New Zealand’s first premier

‘My reasons for offering myself are, simply, that there are no persons at all fit, and I believe I may be useful; but the Assembly will doubtless be held at Auckland, a terrible undertaking, about as distant from Canterbury as England from Lisbon - a much severer work than going to America per Steamboat from England.’ This is Henry Sewell, a solicitor born on the Isle of White 210 years ago, explaining in his diary (written as a newsletter for his family) why he had decided to enter politics soon after arriving in New Zealand. Within three or so years, he would be elected the colony’s premier.

Sewell was born on 7 September 1807 in Newport, Isle of White. He was schooled at Hyde Abbey, then a fashionable school in Winchester, and after serving articles to qualify as a solicitor, he joined his father and brother in the family firm around 1826. In 1834, he married Lucinda Marianne Nedham, daughter of a retired general, and they had six children. As a result of a bank failure in 1840, his father lost money and when he died two years later he left the family in debt. The brothers, not wishing to go bankrupt, sold part of the business. When Lucinda died in 1844, Sewell left his children with his sister, and moved to London to seek business. In 1850, Sewell married Elizabeth Kittoe. Thereafter, he became involved in the Canterbury Association, an organisation dedicated to the colonisation of the Canterbury area in New Zealand, and he himself arrived there in 1853.

Sewell opened a solicitor’s office, and soon became involved in local politics, becoming a prominent figure in the first generation of colonial politicians. Initially, he represented Lyttelton on the Canterbury provincial council, then was an elected member of the house of representatives and, at different times, part of the legislative council. Three years after arriving in the colony, he was elected premier (colonial secretary at the time), a position he retained for a only few weeks being unable to hold a majority in the house. As treasurer in the first stable ministry, led by Edward Stafford, he was virtually deputy premier. Later he negotiated for the colony in Australia and England. He also served as attorney-general in three ministries between 1861 and 1865, and, after another break in England, he was briefly minister of justice. On retiring from politics, he returned to England where he died in 1879. Further information is available from Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, Wikipedia, and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB - log-in required).

Sewell kept a diary for some years, written as a newsletter to family and associates (and copied out by Elizabeth). However, he decreed that its contents should not be published or made public until after his death. The manuscript was held originally by successive bishops of Christchurch and was not passed on to the library of the University of Canterbury until the 1920s. In the 1970s it was painstakingly edited and annotated in two volumes by W. David McIntyre for publication in 1980 by Whitcoulls, Christchurch, as The Journal of Henry Sewell 1853-7. The first volume contains a substantial editor’s preface as well as a very long introduction. According to McIntyre (who also wrote the ODNB biography), Sewell was a pessimistic, lonely, snobbish man, who was never really committed to pioneering life. Nevertheless, his journal ‘provides the fullest private account of persons and places in early Canterbury and the beginnings of self-government in New Zealand’. The full text of the journal can be read online at Early New Zealand Books. Here are few extracts from Sewell’s journal, from his arrival and first months in New Zealand.

2 February 1853
‘About 2 in the morning was awoke by Wakefield. We were in sight of Banks’ Peninsula. Hurried on deck in Pilot Coat and trowsers - found the wind blowing fresh and cold from the S.W. with a considerable Sea. The morning sky cold and squally but with indications of clearing. Before us lay a shadowy outline of land with no distinct features. On our left stretching for a long distance a still more indistinct haze of mountain outlines topped with snow looking bleak and desolate. Presently one after the other passengers tumbled up half dressed and mightily excited. In truth it was impossible to resist the furor. Land after 4 months’ Sea voyage - and safe arrival at one’s destination with the prodigious interest about the future before us are sufficient excuses for mental intoxication. All the Telescopes were brought into use. The morning cleared up. Squalls wore off lighter and lighter leaving about 9 o’Clock a lovely day. The wind dropping gradually and the Sea going down. As we neared the land its features became more distinct and we sailed along the Peninsula at about 3 miles’ distance just as if it were an immense moving Panorama more beautiful than any thing I can remember. No doubt this was partly from the special beauty of the day - partly from the excitement. The South wester dropped away by degrees and left us entirely just off the Peninsula. Then the wind shifted as if on purpose to accommodate us and we worked round into harbour with a gentle North Easterly breeze casting anchor about 6 o’Clock. Boats came off very soon. Young Keele as one of the Custom House Officers with the Tide Waiter. I took him by the arm and walked him up and down the deck greedy for news. ‘Where was Mr Godley’ Gone - had left just before Christmas. All the people were gone off to the diggings. Every thing was stagnant. Godley was supposed to have gone to avoid a crisis - The Association was in the worst possible odour - Public meetings were being held about them particularly with reference to some law processes issued against labourers who had given notes of hand for their passage money. The news of Godley’s departure fell upon me like a Cloud. He had left Capt. Simeon his Successor but this was all I could learn about him. Presently Mr Cookson 5 came on board; had a long talk with Wakefield from whom I heard afterwards better accounts of things. Boat loads of people came on board. Some passengers went on Shore. Mr Raven and I among the rest. I went up to Capt. Simeon’s. Found him extremely kind and hospitable - wanting me to stay - Had no time to learn much from him, but what I did learn was far from encouraging. Got some fresh butter and a loaf of bread and set off to the Ship to regale ourselves with these almost forgotten luxuries - Altogether a day of singular excitement.’

