Exploration
The RGS involvement in early exploration.
Unlocking a Continent.
Following on the coat tails of its mentor the Royal Geographical
Society in London, the South Australian Society actively encouraged exploration
for the purpose of exploring the remaining blanks of Australia. It was the close
of the 'heroic' age of Australian exploration and the Society, with its
methodical and academic approach to the expeditions with which it became
involved, was instrumental in ushering in the 'scientific' exploration era.
Within a few months of its foundation, the Society assisted surveyor explorer
David Lindsay's journey through the unknown portion of the Northern Territory
north-east of Charlotte Waters, by providing plant and equipment to enable
Lieutenant Dittrich to accompany him as naturalist and botanist. Over the years
a number of expeditions were supported or conducted under the auspices of the
Society and in addition, the Society acted as managers for the planning and
operation of two major expeditions. The following are a few of the expeditions
aided or organized by the Society. The Society published the journal of the
expedition and the Royal Society of South Australia and the Linnaean Society of
New South Wales published the scientific results, amounting to almost 400 pages.
They are not well known and a reappraisal of their importance is warranted.
During its centenary year (1985) the Royal Geographical Society commemorated the
Elder Expedition by erecting a cairn at Warrina on the Oodnadatta Track in May
1985 at the point where the cavalcade had disembarked from the train in 1891.
Central Australian Exploring and Prospecting Association's expedition.
In conjunction with the Victorian Branch, the Society began to organize
an expedition to explore the Lake Amadeus region of Central Australia in 1887.
However, insufficient funds were raised and a private company, the Central
Australian Exploring and Prospecting Association, was formed, raising the
balance of the necessary £5,000 capital. The Expedition, led by Society
foundation member William Henry Tietkens, set out from Glen Helen Station, west
of Alice Springs, with 12 camels on 16 April 1889. On reaching the Western
Australian border, Tietkens discovered and named Lake Macdonald after the
Victorian Branch secretary. Returning east, the party determined the extent of
Lake Amadeus, which Tietkens had first visited as second in command to Ernest
Giles in 1874. They continued via Mount Olga and Ayers Rock, arriving at
Charlotte Waters Telegraph Station on 15 August 1889, where Tietkens telegraphed
the Society after an absence of four months. The Expedition added much to the
geography of Central Australia but the geological samples revealed no mineral
prospects and the botanical specimens added little to the records of Central
Australian flora.
Elder Scientific Exploration Expedition. Possibly the
most ambitious Australian expedition of all time was the Elder Scientific
Exploration Expedition. Sir Thomas Elder financed the Expedition which was
organised and run by the Society. Elder had maintained an active interest in
exploration over many years and although he knew there was little prospect of
finding good pastoral country, he was aware that very little scientific work had
been done in the Australian deserts. Though many earlier expeditions into the
interior had collected plant and animal specimens, and in some cases had
naturalists in their parties, the rigours and demands of exploring had resulted
in only limited scientific success. Elder believed that, properly organised and
led, an expedition could fulfil bodily functions satisfactorily. The Expedition
led by David Lindsay, left the railway at Warrina, south of Oodnadatta, on 2 May
1891 on a 6,886 kilometre journey that was to last 12 months. The party was one
of the strongest and best equipped expeditions ever sent into inland Australia
and consisted of 14 men (three of them scientists) and 44 camels. Conditions for
travel were favourable at first, with abundant feed and, fresh water. However,
in mid July the Expedition crossed into Western Australia and experienced very
difficult drought affected country. Many of the surface waters considered
permanent by earlier explorers like Giles, Gosse and Forrest had dried up. After
a series of unsuccessful probes into the west and northwest, Lindsay decided to
strike southwest to Giles' Queen Victoria Spring. The Spring was reached on 23
September 1891 after one of the longest waterless forced marches in the history
of Australian exploration, the camels having covered 868 kilometres on an
allowance of only 36 litres of water per animal. They continued on to Fraser
Range Station and recuperated before heading north to the Murchison River and
the second phase of the Expedition. But the Expedition was dogged by
psychological as well as physical problems and matters came to a head on 31
December with the resignation of the scientific officers. Lindsay went to
Geraldton and telegraphed the Society for further direction and on 20 January
1892 he was recalled to Adelaide. The Expedition continued eastwards to the Lake
Carnegie area under the command of the surveyor, Lawrence Allen Wells. They
discovered traces of gold at Lake Way which was soon to be the scene of the
Wiluna Goldfield. Elder however, decided to terminate the Expedition on 4 March
1892 and Wells, returning to civilisation in the Murchison District, was
notified by telegram that the Expedition was to be abandoned.
