Like You'd Understand, Anyway

The First South Central Australian Expedition

April 1st, 1840

The three of us traded Christmas tales during our long portage. Hill and Browne both professed shock at my contribution, which seemed less than shocking to me. I had related to them the method by which my father, with what I remember to be the sad-eyed support of our mother, celebrated our Lord's birth each Christmas Day.

Having three sons, myself the eldest, he had resolved, he said, to no longer be tyrannized by the understanding that during this particular season he was obligated as a Christian to provide even more for his family, by way of gifts, than he did in the course of the normal round. Henceforth, then, one and only one child each year would be favored with a lovely gift to commemorate the day. He hoped that the child's siblings would derive the pleasure they should from their compatriot's good fortune. In accordance with his understanding of the general workings of the natural world, the process would proceed by lot. So it was entirely possible that one child would be favored by chance two or even three years in a row. We would all find out only upon coming downstairs on Christmas morning, when we saw what was set about the hearth.

He made this announcement having gathered the family together on Christmas Eve the year I turned five. My brothers, being at the time only three and two, hardly knew what they were being told. His wife and our mother, by all accounts gay and outgoing before her marriage, stood by while he entertained questions about his decision, and then did her best to salvage some measure of wan cheer over the course of those Christmas Days that followed.

My story was greeted with an extended silence. We were having trouble with the horses in the current. Browne announced himself, finally, to have been cudgeled about the head by the damned thing. He meant my story. Hill found it odd that such a father would have shown a willingness to finance a part of the expedition. “I'm sure it's not entirely unusual,” I remarked to them, some time later, about my father's notion of gift giving. “I'm sure it is,” Browne responded.

April 3rd

My father instilled in me the habit of resolving every day to make a resolution, to be repeated aloud when dressing and undressing. Today's has been: “Think well before giving an answer, and never speak except from strong convictions.”

“Are you conversing with yourself?” Browne asked from outside my tent this morning when he overheard.

The rock here is of an oolitic limestone and treacherous with hollows throughout. The surrounding area is beset by stupendous tufts of porcupine grass (spinifex) four to five feet high. The country so far has been stupefyingly consistent. We are now fifteen weeks out and for the last six have continued to wait for some kind of happy transformation in the path ahead.

We stopped at a marshy creek and it came on raining, and Cuppage shot himself. Somehow in stowing his saddle he managed to allow a binding loop to catch the trigger. The ball came out his back under the shoulder.

Our legs are full of the sharp ends of the spinifex. Large numbers of crows are following the baggage train, apparently for the sheep's offals.

April 5th

We have left a note in a bottle as to our progress in the message hollow of the great gum tree at Sadness Creek, per our arrangement, to be collected and carried back to Adelaide by a native sent for that purpose. The bottle is marked with indelible ink South Central Australian Expedition, R. M. Beadle.

The animals have been watered and are resting under fair and mild skies. We have been so anxious to proceed at all speed that I have not set down in these pages the full catalog of our expedition. In the matter of personnel, I can state without equivocation that I was given a free hand, and chose a crew of twelve, counting myself, out of over three hundred able-bodied men who applied for positions. Any group of men isolated on a long journey is entirely dependent upon one another, and we will be no exception. Accompanying me on this undertaking are:

Officers.

James A. Browne. Second in command.

Richard Scott Hill. Expedition physician.

Philip Mander-Jones. Expedition draftsman and surveyor.

Men.

Edgar Beale. In charge of stock.

D. K. Hamilton &

Charles Mabberly To man the whaleboat.

John Gould. In charge of the horses.

Robert Cuppage. Armorer.

Francis Purdie. Cook.

John Mack &

H. L. Moorhouse. Bullock drivers.

We carry five tons of provisions and equipment on three bullock drays and two carriages pulled by draft horses. One of the carriages transports the whaleboat. Each of the loaded drays weighs over two thousand pounds. We began with a ton of flour alone, three hundred pounds of bacon, and a quarter ton of sugar. We carry for safety a pairing of sextants, artificial horizons, prismatic compasses, and barometers. A ream of foolscap, this book for journal-keeping, sealing wax, camel's hair brushes, an inkstand, ink, goose quills, colored pencils, and a sketch palette. Five revolvers and two rifles. For ornithological specimens, a shotgun. As well as all the necessary ammunition. Also a trunk of trade and gift items, primarily hats and knives, for the aborigines. In the back of the train are four extra horses, one hundred head of sheep for provision, and four dogs for herding the sheep. Our procession extends more than a quarter of a mile.

We have been empowered to strike north from Mt. Arden into the great interior as far as the 28th parallel of latitude. This in order to determine whether a mountain range or other major height of land exists in that vicinity. The governor and Lord Stanley have to that end approved a budget of two thousand five hundred pounds for an undertaking not to exceed twelve months.

