The Dig Tree

Sarah Murgatroyd

Text Publishing (2002)

The so-called Dig Tree is a marked tree in the country near Innaminka in outback Australia. This lonely artifact on the edge of a billabong on Cooper Creek marks one of the saddest points in Australia’s history. The tree still stands as a monument to colonial rivalries, the British class system and one of the most inept explorers ever to head an expedition in Australia.

The Burke and Wills Expedition as it was later christened is fully detailed in Sarah Murgatroyd’s book. Unfortunately she died young at 35 years of cancer before it was published but her legacy is a detailed account of the expedition, its people and the reason for its failure. The book is a very easy read and despite the time that has passed she is able, from the remaining records, to make the characters human for us.

In the 1860s the Overland Telegraph was coming to Australia. Both Victoria and South Australia wanted to be its terminus. The problem was the huge expanse of totally unknown country in the middle of Australia. A route would have to be found that a construction crew could follow and it would need regular waterholes so telegraph repeater stations could be set up along the way. An intrepid explorer would have to cross Australia from south to north to find this route. John McDouall Stuart had already mounted two expeditions from Adelaide and had been turned back both times by the central Australian deserts. It had cost him his health and very nearly his eyesight but he was now ready to try again.

The Royal Society of Victoria decided they should mount a competing expedition and selected a police commissioner, Robert O”Hara Burke, to head it. Burke had no exploring experience whatever but he had been in the Navy and Army and was regarded as “the right sort of person” in the class-conscious aristocracy of the time. His expedition contained a collection of scientists, camel drivers and even a couple of bushmen. William John Wills was the expedition’s surveyor and navigator, as accurate maps would be needed for the Telegraph engineers to follow as they built the line.

Burke’s lack of experience showed even before the expedition set out. He had over 20 tons of equipment including a timber dining table, stretcher, Chinese gong, a Union Jack and, of course, silver cutlery (for the officers). The camels and wagons were desperately overloaded before they left Melbourne and the first one bogged down in the park where they had assembled. Somehow the expedition got as far as Menindie (now Menindee) where Burke, rash and unwilling to consider the consequences of his decisions, decided to split the party. The slower wagons would come on later and he would take most of the expedition’s transport and establish a forward depot at some suitable place.

That place was Cooper Creek. The surplus transport animals were never sent back to bring up the rest of the stores. Transport at Menindie was not available as the expedition had run out of credit and the Royal Society had no more money. At the Cooper Creek depot Burke impulsively decided to split the party again. He was going to rely on a dash to the north coast that would make him the first man to cross Australia and therefore beat John McDouall Stuart, his South Australian rival. He could be back at the depot within a couple of months, he believed. He directed the depot manager, Brahe, to wait two months then assume he was dead or had gone back through Queensland, and to return to Menindie. In a later conflicting instruction (these changes of instructions were typical of Burke) he directed Brahe to remain at the depot regardless of circumstances. More realistic, Wills privately begged Brahe to stay at least three months if he could in case they ran late – by this stage Burke’s impulsiveness and complete lack of ability was becoming obvious to all.

The summer was beginning so travelling conditions were atrocious. When they were far enough north they ran into the monsoon belt, where the heat and humidity sapped their strength and that of the horses and camels. Burke almost made it to the coast but Wills’ instruments were damaged and their exact location was uncertain. The trip back was worse. Burke’s inexperience had led him to underestimate the amount of food needed and the men were starving. In his desperate attempts to get back to Cooper Creek he overstressed the animals and they began to die of exhaustion. They struggled back into the depot after more than three months to find Brahe had left only that morning in his own desperate attempt to get back to Menindie, since the promised relief had not arrived. He had carved a message on a tree “DIG 3 feet NW” and at that spot he buried supplies just in case Burke was still alive.

Rather than follow him towards Menindie, Burke now made his final blunder. He decided to head for a lonely Police outpost further west. Had he kept going to Menindie a relief group would have found him. Instead all the survivors now perished except one, King, who was cared for by a local aboriginal tribe.

When the news reached Melbourne it became a scandal. The Royal Society was vilified and was forced to hold an enquiry. From the start it was obvious that Brahe and King were going to be the scapegoats. The book covers the politics of the time quite well and we can only sympathise with the survivors whose ordeal was not yet over.

Expeditions were sent out to recover the bodies of Burke and Wills (but not the others). These expeditions were run by competent bushmen and it is notable that despite covering the same territory they didn’t lose a single man between them. It was one of these expeditions that found King, barely alive. The success of these expeditions only highlighted Burke’s stupidity, but defeat was turned into victory by giving the two bodies a State Funeral and making them into heroes. In Adelaide at the same time John McDouall Stuart’s returning expedition was being given a heroes’ welcome. He had crossed the continent further west, on a route that the Overland Telegraph and the appropriately-named Stuart Highway later followed.

We owe Sarah Murgatroyd a great deal for this book. For too long much of Australia’s history has been superficial and the details were the province of academics. My memories of the Expedition as taught in school were summed up as “They set out to cross Australia. They died. They were heroes”. That is a long way from the truth and this excellent book tries to set the record straight.

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This review will appear in Volume 3 No.1 of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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