Like You'd Understand, Anyway

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.