If such a height of land does exist, then everything north of it must necessarily flow into an as yet undiscovered watershed: a vast inland sea.

April 7th

Today's resolution: “Strive, and hold cheap the strain.” We have set a guard, and impressed upon the men the necessity of vigilance. And the danger of the journey ahead. Tomorrow we step off into the first truly daunting territory, leaving the southern watershed behind. The aborigines call our resting place Dead Man's Flat. The men in high spirits, the animals in good order. Up late, too agitated for sleep, my mind full of a thousand small tasks, and marveling on this strange, strange country, where even the celestial sphere is the wrong way about.

April 8th

Even as a child, I'd pressed my hand to the map of Australia in my Boys' Atlas, palming the blank upon its center. Our biggest cities are but specks perched on the extreme southern and eastern tips of a vast unknown. Men of perseverance and resource have failed to penetrate that remote and oblique vastness. Stowitts set off from the NE coast with the idea of crossing to Perth, and together with his entire expedition was never heard from again. The entire area seems so fearsomely defended by its deserts, one might suppose Nature has intentionally closed it to civilized man.

Browne has pointed out to me in the privacy of my tent that the governor's charge says nothing about an inland sea. My father too tried to strike the boat from the budget list. Browne believes, with them, that the great center is likely to prove in its entirety to be inhospitable desert. But I paid the cost of the whaleboat with my own funds. Explorers have recorded countless westward-flowing streams, none of which empty into the southern ocean. Where do these waters go if not to an immense sea or lake to which there must exist a navigable entrance? I believe the continent to be fashioned like a bowl, with elevated sides and a sunken center, a bowl whose lowest points are likely to be filled with water. “A bowl,” Browne said with some unhappiness when I outlined for him my thinking.

And imagine if that sea disembogues into the northern ocean, by way of some strait, I reminded him. “The Beadle Sea,” he smiled, as though indulging a child he loved very much. We were together relashing the bundle containing our charter and various maps, such as they were. “The Browne Strait,” I added, in order to see him smile again.

April 10th

Browne too has had a vexed relationship with his father, whose unfortunate speculations in corn when Browne was still a child left the family nearly without resource. He admitted during his interview that he had reaped few benefits, emotional or financial, from his parents. He has, nevertheless, turned himself into a young man of no little account. He brings to our group an artist's spirit and a Zouave's resourcefulness. As well as an apostate's skepticism. During a supper gathering of the officers, I listed the altogether beneficial ways in which our various virtues interacted. Hill, I pointed out, besides his skills as a healer, is also a man of refined manners, a genteel disposition, and a sensitive temperament. Mander-Jones has a scientist's exactitude and love of order. Our virtues together, I suggested, comprise one ideal explorer. “Of frustrated ambitions,” Browne pointed out. A short while after our discussion, one of the men shot what Mander-Jones informs us is a new sort of butcher-bird, very scarce and wild.

April 13th

Today's resolution: “To love is to be all made of sighs and tears; to be all made of faith and service.” Named a dry creek bed of some size Beale Creek, to reward the fellow for the labor of having surveyed it. Sufficient saltbush, which the horses eat readily. Some small, fawn-colored kangaroo, of which the dogs have killed four. No elevation of any kind breaks the horizon or varies the sea of scrub ahead. At first there will be the appearance of improvement, then barren country again. During our evening meal Browne asked if the governor or Lord Stanley had any knowledge of the whaleboat. I told him that they had made clear to my satisfaction that they had every confidence in myself and my decisions. Cup-page reports that his pain is very bad when he mounts or dismounts. Browne considers it a poor sign that our armorer has managed to shoot himself.

April 14th

All day the sun through heavy clouds, which checked some of its fiery beams. Nothing about but a few coleopterous insects. “Beetles,” Browne corrects me, a little peevishly. After encampment we observed four or five signal fires. The aborigines are apparently retreating before our advance.

April 16th

No sign of a previous civilization. Not an arrowhead, not a flint, not even the remains of a cooking fire. Everything suggests an ongoing and immemorial enervation. A kind of trance in the air.

April 17th

Here in this wilderness, we intruded upon an extraordinary gathering: a group of five white men seated upon the ground, weeping. They seemed to have about them ample supplies, and to be without injury. Nothing would make them explain the cause of their grief. In the end we were obliged to continue on our way. Purdie, the cook, in particular, has remained quite upset by the incident.

April 20th

A stretch of better country, over which we have made good progress. Found a native wheat and a rye, and in hollows a purple vetch of which the cattle are very fond. Crossed an entire plain covered with perfectly spherical stones. Formed by the action of water, no doubt, when the plain was — or is — undersea.

