given by Mr Burke, that I had to give up all scientific observations until further orders.—To obey these different commands I was obliged to use the night. When all in the camp were asleep or at rest, I sat them up writing or sketching till midnight; This sort of work robbed me night after night three hours sleep and many times I slept in 24 hours only four. If you further consider that in consequence of the hard and rough work I had to perform during day-time my finger and finger-nails were in a pitiable condition, it is easily understood that under these circumstances pursuing science is rather a heavy task. However, I did what I could and not less.
A beleaguered Ludwig Becker refused to give up. Despite the ‘ruinous work’ attending the camels, he still managed to complete seven beautiful sketches on his way to the Darling. He had become the unwitting object of a power struggle between Burke and Landells that was fuelled by ignorance and mismanagement. As the expedition approached the Darling River, it threatened to blow the party apart.
George Landells was incensed that the camels were fully loaded before the expedition had even reached the edge of the desert. According to Beckler:
Landells’ basic principle was to watch over and care for the camels as long as possible and not to over burden them, in order to have them as strong and fresh as possible when forced marches, principally resulting from lack of water, would become necessary. This strategy was, without doubt, correct. However, Burke was not just impatient with the progress of the expedition in general but, as he often complained to me, with the camels in particular. Because until now they had run away frequently, because they had moved more slowly than the horses and because they naturally took a greater length of time to load, he no longer placed much confidence in them.
Burke’s hostility towards the camels led to a shift in alliances. Landells was left to his own devices and at the same time, both Becker and Beckler begin to mention that ‘Mr Wills was left in charge’ of certain matters. Burke was sidelining his deputy and confiding more and more in his surveyor.
Late on 2 October the expedition reached Bilbarka on the Darling River. Here Burke learned that a steamer, the Moolgewanke, was heading north to Menindee. Better still, it was owned by a certain Captain Johnston and had nothing to do with Burke’s enemy Francis Cadell. Seizing the opportunity to rid himself of ‘those accursed impediments’, the wagons, Burke ordered his men to prepare the stores so that eight tonnes of equipment could be loaded onto the steamer. While this was being done, Burke continued to bicker with his deputy, sending ripples of tension running through the camp. Their latest disagreement centred on the 270 litres of rum that Landells had insisted on bringing as medicine for the camels.
Modern camel experts dismiss the idea of rum as a camel pick-me-up, but there is a story often told in Menindee that Landells wanted the liquor to preserve the camels’ feet. It is known that urine with a high alcohol content stiffens leather, and it may have been that the camel driver intended his men to drink the rum and then use their urine to toughen the animals’ feet before they reached the stony desert regions. A less elaborate explanation suggests Landells brought the rum so he could sell it on the black market en route.
Whether their urine was put to good use or not, several members of the expedition had already experimented enthusiastically with the rum’s restorative properties. Then on 7 October a group of shearers from the nearby Phelps sheep station broke into the expedition’s store and helped themselves to as much liquor as they could drink. Stories of drunkenness made their way back to Melbourne and into the Age: ‘It seems that, among the other bad habits acquired by contact with human beings, the camels are addicted to that of tippling raw spirits, and they have a special liking for rum.’ Burke was furious. He confronted Landells and demanded that the rum be left behind. ‘Early in the day I heard Mr Burke talking, in front of his tent, very loud to Mr Landells;’ Becker wrote, ‘the nature or the object of that communication seemed to me to be a disagreeable one to both of them.’ Burke accused Landells of pampering the camels, slowing down the expedition and constantly offering the wrong advice. Landells stormed off, saying Burke was a madman who would get them all killed:
His conduct throughout has displayed such want of judgement, candour, and decision, as at once to destroy my entire confidence and respect. Indeed, that conduct has been altogether of such an extraordinary character, that I have on several occasions grave doubts about his sanity. His temper was quite ungovernable. He usually carried loaded firearms, and I often was fearful that he would use them dangerously while in a passion.
Accounts differ on how the quarrel was resolved but, whatever the details, the result was melodramatic and undignified. According to Landells, Burke burst into tears and begged his deputy to stay, saying, ‘My God! I never thought you would leave me, as I have great dependence in you. Come on: I hope none of the men have seen this.’ According to Burke, Landells wanted to return to Melbourne, claiming he had only ever agreed to go as far as the Darling. According to Wills, Landells maintained he had a ‘secret agreement’ with the committee and would continue only if he had complete control over the camels. When Burke threatened to withhold his pay for ‘disgraceful behaviour’, Landells backed down and agreed to stay on.
Wills’ prominent role in the proceedings revealed his growing influence on the management of the expedition. The surveyor respected Landells’ work with the camels but nevertheless decided he was:
nothing of a gentleman, either in manners or feeling…sentimental, good natured, more particularly towards dumb animals, and, as a natural concomitant selfish in the extreme, mildly persevering, and perseveringly mild; but, at the same time, he must always make people dislike him, from his unmannerly diffidence and want of substance.
While the camp seethed with gossip, the camels, all of them, took it into their heads to vanish into the bush. Hodgkinson, King, McDonough and Dost Mohomet set out to find them, but only succeeded in losing themselves. Landells and Belooch then failed to locate either the men or the camels, forcing Burke and Becker to wander around lighting fires and sounding the Chinese gong to guide everyone home. King, McDonough, Dost Mohomet, Landells and Belooch returned that night but Hodgkinson did not come back until noon the next day. No one found the camels.