15 April 1853
‘Yesterday prepared to set off to Lyttelton, but the weather was desperately bad. All Wednesday night it blew a hurricane. Yesterday wind and rain, and strong indications of a coming South Easter. So we make up our minds to stay where we are.

The Government gives us an indication of their mind by raising technical objections to our Writ of Injunction. It does not exactly agree with the terms in which the Judgment was delivered in Court. So they ask to have it altered; the object being to take advantage of a small opening to let the Government loose from the Injunction without meeting the case on its merits. What a dodge for a Government! and what a Government! However to be up to them called on the Registrar and with him on the Judge. He will not submit to any such shuffling quibbles, and will not loose the Injunction till the case has been heard and disposed of fully upon the merits. He complains bitterly of the attempt made to overbear him and to destroy his independence. He will not be a political partizan of the Government, so the Governor does all in his power to thwart and annoy him. He is absolutely fixed as to the illegality of the Proclamation. Spoke to Col. McCleverty about Simeon’s salary as Resident Magistrate and the hardship of reducing it for the sake of a merely temporary appointment.’

2 July 1853
‘Rain again. Simeon has resolved upon resigning the Agency forthwith which is a great relief. I shall consider him entitled to a quarter’s Salary in advance. I shall have a good deal to do with him after the formal termination of his office.

A good deal of talk with Raven about matters which become connected with one’s future views - but more of this hereafter.

In the evening comes Capt. Fuller dressed like a dilapidated Shepherd, in truth a great object. He seems to have cast off all care about personal appearance, and is a strange contrast to the neat trim Military gentleman at the Adelphi. He comes evidently to seek refuge and hospitality. Board we give him but lodging we cannot, Raven occupying our only spare room. I don’t like the fashion of people coming at all times, and disturbing your domestic privacy - but Hospitality is a necessary virtue in a Colony. Raven and Fuller talk the whole evening of bullocks and Sheep, breaking up land, potatoes and so forth. Fuller is afflicted still with that huge agricultural Family - the Russleys, who eat up his substance like locusts - still I think on the whole he is getting into the right way to do well for himself, but he is half daft. Queer anecdotes one gets of Colonial ways of living. There is the road to Kaiapoi, a never-failing topic of lamentation. Just after leaving Christchurch you enter the Papanui Swamp through which it is next to impossible to drag any vehicle formed for human use. Raven took his children across it the other day. He in advance carrying the eldest girl. Miss Burbidge the Governess and Johnny following on a Cart horse with a pack saddle. Presently there is a scream - the horse is down and Governess and child are in the midst of the Swamp, but with some exertion are safely mounted again. After clearing the Swamp the road becomes slightly better for a few miles, when you reach the banks of the River. Who in England would take the bed of a River for a Road? but so it is, the bottom is tolerably hard, barring a quicksand here and there which may possibly engulph the travellers. After some miles of this amphibious route they get to the Ferry - a ferry for man but not for horses, so the horses have to swim for it, getting thoroughly wet and of course transferring the acquired moisture to their riders on remounting, - then more quagmires and swamp and so home - fifteen miles up the country. Such is winter travelling in the settled District of the Canterbury plains. N’importe - people get on well enough, and on the whole seem rather to enjoy it than not. They are out of provisions up at Kaiapoi and have no sugar. Vessels cannot go round to the Waimakariri this weather.’