At times the land ahead is as flat as a table. The birds are remarkable: ibis with their coral eyes; emus, striding about like enormous indignant chickens on their startling claws; olive green and yellow butcher-birds circling on their updrafts to gain height. Something Mander-Jones calls a “ventriloquist dove,” which, with no movement of its throat, makes a sound that seems to come from the distant horizon. We are taking notes and collecting specimens whenever possible. We all feel the exhilaration of putting our other lives behind us. Mack, with Cuppage laid up, has had unusual success shooting pigeons. Today's resolution: “Look round the habitable world! How few know their own good; or knowing it, pursue.”

April 21st

A close, humid day which produced an incessant clamminess over the body and called forth innumerable insects. Mander-Jones bitten on the scalp by a centipede in his hat. The dogs killed a fine specimen of something that had been following us, but in the ensuing scuffle they tore off its head. It rained gently in the morning.

April 22nd

When I was less than five years old, I am told, I dragged around behind me on a cord a legless horse to which I was inseparably attached. The poor thing bounced and tumbled along in a most pitiful way, as I remember. No one knew from whence it came. It was a carved lump of pine painted with a blue saddle. It had a mouth but no eyes. I slept with it and named it My Captain, to the puzzlement of those who gave it any thought.

April 23rd

Plagued by the flies, and the rain has brought out the death adders and other snakes. Eight-inch centipedes with ghastly jaws, fearless, mouse-sized scorpions, ubiquitous stinging ants. Men glad of moving on.

Browne at our officers' supper again lodged a complaint concerning the number of water casks we carry (two), which he sees as woefully inadequate. He reminded us all that we're doing what we've been expressly advised by those familiar with the country not to do: travel with no line of communication to our rear and no maps for our forward journey. His reassuring prudence was duly recorded. In order to demonstrate our congru-ency on this point I cited for him yesterday's resolution, which was “Take care of the minutes, for the hours will take care of themselves.”

During heavy winds the dogs shelter in hollows, whining and barking to very little purpose.

April 24th

Finally, some natives. A small group: two men, four women, and a few children. They were camped on a sand hill and sat watching as we approached. The children were in a terrible fright, clinging to their mothers like opossum. The adults are very wiry and strong looking though they tend to be deficient in the front tooth. While we watched they cooked some mice in the hot sand itself and then devoured them entire, fur, entrails, and all, nipping off the tail with their teeth. I had with me a vocabulary of the language of the Murray natives but was unable to make them understand a word of it. We asked, by signs, where they derived their water, and they intimated that they depended on rain. They did so by lifting their hands and then pulling them quickly down while fluttering their fingers. Then they pointed where we were headed and shook their heads vigorously.

They were much taken with our appearance, and some of us do present a sight: Mabberly with his great buccaneer's hat; Beale with his peculiar facial scar. Mander-Jones with his filthy beard. And Hill's spectacles, which are so very small that I constantly wonder how he sees adequately through them. Purdie, the only one of our party to have met aborigines on their home ground before, informed us after we had moved on that they believe Europeans to be black fellows returned from the grave, gone white because of their new status as ghosts.

Tested the water in their water-hole and found it to be 107.8 degrees. Tonight the dogs are barking toward the point from which the wind is coming. One of the horses kicked Moorhouse's gun on the stock and shivered it to pieces. Hill has broken my watch.

April 27th

Dreadful passage. For three days now our road has lain over these abominable and rotten lands on which water has evidently subsided and whose surface the sun has cracked into deep fissures. Whenever the dray wheels drop into the holes it shocks the animals greatly. We are flanked as we proceed by great ridges of basalt and ironstone. Nothing seems tempered by weathering; all edges seem razor-sharp. There is much eurite underfoot. Mysterious columnar formations off to the west. Nearly all we survey seems unsuitable for cultivation. The temperature yesterday rose to 111 Fahrenheit; this morning, it fell to 38. Nights we huddle in flannel pantaloons and greatcoats. Days we suffer in the heat. How it is possible that the natives can withstand such extremes, unprovided as they are against the heat and cold?

Cuppage is now able to lift or carry very little. Hill fears his wound may be infected.

May 1st

Full of accidents today. Moorhouse's dray broke its axle-pole, and Gould's its rear wheel. The country is more open and worse in character. Rents and fissures so tremendous the cart-drivers are thrown from their seats. Mabberly has been admirably careful with the whaleboat, about which, considering the likelihood of her being so soon wanted, I am naturally nervous. Nothing cheering in the prospect to the N and NW.

One of the dogs has been lost — swallowed — in a strange dry salt lagoon comprised of gypsum and black mud. Its compatriots were hysterical with grief and upset. The approaches to the place were most unpleasantly spongy. The wind blows salt from it over the flats behind us like smoke. Old Fitz, our best draft horse, has a swelling on his near hind leg.