The Elder Expedition has often been cited as a failure, but its achievements
were not insignificant. The scientific results, though variable, were impressive
in some disciplines. More than 150 new species of insects were collected and 19
new species of plants were included in the 700 specimens collected by Richard
Helms, the naturalist of the party. Collections of land and fresh water
molluscs, lichens, fungi birds/mammals and reptiles (116 specimens) were also
made. The mammals included several species now extinct in South Australia.
Expedition geologist, Victor Streich, made a comprehensive collection of Rocks
and minerals and described in detail the geology of the country traversed. In
addition, Helms made some important ethnographic notes on the Aboriginal tribes
encountered. The Expedition had also mapped over 200,000 square kilometres of
country previously unknown to Europeans. The Society published a journal of the
expedition and the scientific results. During its centenary year the Society
commemorated the Elder Expedition by erecting a cairn at Warrina in 1985.
The Calvert Exploring Expedition. In 1896 Albert
Frederick Calvert, a London mining engineer and author of two books on
Australian exploration who had struck it rich in the Western Australian
goldfields, sponsored an expedition into the regions of Central Western
Australia left unexplored by the Elder Expedition. In the absence of a
geographical society in that colony, the South Australian Branch was asked to
organise and manage the expedition. Wells was appointed leader of the Calvert
Exploring Expedition and setting out from Lake Way of his previous explorations,
headed north towards the Fitzroy River. Amongst the party of 7 men and 20 camels
was Wells' cousin, Charles Wells, second in command; George Lindsay Jones (a
nephew of David Lindsay), mineralogist and collector of native vocabularies; and
George Arthur Keartland, naturalist and botanist. On entering the Great Sandy
Desert, Wells decided to split the party. His cousin and Jones left the main
party at Separation Well to reconnoitre country to the west of the main party
with the intention of a rendezvous in at Warburton's Joanna Spring. Warburton
had named the Spring, which had saved the lives of Iris expedition in 1873,
after Joanna BarrSmith, the wife of his sponsor, Thomas Elder. The Spring,
however, had been wrongly located on Warburton's map, and Charles Wells and
George Jones were lost trying to find it in the fearsome heat. The main party,
with all Lawrence Wells' surveying experience, were also unable to locate the
Spring. Several camels died in the heat while searching for it and on 31 October
1896, with only 160 litres of water left Wells decided to make a dash for the
Fitzroy River. On reaching Fitzroy Crossing, Wells immediately returned to the
field in search of the lost explorers and on his second attempt located the
elusive Joanna Spring, ascertaining it had been mapped 24 kilometres too far to
the east. He failed to find any trace of his companions. Pastoralist and
renowned bushman, Nathaniel Buchanan, led another search expedition and William
Frederick Rudall, surveying in the vicinity of the Oakover River, was also
diverted to the cause. Wells undertook another, the fifth search expedition, and
eventually located the bodies on 27 May 1897. The author of the Society
centenary history, Ken Peake-Jones, said in his book, The Branch Without a
Tree, that the Society was 'solemnly aware of having participated in a splendid
failure, an honourable defeat by the desert'. Almost 100years later in 1993, a
small party of Society members relocated Adverse Well in trackless, sand dune
country the campsite where Lawrence Wells was forced to abandon most of his
equipment in his dash to the Fitzroy River. The members discovered cooking
equipment, small arms and ammunition, fragments of scientific instruments, glass
photographic plates and more than 50 geological specimens.
