The Explorers (24 page)

Whilst partaking of this repast the chief Mannalargenna said his spirit told him that the natives was on an adjacent hill looking at them. Though I felt convinced it was a delusion, yet in order to gratify his whim I sent two of the native men to see if there was any footmarks of natives. They shortly returned and had seen no signs of native footmarks or any indications whatever.

The strange native woman whom I had brought from the gaol and who belonged to the Big River tribe informed her husband Umurrah that she knew where there was plenty of guns and spears concealed. Tom and Umarrah informed me accordingly and it was agreed that the woman should conduct me to the place and that I should get them accordingly. This is another strong and striking proof of their confidence in me. These firearms had been taken by her countrymen in their attacks upon the whites and when she was present, and now she is desirous to make atonement by restoring them to the whites again.

One of the native women, Sail, found a bulbous plant called by the white people ‘native bread', which they gave to me as a present.† At 4 p.m. came to the top of a hill and was informed by my natives that the white man's house was close by, and at the same time they showed me a tree which the white men had cut. I had not intended approaching so close to the whites lest my party should be discovered by stockkeepers, in which case I apprehended that some of my natives might get shot, as the practice of this class of individuals is to come upon them and to fire at them—a similar practice to the blacks in their attacks upon the whites—unless fear seizes the white and he seeks his safety by flight. I cautioned my natives and said if the whites saw them they would shoot them. They replied that they could see the whites first, and that they could not always shoot straight…

25 October—…Set off travelling in a south-east direction and with a view to procure the spears and guns which the native woman of the Big River tribe had disclosed and which had been concealed by her and the Oyster Bay tribe. She said there was two places where they had those various death instruments concealed.

In our way the natives showed me a dead tree where there was native bread growing. I saw no signs myself; they smelt the wood and said the plant was a long way in the ground. The natives showed me a bird's nest built in a hole in the ground, with three small white eggs. The bird resembled the honey bird, but smaller. Crossed the head of Prosser River and decamped in a small meadow on its banks, the natives having assured me that no grass would be met with after leaving this place.

Leaving the baggage and some of the people at this encampment I set off with five black men and the native woman of the Big River tribe to procure the muskets and spears which she had previously divulged to having been concealed. This woman led us over several stony hills covered with thick forest and across gullies. On arriving at a small grass plot enclosed by a green copse, the female guide pointed out the embers of a fire and where she said her and her tribe had enjoyed a little hilarity by dancing. This woman had previously said that those weapons would be found near to where they had had a fire and had danced. On beholding this spot again the woman evinced much feeling and all the circumstances connected therewith burst on her mind and with which she agreeably entertained her sable friends.

On leaving this place she proceeded to the distance of about forty yards further and on reaching a large fallen tree pointed out that as the place where the things were concealed. They were soon sought out by her and the rest of the natives, and was presented to me as a token of their confidence in me. They consisted of several bundles of spears tied round with pieces of blankets and check shirts, and amounted to forty-five spears, six waddies, one fowling piece and one tower musket, a bag containing bullets, slugs, buck and small shot, and a bag which had contained powder and a newspaper. They were in tolerable condition; was placed under the tree.

On restoring those weapons of destruction they evinced much pleasure, and if any further proof was wanting of their confidence this alone would be sufficient. On our way from the place of encampment to this sequestered retreat the natives discovered a smoke, which they said was that of the natives. I loaded myself with the spears and one of the muskets and returned to the encampment with the native woman, who carried the fowling piece.

The men set off by a different route on an hunting excursion. Umarrah had selected from the spears one for himself, and two waddies. The rest would have followed his example but that I told them I purposed sending them to the governor, to which they agreed. I ascertained from this woman that these weapons had been placed there in concealment at the time of the Line and that some of the small spears belonged to the young lad that was taken at the time of the Line and the big ones to his father. She said that the embers of the fire I saw was where she and the other women, about eight in number, had
kar.ne.win.ne
, i.e., danced, and that there was two men with them, that the rest of the men was dancing at another fire down in the bottom. Said that Memermannalargenna had speared a woman near the Blue Hills.

The country in these parts consists of a succession of stony hills covered with forest and intersected by gullies, and is bounded by dense underwood, and affords as secure a retreat for the natives as can possibly be in any part of the colony. There is fine scope for reflection to consider that at this period last year the grand military operations was then in active service, that those spears had been manufactured by those very natives whom they was then in quest of and that when they took their departure they concealed those weapons, that the woman was then with them and now with me leading me in quest of her countrymen and telling me all the various schemes they adopted. The large spear that we found belonged to Montpelieratter and with which he had speared a white woman. The natives informed me that the white men about those parts had killed plenty of the natives, that they used to shoot them in their huts in the winter time.

This night the place to find the natives was a subject of deliberation. Tom said Mannalargenna would ask his devil. Accordingly, he went to work, Tom and his wife asking him occasionally where the natives rendezvoused. He said they was about the banks of the river. When he had finished he got up (it being dark) and said that a dead man's devil that had been put in a tree was walking about and would tell him about it. He set off in the woods; Tom and another native trembling followed him; the women lay as still as mice. They said I should know if he was there by his whistling. By and by heard a whistle and several whistles. They returned. I asked Tom if he had seen the devil; he said he had only heard him whistle. Said that when there was a small fire he would come and look at us at night.