May 2nd

Stopped to give the animals a day of rest and to repair the drays. At a dry creek bed, some white mallow, which Gould gave to the horses. Nearer the creek a plant with a striped and bitter fruit. Perhaps some kind of cucumber.

The flies an affliction. Scaled a box tree to consider the path ahead with the telescope. Flies blocked and clogged the eyepiece. Attacked by ants, their bites like a bad sunburn throughout the night.

May 5th

I've directed that the bullocks be fastened by the noses to the carts, so that we might start earlier. The thermometer this morning at half past six stood at 102. Increasingly the only plants we encounter are differing kinds of atriplex with their terrible spines. The only water our advance parties were able to discover today was a shallow puddle so thick with animalcula as to be unfit to drink.

Numerous insects about at night. During the day, the flies. Whether we are out taking bearings or in gullies searching water or in our tents, it is all the same. They watch our movements, and the moment our hands are full, settle in swarms on our faces.

May 12th

A new mortification: we have left behind all scrub and rock to confront gigantic sandy ridges which succeed each other like wave trains, and we climb and descend one just to confront another. Only the smallest, umbrella-shaped shrubs in evidence here and there, the intense surface heat having seared away the lower branches. The ridges are sixty to seventy feet high and as steep as swells in a heavy gale. They appear to extend many miles to the NW. Should we find a body of water in that direction, I am at a loss as to how we would negotiate the dray with the whaleboat that distance.

Even so, the ridges exhibit a regularity that waves alone must have created. What we are struggling with, it follows, was not long ago a submarine position. “Oh, for the love of God,” Browne responded when I told him, his hat soaked through with sweat before our day had even begun.

May 19th

A week of stupefying labor. The heavily loaded drays sink deep into the sand, and the overheated bullocks just cease their struggles completely for minutes at a time. The days are scorching hot, and the animals are suffering greatly. Today the sheep came to a dead halt and would not move, while the dogs and horses huddled under and against the drays for such shade as they might provide, remaining there until evening.

Winds and whirlwinds, all oven-hot. The horses are suffering even more than we might have expected. Their legs are pierced in a hundred places by spinifex, which has in the last two days begun to cover the ridges. Both Captain and the chestnut have had a running at the nose which I feared to be glanders, but Gould reports they are better. I have an ugly rash over my back and chest. The men complain of insomnia and sore eyes. This evening at sunset we remarked upon an extended haze of a supernatural blue on the horizon opposite the sun. The effect, we presume, of refraction.

I have had some surprisingly bitter contentions with some of the other officers. More than ever I am convinced that the interior is to be achieved only by careful calculation and that additional headlong rushing about will lead us into further difficulty. As it is now, advance parties, usually captained by Browne, scout twenty to thirty miles ahead of us by horse. Both Browne and Mander-Jones believe we cannot maintain this unhurried pace with summer only four or five months away.

I hope I will not shrink from the trials ahead. The day may come when I must face greater extremes, and I trust I will do so not the less firmly for having only the smallest notion of what I'm likely to encounter.

May 22nd

Cuppage feverish and laid up. A comfortable pallet has been arranged for him in the whaleboat. A few days' inactivity while the advance parties search for water. I have directed that the whale-boat be outfitted and painted.

Hill, who has been working wonders with poor Cuppage's suffering, is really like a young hero from literature: fair-minded, virile, and eager to get on. He articled as a surgeon, which he found not very agreeable. His real passion is for astronomy, and his sense of direction so intuitive he negotiated alone some of the jungles on the northern coast. And few men have less of envy in their disposition.

All of Adelaide, it seemed, approved my choice of Hill for this expedition. And nearly as many lamented my choice of Browne. This man with the instincts and fearlessness of a native in the bush, and of a judgment beyond his station, is in Adelaide a drunkard of the lowest reputation. Hill initially and privately conveyed surprise that I would suffer such a man to be in my party, and my father too expressed violent doubts. But here in the wild there is not a more careful and valuable follower to be found. I believe him to be personally attached to me and nurse the fervent belief that this chance at achievement will have a decisive effect on the rest of his life.

May 28th

Our progress renewed. Today's resolution is “Seek experience joined to common sense, which to mortals is a providence.” The ascents are backbreaking and the revelations at the summits unrewarding.

Still little seasonal cooling. The air so rarefied we can hardly breathe. The sun dries everything with such speed that one can almost watch the few pools we do find sink. There is no way of knowing how soon we might be cut off by the loss of water holes behind us. The complete absence of animal life is stark evidence of the dire poverty of what lies all around us and ahead. We are now alone in the wilderness. The wind is blowing from the NE in our faces with the heat of a blacksmith's forge. Despite our exertions, none of us exhibit any moisture on the skin. This is perhaps related to our being now much distressed by violent headaches.