This enraged Burke so much that he considered abandoning the camels altogether. Becker reported a further series of fierce arguments between the leader and his deputy but was reluctant to record the details. It was only when Burke paid an Aboriginal tracker £5 that the camels were located. ‘Them long-neck yarrowman’ were grazing just a kilometre away from the camp.
The Moolgewanke arrived on 9 October and the supplies were transferred to the steamer. The rum was left behind at Phelps station along with assorted boxes of stores. When the party finally departed for Menindee on 11 October, the atmosphere was tense. Determined to prove he could keep pace with the horses, Landells drove the camels long into the night and poor Becker was once again caught in the crossfire:
It was a most harazing affair; beside this neither myself nor Mr. Landells were sufficiently prepared to go on in this way, we had no food and no water, and the moon was down—but a few matches assisted us in looking for the track. On we went for miles and miles; Mr Landells, staggering in front, was scarcely able to keep himself free from falling asleep; I, behind, pulling the camels and looking out anxiously for our camp-fire…One disappointment followed the other till half an hour before midnight when we reached the long longed for halting-place. We found everyone asleep, however the cook willingly assisted us in getting a drop of tea. It was near two o’clock before our overtaxed limbs were allowed to rest. We had travelled this day 22 miles.
Three days later on 14 October, Becker’s horse trod on his foot, ‘splitting the nail of the big toe’, and ‘forcing one half of it through the flesh down to the bone’. The accident left the artist barely able to walk and Burke was forced to allow him to ride one of the horses.
By pushing his animals to the limit, Landells arrived in Menindee on 15 October just twenty-four hours after Burke. He and his exhausted animals pulled up under the shade of the river red gums on the banks of the Darling, and the camel driver went triumphantly to report his arrival. But it was not Burke who awaited him in the leader’s tent. It was Wills. The young surveyor calmly told Landells that he was fired.
In a calculated act of humiliation, Landells had been sacked by a junior officer. Landells accused Burke of insanity. The Irishman responded by branding his deputy a scoundrel and challenged him to a duel with pistols. Landells refused, saying he had come to ‘fight the desert’, not his commanding officer. He tendered his resignation once more, this time in writing. Burke scrawled on the back: ‘Since that time I believe that he has been doing everything in his power to obstruct my orders.’
The next morning, as if to prove he could dispense with Landells’ expertise, Burke had the camels lined up and fitted with special ropes attached to their nose-pegs. The animals bellowed as one by one they were led towards the slippery riverbank. To Landells’ consternation, the camels were about to be swum across the Darling in defiance of his recommendation that they be ferried over by boat. Camels can swim quite well provided they are not too fat. If the hump is too heavy, they tend to overbalance and drown. The men kicked the dirt in embarrassment as yet another argument broke out and raised voices began to echo up and down the river.
Burke deliberately placed Wills in command of the operation, declaring that if such a ‘trifling obstacle’ as the Darling River was enough to stop the animals, then they ‘would be of little use upon the contemplated journey’. As Landells stood glowering on the sidelines, each camel swam across the muddy waters. His humiliation was complete. He packed his bags and made immediate arrangements to travel back to Melbourne. It was Wills who informed the rest of the party of Landells’ resignation. By nightfall his position was official—Burke had promoted him to the post of deputy leader.
Landells’ departure sent the camp into a frenzy of speculation about what would happen next. Beckler made the first move. Later that evening, he too announced his resignation. ‘It was no little matter for me,’ he admitted, ‘to draw back from a wish nurtured so ardently and for so long as this expedition, to renounce so suddenly what had been a fervent desire.’
The expedition had only been in Menindee two days and already the tumultuous events had provided the settlement with more excitement than it had ever seen before. Rumours swirled down the Darling and resurfaced in newspaper editorials nearer Melbourne:
The opinion of parties able to judge on the Darling is that Mr Burke will not be able to make any more than 200 miles beyond the settled districts this season, and that he is not the right man for the work he has undertaken. It is stated that instead of making himself agreeable to the men, he harasses them soldier style and in going to camp at night will not allow a man to dismount until he gives the word, although he may be a mile away.
The Victorian Exploring Expedition had disintegrated on the easiest section of the journey and was now lying in tatters on the edge of the desert. The journey of 750 kilometres from Melbourne to Menindee had taken fifty-six days—a horseman could ride it in ten. Of the nineteen original recruits, eleven had resigned or been dismissed. Eight more men had been hired. Five of these had also left. Burke had lost 60 per cent of his staff.
The most significant departure, aside from Landells, was that of the experienced hand Robert Bowman. It seems he could not bear the ineptitude paraded before him daily. Beckler noted that Bowman ‘did not like it with us at all and left us after only a few days’. Another account says that Bowman was ‘so imprudent on one occasion as to contrast the superior skill of Gregory with the bungling of the Victorian leader’.
Now, perched on the outskirts of European civilisation, Burke faced the challenge of rescuing the expedition before it disappeared behind the ‘shimmering veils’ of the desert. From now on there would be no tracks, no signposts and no local information, save for the wisdom of the indigenous people who lived along the route. The next stage of the journey would take him to the very edge of the map—to the giant coolibah trees that stood on the banks of Cooper Creek.