Comment: Explorers

Hi Ron,
I agree. I have read Davids book and found it so interesting. In 2010 while doing the Gary Highway, we went to 'mulgan rockhole' and 'Mcphersons pillar' which he visited 114 years before. Except for a small plaque I dont think it would have changed very much at all in all those years. He had written in his diary that it was "surely the most god-forsaken place on the face of the earth". We think that it is so beautiful out there, but i suppose haveing comfy beds, 4WDs, fridges etc does help! lol
Sue B

Thanks for that, I admit I made the article "visible" a little prematurely (I have been working on it for ages) but it was a public holiday here over the weekend and I just wanted it finished!! It's been a challenge to get the right balance of information vs article length but ok... I'll go back and revisit it - my gut told me there were some important people missed. I wasn't going to be promoted (in the newsletter) until it was finished anyway.

Michelle

Ron
That's a really good read. Thanks for that link.
Skip

Hi Ron,

To tell you the truth I am not at all surprised that Hon. David Wynford Carnegie is not mentioned.

When one starts to sift through all the available information available be it internet, books or archives with a view perhaps to providing some sort of summary on the issue, the names of the explorers mentioned in this article are very often the most popular.

For obvious reasons exploration started from Sydney, and then as other settlements developed, they became the starting and finishing points of various expeditions.

Soon it was a duel between Victoria and South Australia as to who who crossed the middle first and then most of the usable continent was mapped. Yet not the interior of Western Australia.

So come along David Carnegie, who noticed when he got here in the 1890's that the interior of WA had yet to be mapped properly. He grabs four men and a black boy and goes off to have a look and reaches Halls Creek from Coolgardie only to realise he hasn't scratched his itch so he comes back again by a different route (briefly going into the Northern Territory of South Australia east of Lake MacDonald).

Well it's a little too late Mr. Carnegie; he obviously didn't realise that the bureaucrats and the professors sitting in there nice comfortable leather chairs overlooking Sydney Harbour had already written "The Exploration of Australia", and there was no room for anymore, especially those convict tarnished, barbarians west of longitude 129 and that of Perth and the Swan River Colony.

So that's my take on it Ron, can't really blame Michelle here.

If there is something I would like to change about this article, it would be the main image of that W.J. Wills and that other fool. I beg Michelle to change it to an image more worthy.

I must admit I haven't studied the Wills and Burke Expedition intensively, really only read two or three books on it however one things for sure, Burke was an idiot.

J.M.R. Cameron sums up my point of view perfectly in the first paragraph of the introduction of "The Finest Goldfields in the World" by Hesparian Press.

"Accounts of exploration typically concentrate on the expedition itself or on the expedition and its immediate aftermath. Accounts of Australian exploration seem particularly oriented this way, perhaps because our explorers have always been portrayed as heroes pitting their skills and their well against a hostile, unforgiving environment. Clearly, there is an underlying truth here because the notable Australian explorations do have a heroic quality,probably more pronounced the less competent the explorer was. The disastrous sorties by George Grey or Burke and Wills and the benign way they have been treated in the historical record readily spring to mind. They form part of our gallery of glorious if somewhat flawed heroes who occupy their pedestals at the expense of others like the Forrests or the Gregory Brothers or the countless unnamed shepherds, drovers, and prospectors whose assessments of the continent's resources were carried out with the minimum of fuss or difficult and whose achievements were ultimately of far greater significance."

Cheers
Alan