May 29th

Continued all day without knowing whether we were extricating or ensnaring ourselves. We are to all intents and purposes at sea. A carrion kite hovered over us early this morning in befuddlement at our presence.

June 2nd

Recovering in our tents. Supper of a little dried beef. Browne reminded us that we are in a precarious situation, and that the least mistake will be lethal. This is a region in which we have not the leisure to pause. He further pointed out that it wasn't the advance but the retreat that was to be most dreaded.

June 3rd

No travel. Old Fitz now dead lame. The men employed examining the bacon. Today's resolution: “Of comfort, no man speak.” Surface heat so great we can't hold stones we pick up with our hand.

June 4th

No travel.

June 5th

Another halt. The men complain of giddiness when they stoop. The bullocks done in. The heat of the sand is so intense that the poor animals paw away the top layers to get to the cooler beneath.

The upper leathers of Hill's shoes are burnt away. Gould's back terribly blistered. The dogs are losing the pads of their feet. The natives could not possibly walk this desert at midsummer. The bullocks' yokes even now are so heated the men cannot handle them. We ride with our feet out of the stirrups because the irons are too hot. Mander-Jones's chronometer has stopped. It is no longer possible to use the quills, the ink dries so rapidly. 139 degrees in the sun.

The monotony of such plodding, hour after hour, and always with the prospect of waking the next morning to more of the same—! We are almost entirely silent during this apathy of motion. This coma of riding. Even a small object becomes an achievement when attained, something on which to focus the mind in so vast a space.

June 9th

I could not more regret the paucity of casks to hold water. I would strongly recommend casks as indispensable on all future expeditions in this country. There is a yellow hue on the horizon each morning which we now understand to be a sure indication of the afternoon's unsupportable heat.

June 12th

We have come upon what can only be called the Stony Desert, the first sight of which caused us to lose our breath. It is more demoralizing than what has gone before. Not a speck of plant life across the horizon. Masses of rock mixed with white quartz split into innumerable fragments. Ruin and desolation, stretching out in an endless plain as far as we can see. Purdie, the cook, whimpered audibly from his seat on one of the drays at the prospect. Some of the men laughed.

The surfaces are diamond-hard and ring under our horses' shoes. The stone is so thick upon the ground that the carts leave no track. Distance traveled fourteen miles.

June 14th

It is as if the earth itself were steel-shod. The horses' hooves are being cut to the quick. We're shaken by detonations to our right and left: great rock masses splitting off in the extremes of temperature. Seven sheep dead from the heat. Distance traveled eleven miles.

Today a new stretch of rock hued with iron oxide, so the plains ahead now have a dark purple cast. The country continues to raise terrible havoc with the horses' shoes, which are wearing away like wax. Gould and Mack report that their headaches have worsened. The men complain of rheumatism, and most of us have violent pains in our hip joints. Hill reports a large ring round the moon last night, most likely indicative of wind. The whaleboat suffered today its first accident: the stern sheets were torn off on a rock. It was not the driver's fault, but mine, for not warning him of its proximity. Each day brings fresh sheaves of anxiety to our already overstuffed bundle.

June 15th

We are all on foot to spare the horses. The stone, in no way rounded, is brutal to the feet. Gould complains incessantly of an excruciating pain in his forehead. Poor Cuppage has not been heard from for days, except to cry out whenever a drop or a crash shakes the whaleboat. Browne's horse has an inflammation of the mucus membrane. The casks are empty. At the first waterless halt, the horses would not eat and instead collected round me, my poor Captain so much afflicted that he tugged my hat with his teeth to claim attention. Called a halt and asked Moorhouse to reconnoiter the extent of the ridges to our NW from the vantage point of the ridge to our W. His climb provided him, regrettably, with no cover. He returned to pronounce it the most difficult task he had ever performed.

June 20th

Only three miles down a ravine to our E, a kind of natural oasis with a pool thirty to forty feet wide and nearly ten feet deep, situated beneath the shade of large stands of casuarina and mulga trees. Ample feed for the animals. Providence has guided us to the only place where our wants might be supplied for any extended amount of time, but has also here stayed our progress in a region soon to become forbidden ground.

Today completes the sixth month of our absence from Adelaide. How much longer we shall be out it is impossible to say. We still wait for winter rains. I am heartbroken at the delay. I remain of the full conviction that we're fifty miles or less from the Inland Sea. My only consolation is that the present situation is unavoidable.

June 27th

I have been neglecting my resolutions. Today's is “The happy man finds in some part of his soul a drop of patience.” I have been trying to chart our position and finding it impossible to put pencil to paper in this superheated tent. Have set the men to digging a chamber deep in the ground from which we might make our calculations.

