Lamingtons come to Galway

It's amazing what Burke and Wills are responsible for. Check out this extract from a blog by winemaker Yalumba.

“But I’m in the Old Town on Shop Street (called that because this is where all the old shops are) right now, just a couple of doors down from Griffin’s Bakery. As I was walking past, they had what looked like lamingtons in the window and I went in to ask about them – and sure enough – it’s Australian Heritage Week and that’s exactly what they are. They only make them for this special occasion which is for the anniversary of Burke & Wills, because one of them came from right here in Galway. So I felt I had to do the patriotic thing and buy one to give it the taste test. Yep, fluffy sponge with a layer of raspberry jam in the middle, whole thing coated in thin choc sauce rolled around in coconut. They’ve added 3 dribbles of solid choc across the top – nice modification – and a lovely version of a classic. What a top introduction to the town.” http://yalumbastories.wordpress.com/

19 men

Robert O'Hara Burke left Melbourne 150 years ago this month with a party of 19, including himself. That's about the size of a footy team, which got me thinking that there are some similarities between Burke's Victorian Exploring Expedition and an AFL team down on its luck.
When you aren't winning - what do you do? You keep making changes to your side. Burke started dropping players before the kick-off. The 19 that were announced as the team on 18 August 1860 at the Royal Society Hall were not the same as those who took the field in Royal Park two days later. Burke dropped two men on the day in between, and one more on the day (turned up drunk). So he named three new players on the day.
As they trekked through Victoria, he added two more to the interchange bench. He reviewed the line-up again in Swan Hill, dropping three and picking two new recruits. One of these, Charley Gray, was subsequently to hold a key place on the forward line.
Although he'd told the Royal Society (who were the equivalent of club management) that he now had his "dream team" in place in Swan Hill, before long he decided that he could manage with less (he had salary cap problems) and the team size was reduced by four in Balranald. One of those dropped was Ferguson, who wasn't a good team player (American, you understand).
Now we get to Menindee, where there was another shakeout. Landells resigned, and Wills was moved to the forward line. The backline of Becker, Beckler et al was left behind while the rest of the team moved forward. Wright was recruited and moved toward the centre with the rest of the team, but was sent back to the back line later.
At Cooper Creek, Brahe, McDonough, Patten and Dost Mahomet stayed to hold the fort at the centre line, while the forward line of Burke, Wills, Gray and King moved goalwards at last. Their efforts were rewarded with the big score in February 1861 (although the South Australians will tell you that it really hit the post, as Burke and Wills didn't actually see the open sea, just the tidal flats).
Meanwhile, the back line was still milling about in Menindee. Wright added a three more players, then started a forward move to support the centre line. They meanwhile, with no news from the forwards and injury problems, were retreating toward the back line. The two groups met on the half back line at Bulloo, where the old injuries took a terrible toll - four men were carried off (probably by scurvy).
And the forwards? the heroes who'd kicked the big goal? When they returned to the centre, their supporters had just given up and left (a mere 9 hours before). They'd had their own injury problems, with Gray left for dead on the way back down the field. And despite some great efforts by indigenous players who'd been contributing to the play from time to time, only one of the three remaining forwards survived the season. John King was picked up by Howitt's team in September 1861, and made it back to Melbourne, as had the rest of the Expedition team by then.
But even if they didn't get back, Burke and Wills are still remembered as heading one of the most famous teams in the exploration game.

Thoughts on the Dig Tree

How wonderful it has been to see so many beautiful photos of the life-giving floodwaters surging through Australia’s northern Channel Country towards Lake Eyre. The country that the waters are flowing through includes one of our most significant heritage sites: The Dig Tree.

This coolabah tree, situated on the north shore of Coopers Creek, has lived for over 150 years. It has born witness to one of the most tragic and terribly ironic failures of communication that took place beneath its boughs on 21 April, 1861.

To understand its significance, imagine what it was like to set off from Melbourne on an expedition to discover the interior of Australia at a time when there were no maps, no cars, no mobile phones, no emails, no GPS. Imagine yourself riding a horse or a camel with the intention of discovering the interior of our vast island continent, hoping to find an inland sea – and then to travel to the far north, wondering all the time what kind of edge the continent had made with the far distant sea?

The first team of European explorers to cross the continent was led by Burke and Wills. They set off from Melbourne 150 years ago. The immense significance of the Dig Tree is a story of a failure of communication. Burke’s team came back from the arduous expedition to the Gulf of Carpentaria, exhausted and out of food, expecting to find a base camp at the Dig Tree. But no-one was there. Brahe and Wright had left about 4 hours earlier! They had the decency to dig a hole and bury food and provisions in case Burke’s party did return. The explorers found the cache beneath the tree which gave them enough food to survive for more than two months more. Had they stayed beneath its sheltering branches they would have been found when Brahe and Wright returned. Instead the explorers wandered off into South Australia where Burke and Wills died. They left no trace of having been at the Dig Tree. If they'd carved another message in its bark before leaving, Brahe and Wright would have known, when they returned to the tree, that they were still alive somewhere.

Think about this story and what it means for the way Australia has developed its own unique culture. Dig this... AMP (formerly one of Australia’s leading Mutual Societies, still a major insurance company) ran an ad for many years that said this:

“The Dig Tree is on a small tract of Australian Heritage land at “Nappa Merrie” cattle station, one of the Stanbroke Pastoral Company chain. And Stanbroke is just a part of AMP’s investment portfolio - Australia’s most substantial. AMP is a MUTUAL society investing the savings of nearly 2 million Australians. So in many ways the lives of AMP Policy holders are interwoven with the history of this country”.

The story has inspired art, music, writers of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, even the writers of advertisements!

Pera Wells

Musings on the myth

Why is the story of Burke and Wills so important in the Australian psyche? Manning Clark, one of our most notable historians, had this to say:

The story of Burke and Wills could be told to illustrate many things about life. Like all great stories it had everything. It had a mighty spirit, Robert O’Hara Burke, destroyed by a ‘fatal flaw’. It could told to show that when chance conspires with a man who suffers from attacks of the ‘sillies’, then all the inventions of science, all the material progress of mankind is powerless to save him from the fruits of his folly. It could be told as a story about the evils of snobbery, with a special glance at ‘poor Charlie Gray’ as a victim of such snobbery. It could be told as a story of how the great bond between Burke and Wills, the affection they felt for each other, contributed to their deaths. It could also be told as a story of a man who was trying to prove something to a woman who, in turn, was never going to be impressed by Robert O’Hara Burke even if he had raised the dead once again into the land of the living.

To feel the full force of that tragedy one has to stand on the banks of Cooper’s Creek at the spot where Wills died. Right to the very end Wills had believed, like Mr Micawber, that something might turn up. Then, when he knew his death was very near he had the courage to tell his father his religious opinions had not changed. Like Hamlet he believed: the rest is silence. On that same spot a few months later the man who led the expedition to find his remains, A. W. Howitt, an agnostic, read the words of St Paul: ‘For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised.’ The most difficult thing of all for a historian is to learn how to tell his story so that something is added to the facts, something about the mystery at the heart of things.

Manning Clark Manning Clark: Occasional Writings and Speeches Fontana Books 1980 pp 69-70. Originally presented in 1976 in a series of Boyer lectures. One wonders whether, if Clark had been speaking in (say) 1996 or later, he might have added: ‘It could be told to show what white Australia can lose by treating the ‘natives’ with disdain or contempt.’