Crossing the Simpson Desert . 'There is still one patch
of Australia where the white man's foot has never trodden, and that is the
sand-ridge desert in the south east corner of the Northern Territory north of
Lake Eyre.' These were the words of Dr Cecil Thomas Madigan when he addressed
the Society in 1928. The following year the President, industrialist Alfred
Allen Simpson (who had been Lord Mayor of Adelaide from 1913-15), contributed
generously to the expenses of Madigan's aerial reconnaissance over Lake Eyre and
the vast unexplored sand hill desert. After the flights Madigan considered hat
the desert and its endless parallel sand dunes '... must surely be one of the
most uniform topographical areas in the world'. It was as yet unnamed and
Madigan proposed calling it the 'Simpson Desert' after the President of the
Society, to which Simpson replied that he '... would not object to having his
name attached to so inhospitable a region'. Madigan, with Simpson's financial
assistance, led a camel borne scientific expedition across the Simpson Desert in
the winter of 1939. His major focus was obtaining information on the natural
sciences of the Desert and the party included three scientists and 19 camels.
Madigan's route from Charlotte Waters crossed the northern half of the Desert to
Birdsville. The arduous journey took over two months, with a waterless stretch
of over 400 kilometres, and the scientific results, published by the Royal
Society of South Australia, were of considerable importance. Several ABC radio
broadcasts were made during the crossing, the link being made possible by a
Traeger pedal wireless set. A call was also made to Simpson from near the centre
of the Desert.
A modern expedition. A particular highlight of recent
years was the role the Society played in the Joint Army and Royal Geographical
Society Great Sandy Desert Walk during May to July 1993. Five interstate Society
members and the President of the Society formed the core of the walking party
who traversed 880 kilometres with camels and travelled with the vehicular
support team. Departing from Kintore on the Western Australian Northern
Territory border, the expedition travelled across the Great Sandy Desert to
Joanna Spring, a place carrying important Links with the Society, and continued
through to Broome. The support party had a measure of sophistication undreamed
of in the Society's earlier expeditions: six wheel drive vehicles,
refrigerators, HF radios and satellite Global Positioning System navigation
units. However, the desert was still as unforgiving as ever and two members had
to be airlifted out in a medical evacuation.
Memorials to explorers of the century. As the age of
Australian exploration drew to a close around the turn of the century, the
Society increased its interest in the exploits of past explorers. In recognising
the merits of explorers that had gone before its foundation, the Society erected
plaques and statues around Adelaide and South Australia to Matthew Flinders,
Nicolas Baudin, John A. Horrocks, Edward John Eyre, Charles Sturt, John McDouall
Stuart and, in recent years, to George Woodroffe Goyder.
Exploration Relics and Memorabilia. A number of
relics associated with early exploration in Australia are held by the Society.
Collected over the years, they include memorabilia such as compasses, expedition
flags, guns, and swords attributed to a number of explorers. Colonel William
Light's levelling instrument is among the surveying and navigation equipment in
the collection along with several compasses and Warburton's box sextant. Of
interest are two artificial horizons, used in conjunction with nautical sextants
to determine inland positions by explorers and surveyors. The collection has
such oddities as fragments of Captain Charles Sturt's boat, carried on his
northern expedition of 1844-45 in search of the mythical inland sea, and two
slabs of regrowth from a tree blazed by explorer William Christie Gosse in 1873.
Brought in by Tietkens from Glen Edith in 1889, they clearly show, in mirror
image, the carved letters 'GOS'.
Conquering a Continent.
John McDouall Stuart with his background, his companions, their horses and the
magnificent story of the first successful crossing of the Australian continent.
The Overland Telegraph Line followed the path of this most successful
Australian explorer. Further information on John McDouall Stuart is at:
www.johnmcdouallstuart.org.au