June 30th

Beale has a pulmonary condition. Was bled yesterday and is better today. Mabberly has had an attack of inflammation of the lungs. Almost everyone is complaining of bleeding at the nose. We are all beset by symptoms of scurvy. My gums are so sore that I cannot take even porridge and have a vile taste of copper in my mouth, intensified by savage headaches. We all trust the symptoms will not increase, because soon we must move despite all risks and under any circumstances. Our diet is unwholesome. We must collect something in the way of a vegetable.

Cuppage is now insensible. We have discussed whether to send him back, but Hill has ventured that he would never survive the journey. Neither would whoever accompanied him, Browne added grimly. He has recently returned, his horse lathered and nearly broken, to report that the water-holes to our rear, at which we not six days ago found ample water, now have no moisture left in their beds. Our retreat is now cut off. We are bound here as fast as though we were on an ice floe in the great Arctic ocean.

July 1st

The barometer remains unyielding. Until it falls we have no hope of rain. I have reduced the allowance of tea and sugar. The men have become as improvident as aborigines. The inactivity is causing between us much vexation and anxiety. About thirty sheep remaining. Have set the men to repacking and inspecting the bacon and biscuit. The bran in which the bacon was packed is now entirely saturated and heavier than the meat. Our wax candles have melted. Our hair has stopped growing.

July 6th

I was born here in Australia, though this is not commonly known. The year of my tenth birthday, my brothers and I were sent to England with my mother's elder sister. We would not see our parents again for more than a decade. We lived with various relatives, always in close proximity to lives of enormous privilege. I began my education at a succession of schools, each of which I detested. Where were my friends? Where was that person for whom my happiness was an outcome to be desired? I led my brothers on a midnight ramble in search of home. They were eight and seven, and complained about neither the distance nor the cold. The younger, Humphrey, was shoeless. I was so moved by their fortitude that I became teary-eyed through the march. We begged milk from a farmer and were rounded up by a constable the following afternoon.

Browne too hated school. He remembered with fierce indignation a headmaster's remark that God had created boys' buttocks in order to facilitate the learning of Latin.

July 12th

I am much concerned about Browne. His behavior has alarmed both Mander-Jones and Hill. He has been refusing water and crouching for stretches out of the shade, hatless. I have tried to provide for him duties that will keep his faculties engaged. A flight of swifts passed over high to the S at twilight. They were beating against the wind.

July 24th

The same sun, morning to night. We might save ourselves the trouble of taking measurements. The ants at sundown swarm under our coverings. The flies intensify at dawn. All manner of crawling and flying insects fill our clothes. There never was a country such as this for stabbing, biting, or stinging things.

Our scurvy is worse. It must be dreadful in its advanced stages for even as it is we are nearly undone. “I have today's resolution,” Browne said to me this morning, lying on the floor of our dug-out room. He hadn't spoken for a day. His head rested on Hill's feet. “Always remember that love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise,” he said.

“What on earth are we on about now?” Mander-Jones cried out from beside me. I hushed him. “I am traveling with lunatics,” he said, with great feeling, before lapsing once more into silence.

The men have tipped the whaleboat over to make a shaded lean-to. Today I was the only one willing to leave either shelter to take a reading. The barometer has fallen to a point that would normally suggest rain, but it is impossible to guess what to anticipate here. The water in our oasis is evaporating visibly. It stands now at a depth of only four feet.

August 20th

The eighth month. Midwinter. 112 in the shade, 129 in the sun. The heat has split the unprotected edges of our horses' hooves into fine laminae. Our fingernails are now as brittle as rice paper. The lead falls out of our pencils. Mack and Gould engaged in a fist-fight that was quelled only after Gould threatened to stave in his head. In our dug-out last night, Browne again could not be moved to speak. Hill's voice was a brave croak. Mander-Jones was sullen and uncommunicative, afflicted as he is with sore eyes from the flies getting into them. I told them that it could only have been that our expedition coincided with the most unfortunate season of drought. Even here it could not be that there were only two recorded days of rain in eight months.

Gould reported that grass was now so deficient about the camp that we could no longer tether the horses.

The success or failure of any undertaking is determined by its leader, I reminded them. Browne roused himself in response. He seemed enraged in ways he wasn't fully able to articulate. He most certainly does not look good. He theorized that my choice of bringing extra paint for the boat, rather than adequate casks for water, or lemon or lime juice for scurvy, spoke volumes about the nature of our undertaking. And what was the nature of our undertaking, sir? I asked him. Idiotic, sir, he answered. Criminal, sir. Laughable.

August 22nd

Out of sorts from upset and unable to function. Hill, after a discreet hesitation of a few hours, took over the direction of the men in terms of their responsibilities. At sundown the entire horizon to the west was indigo with clouds and heavy rain. Each of us spent the evening absorbed in the spectacle, unwilling to speak.

I dreamed of my father as I saw him on the pier in Adelaide upon my return. When I awoke Browne was kicking the leg of my cot with his heavy boot. He had today's resolution, he announced. He said, “There was an old man in a Marsh, Whose manners were futile and harsh.”