I told them I would go and make a small fire in the woods and see if the devil would come, that if he made his appearance I would lay hold of his ears and pull him along and put him in the fire. I did not treat their superstition with that contempt I should do had I not been engaged in this anxious enterprise. Was therefore willing to indulge them in their whims, hoping thereby to succeed, as for their own credit they would find them out. Umarrah pointed out the way this afternoon he took when he left the Line.

† Fóëátoo: a relative of King Finau.

† † Selly was in fact an American sailor, Captain Peter Chase, who berthed his vessel the
Criterion
at Port Jackson on 26 May 1806.

† Gnatoo: tapa, a bark cloth.

† Papalangis: Europeans.

† George Bass attempted to cross the mountains in 1796, equipped with scaling irons, hooks and long ropes.

† The geese were probably magpie geese.

† Allan Cunningham, who was on this expedition, mentions in his diary that Oxley intended to remove the skull for studies in craniometry.

† Sydney River: now the MacDonald River.

* Mr Hovell left his pan at Cooradigby.

* The boat was made out of wattles, in this manner: the bottom was formed of three pieces of stout saplings, bound across the end and middle by similar transverse pieces; through these we laced wattles, which we bent up to form the sides, binding them across from the opposite heads to keep them from springing outwards. This formed a square body, like a cart body, on the outside of which we stretched the tarpaulin.

† Macnamee was a convict travelling with Sturt.

† Fraser shot a kookaburra.

† The new river was the Darling.

† Native bread: a fungus.

J
OHN
L
HOTSKY

Decrepitation at Last, 1834

John Lhotsky—he of mendacious memory, as Baron Von Hugel, his compatriot in exile, characterised him—was a German wanderer with some geological training and a most peculiar turn of phrase and mind. Representing him as an explorer is perhaps overly generous. But he did wander and recount what he saw. His ‘aerial baths' and discomfort at being decrepitated upon between Sydney and Bargo are more memorable today than his hard-won geological insights. Indeed, decrepitation was his downfall for, as he reminds us, his geological specimens became so sodden that the packages were ‘converted into mere dung'!

After a labour, which I may call immense, in order to compress into a narrow compass, and that at the least possible expense, the requisites of a long journey, I started from Sydney on the 10th of January, 1834. I had with me a cart with one horse, and four men. It matters not whether they were called free or assigned: as long as an assigned servant conducts himself properly I treat him as a free one, and I should wish to possess the discretion, as often as I should deem it expedient, of acting
vice versa
. I left behind me all bills of exchange, courts, summonses, attorneys, editors of newspapers, gaols and such like, and exulted in the feeling that, abandoning all these delights of ultra-civilised society, I should once again enjoy for some time a freedom nearly approaching the state of nature.

I left Sydney at 10 a.m., and determined to stop for dinner with my party in the bush opposite Grose Farm, as the heat was excessive and I was desirous of habituating my half-wild horse and town-fashioned servants by degrees to the change of life we were about to commence. We were all in the best possible spirits. At 3 p.m. the heat reached its highest degree, and there were only a few fine cirrho clouds standing in the zenith, at an immense altitude in the perfectly clear and serene firmament, while a rather fresh
NE
breeze was blowing intermittingly.

My health, which did not suffer during an eighteen months' residence in the hottest parts of the Brazils, had been much impaired since my arrival in New South Wales, and though I cannot call the climate of Sydney unhealthy, yet the sudden transitions of Australian temperature and the predominance of southerly gales, charged as they are with incredible quantities of the dust of our unpaved and unwatered streets, injure the lungs of the inhabitants more than might be believed. This day, however, I was induced to attempt a remedy, which under the necessary precautions and restrictions may be adopted by persons similarly circumstanced. I bared the upper part of my body, and in that state walked for half an hour in the currents of air among the trees. The effect was excessively beneficial, and I felt the muscles of my thorax so much invigorated that I repeated the experiment during my journey with the most beneficial result. To physicians at home, this aerial bath has been long known, and it would appear besides that the slender clothing of tropical nations rests on a deeper diatetical foundation than is generally supposed. I stopped the first night at J. Solomon's inn, on the Liverpool Road, where the accommodation as in many other country inns of the colony was not to be complained of…

At an early hour in the following morning (January 11) I resumed my journey along the Liverpool Road. The deep sand which surrounds the neighbourhood of the metropolis soon disappeared, small declivities of red loam were seen, and the land began to assume a more fertile character…The country near Liverpool is well cultivated, in fact so much so that this is one of the few places in the colony where a traveller may fancy himself in some parts of Europe, surrounded as he is by drays and teams, persons on horseback and in vehicles, combining the appearances of active agriculture and thriving village life. The public houses here, as in many other parts of the colony, are far too numerous, their number between Sydney and Parramatta being twenty-nine. Thus I arrived at Liverpool, an improving little town having some good public edifices.

We encamped at noon beside a pond of water, near the roadside at an open forest space, called ‘the Long Bridge'. This was the first time I bivouaced with so large a party in Australia. During such intervals, my horse was walked about, a practice which I never allowed to be neglected when it was taken from the shafts, either at noon or night, and by this and some other means I was able to bring this animal (which, by some accident in its purchase, happened to be a very bad one) so far as Pass Britannia, where it died. To the little attention which travellers are usually able to pay to such apparent trifles in this wholesale country, the failure of many expeditions is to be attributed…