“That's not a resolution,” I called after him, once I'd found my voice, which was after he'd left.

With what energy we've been able to muster we have been busy all day preparing an excursion to the WNW to try to meet and retrieve some of that rain. This will decide the fate of our expedition. We will take six weeks' provisions, one of the casks, and four or five bullock hides to carry the water back. Browne and I will lead, and Beale, Gould, and Mack will accompany us, along with seven of the horses and one of the drays.

September 12th

Three weeks out. Set out on August 23rd at 4 a.m. The cask is nearly empty. Today we gave our horses as much water as reason would justify before making camp. Their docility under such suffering is heart-rending. They cannot rest and spend the night troublesomely persevering, plodding round the cart and trying to poke their noses into the bung hole. We close our eyes and pretend not to see.

September 16th

A water-hole. A triumph for Browne. The water cloudy and off but purer than any we have for some time seen. Filled the cask and made some tea. The horizon shot through with lightning.

September 21st

Returned to the strictest rationing now that our strength seems somewhat restored. Walking as much as possible to spare the horses. My heels and back lanced with pain. When lying down I feel as though I'm being rolled across a threshing machine. Summer starting to come on. The thermometer between 120 and 133 during the day. Matches held in the hand flare into flame. We must be a sight, I remarked to Browne: burnt by the sun, our clothes in rags, our hats long since shapeless with sweat, covered in insects, each absorbed in his private cell of misery, whether a chafing shoe or an open sore. And almost no quarrels. On this never-ending ribbon of interminable heat. Browne, as if to prove my point, did not answer.

September 30th

This morning we gave Captain, my mount, double breakfast, in hopes it would strengthen him, but it did not. The poor brute staggered rather than walked along. At midnight he fell. We got him up again and, abandoning his saddle, proceeded. At a mile, though, he fell again and could not go on. I sat by him in the night as he expired, after which I felt so desolate I took myself off into the darkness for a while. I had fully intended to purchase him at the sale of the remnants of the expedition, perhaps as a gift for Browne.

October 10th

We have found only a runnel with mud so thick I could not swallow it. Browne managed to drink some of it made into tea. It fell over the lip of his cup like clotted cream, and smeared the horses' noses like clay. They refused it. Browne was then ill all the next day.

October 12th

Some kind of cyclopean boulders now before us. Even the horses regard them with dismay. I dismounted and ascended the first for a bearing. It was no trifling task in our condition and these temperatures. Beale accompanied me with the instruments. “This is more than a Government day's work, sir,” he said on the way back down.

I could not respond. Our view had been over as terrible a region as Man ever saw. Its aspect was so mortifying that it left us with not a tinge of hope. We have to return, with every promise of a better country within reach annihilated. We all stood dumbly in the heat at this understanding, as if concussed by a blow, before eventually retiring to our midday shelter under the dray. Mack and Gould wept. Browne kept up an intermittent continuous hum, like a bush insect. Was it possible to give up, having achieved nothing? I asked myself aloud. One of the horses toppled to its knees as if by way of answer. No one spoke again until sundown, when we turned about and headed back the way we came. We have been defeated, I reminded our little group, by obstacles not to be overcome by human perseverance.

Our bearings record that the farthest point to which we penetrated was to Longitude 138.5.00 and Latitude 24.30.00, and I will in truth affirm that no men ever wandered in a more despairing and hopeless desert. I have no other observations to add on the nature of this country.

November 17th

Made camp yesterday at 6 a.m., nearly done in from lack of food and water. Three of the seven horses lost, the other four nearly useless. All of us are afflicted by a fatigue that seems impossible to overcome. The buttons on our shirts by mid-morning are so heated as to pain us. Few men have ever laid themselves down to rest, if it can be called rest, as bereft as I have been today.

November 20th

Browne has somehow managed another expedition to the south on one of the fresher horses to ascertain how much water remains on our line of retreat. He returned this morning to report that one of the deepest and narrowest channels had long gone dry. With that source lost, there can be no water nearer to us than seventy-eight miles, and perhaps not there.

The horses are at their wits' end. What grass there is flies to powder under their tread. The last ram has taken the staggers and Beale has ordered him killed.

Whirlwinds blowing all morning from the NE increased to a furnacelike gale. The incinerating heat was so withering that I wondered if the very trees would ignite. Everything, animate and inanimate, gave way before it: the horses with their backs to it and noses to the ground, lacking the strength to raise their heads; the sheep and dogs huddled beneath the drays. One of our thermometers, graduated to 157 degrees, burst. Which is a circumstance I believe no traveler on this earth has ever before had to record.

November 24th

A party rebellious to my purposes now intends to strike out to the south in hope of relief. Browne reported this to me. And of whom was this party constituted? I croaked, gazing at him with what I hoped to be severity. Beale, he said. Hamilton and Mabberly Gould. Cuppage. Purdie. Mack and Moorhouse. And Mander-Jones, to lead.

“That's everyone, besides Hill and yourself,” I told him.

He agreed.

“Cuppage is unconscious,” I reminded him.

“Mack says he speaks for Cuppage,” he told me.

I asked after his own status. Was he going south too?

“I have just been there,” he said.

I assembled the group and addressed the assembly without anger. I told them I could only insist upon all I had observed. And that I have always been open to reason. But that I was convinced that at present no hope lay to our south, at least not until the rains returned.

They killed the rest of the bullocks and scraped and sewed their hides to carry water. They will take one cask and leave one. One dray, carrying only Cuppage, the water, and some dried beef and flour. Mander-Jones, who can hardly see from the bites of the flies, is leading nevertheless. He refuses to talk to me at any length. I asked what he wanted done with his specimens and notes and then regretted the meanness of the question.

December 1st

They are gone. The dogs that were left followed them out of camp.

December 2nd

Hill has made a stew of some of the beef. At the last moment Browne tried to arrest the mutineers' departure with a startling display of passion. Now he seems to have withdrawn into himself even more. “Do you think they have any chance?” I overheard Hill murmur some hours later while serving him his stew. Whatever he answered caused poor Hill to weep once he'd returned to his cooking fire.

December 5th

A squall has leveled our remaining tents and torn away the canvas covering of our dug-out. My papers are gone. What's left of our supplies has been scattered. I found a sextant and two goose quills. The weather remains infernal. A gale unrelentingly blows from the N or E. The flies do not relent. How is human foresight to calculate upon such a climate? We are all suffering from piercing pains in the joints. My gums are now hugely swollen. Hill's lower leg muscles are so contracted he cannot stand.

We sit about with the aimlessness of aborigines, gazing into each others' eyes and preparing for the worst. Only when thinking of my companions do I have regrets. One of my father's favorite resolutions was always that life was worthless save the good that one might do. “We're forced to conclude, then, that for him, life was worthless,” Browne remarked during one of our early father discussions.

December 11th

We have pains and do not understand what they are. Browne has become unresponsive, immersed in his own unwinding. He has spoken of starfish and sea ferns. I do not know what we will do if he is laid low. He has always been one of those whom life pushed from one place to another. A useful naysayer, the kind Australians call a “no-hoper.”

December 23rd–24th

Hill is unable to walk. Browne and I have resolved to assay one of the unexplored ravines to our E. He speaks of a great flood there, and drowned cattle. Hill looks at him through his tiny spectacles with pity. Hill says he feels no pain while stationary. The skin of his calves and thighs is black and the discoloration is proceeding upwards.

Our horse led us up a draw all night while we dragged along behind it. Daybreak found us in a smallish box canyon of some sort, sheltered, at least, from the sun. Browne then slept while I explored as best I could. It was an extraordinary place, and evidence of our inland sea. There were marine fossils and conglomerate rock that looked like termite mounds. The remains of strange undersea plants and fish fins were clearly evident. Grotesque shapes, and a great silence. I roused Browne to show him. We were both tearful at the sight. “The Beadle Sea,” he said to himself when he came around and looked. “No, no, the Browne Sea,” I answered, cradling his head, but by then he was again already asleep.

I laid myself beside him, grateful for his presence. He always doubted my judgment but thought my leadership to be worth my blunders. We awoke some hours later to find the horse gone and twilight coming on. More sleep, Browne in a half-conscious state and making small gesticulations. It was as if he had been submerged in a kind of gloaming of the mind, an infant's fatalism. Near daybreak the moon rose in the E and the sun followed, warming us both. It was not possible to tell how long my friend had been dead. I eased my arms from around him and stood, then turned round myself and cried. I squatted beside him. When the sun was full on my head I found a flint and scratched onto the rock face beside where he lay J. A. BROWNE S.A.E. DEC 251840. I sat with my back to his side for another full day, taking only a little water at sunset. In the blue moonlight the stars seemed to multiply and wheel. I gazed upward full of grievance and self-justification. I called out that we should be done justice to. The canyon walls gave back their response. In the moonlight they became a luminous cerulean. I heard the slosh and slap of water in a great bay. I knew I had had a dream past the wit of man to say what dream it was. The wind picked up. My ears filled with sound. The blackness of a sandstorm dropped over the canyon rim like a cloak. Its force turned my friend onto his side. Its force turned my face to the rock. I saw strange wraiths. Wormlike, coiling figures. Terrible faces. My eyes clogged with grit. I hoped they would fill with everything they needed. While my throat filled with what poured over the canyon rim. And my heart filled with the rest.