29 July 1853
‘Started with Stoddart for Christchurch. To the Land Office. First settled business with FitzGerald and Brittan; got their signatures to the Conveyances of Church Lands. Then talked to Brittan about my Electioneering plan; he highly approved; recommended me to stand for the Town in preference to the Country which was of course to get rid of me as a Competitor. Then he said his Brother-in-law one Mr Fooks who knew all the constituency should canvass for me at once. So I left, considering that Brittan at least would help me. My reasons for offering myself are, simply, that there are no persons at all fit, and I believe I may be useful; but the Assembly will doubtless be held at Auckland, a terrible undertaking, about as distant from Canterbury as England from Lisbon - a much severer work than going to America per Steamboat from England. Besides this, the work to be done is very responsible, and I have no doubt will be very disagreeable; all fighting with the Governor. Watts Russell is an amiable good kind of gentlemanly dummy, utterly unequal to such work. FitzGerald who will probably be returned for Lyttelton is scatter-brained. Brittan is untrustworthy, even if he is returned which is not likely. To undertake such an office has neither pleasure, honor nor profit in prospect. I could however manage to attend the first important Meeting, which will probably be about November. The Governor leaves the Colony in December. His plan is, doubtless, to pay a parting visit to the different Settlements, to hold a Session of the Assembly at Auckland in November - to smother the Southern Settlements by Auckland influence and if possible to get off with eclat. Doubtless he calculates on the Southern Members not coming up. I returned to Lyttelton Friday evening, Stoddart remaining to canvass for me.’

Discovering Pitcairn Island

Pitcairn Island, in the Southern Pacific Ocean, was first discovered by Europeans 250 years ago today thanks to one of a series of circumnavigation expeditions undertaken by the British Royal Navy. Captain Philip Carteret, a naval officer in charge of the Swallow, was sailing west across the Southern Pacific Ocean when one of his crew spied ‘a great rock rising out of the sea’. A first hand account of the discovery can be found in Carteret’s diary - published in 1773.

Carteret was born in 1733 on the island of Jersey, but joined the Royal Navy aged 14 or so. He served first as an officer’s servant, and then in 1755 passed his officer’s examination. In 1761, he inherited the family estate on Jersey but continued serving with the navy. From 1764, he served as lieutenant on the frigate Dolphin under Captain John Byron during his circumnavigation of the world. On returning to Britain, he was given his own command, the Swallow, which was ordered to sail with Dolphin on a second circumnavigation in search of a southern continent. However, after several months, the two vessels became separated.

Carteret proceeded west through the Pacific discovering Pitcairn Island and the Carteret Islands (named after him) as well as a new archipelago inside Saint George’s Channel to be named Duke of York Islands; he is also credited with rediscovering the Solomon Islands and the Fernández Islands first sighted by Spaniards two centuries earlier. On his return to Jersey, he became involved in local politics. He married Mary Rachel Silvester in 1772, and they had five children, four of whom survived into adulthood. His requests for a new ship fell on deaf ears at the admiralty, until 1779 when he took charge of HMS Endymion, and sailed it to the West Indies. There, however, he was paid off and displaced as captain; petitions for another ship were unsuccessful. He retired in 1794 with the rank of rear-admiral, and died in 1796. Further information is available at Wikipedia, decarteret.org.uk, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (log-in required), or Captain Carteret and the Voyage of the Swallow by H. G. Mowat (which can be previewed at Googlebooks).

After returning from his expedition in the Swallow, Carteret gave his journal of the expedition to John Hawkesworth who published it in 1773 in the first of the three volumes entitled: An Account of the Voyages Undertaken by the Order of His Present Majesty for Making Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere, and Successively Performed by Commodore Byron, Captain Wallis, Captain Carteret, and Captain Cook, in the Dolphin, the Swallow, and the Endeavour: Drawn up from the Journals which were kept by the Several Commanders, and from the Papers of Joseph Banks, Esq. This is freely available online at Internet Archive.

Carteret was so aggrieved at changes made by Hawkesworth to his manuscript that he prepared his own version. However, this manuscript languished through the centuries, and was in a private collection in Sydney in the mid-20th century when Helen Wallis edited it for the Hakluyt Society. Carteret’s Voyage Round the World, 1766-1769 was published in two volumes in 1965. The following extract, however, on the first sighting of Pitcairn Island comes from the 1773 Hawkesworth edition.

3 July 1767
‘We continued our course westward till the evening of Thursday the 2d of July, when we discovered land to the northward of us. Upon approaching it the next day, it appeared like a great rock rising out of the sea: it was not more than five miles in circumference, and seemed to be uninhabited; it was, however, covered with trees, and we saw a small stream of fresh water running down one side of it. I would have landed upon it, but the surf, which at this season broke upon it with great violence, rendered it impossible. I got soundings on the west side of it, at somewhat less than a mile from the shore, in twenty-five fathom, with a bottom of coral and sand; and it is probable that in fine summer weather landing here may not only be practicable but easy. We saw a great number of sea birds hovering about it, at somewhat less than a mile from the shore, and the sea here seemed to have fish. It lies in latitude 20° 2’ S., longitude 133° 21’ W. and about a thousand leagues to the westward of the continent of America. It is so high that we saw it at the distance of more than fifteen leagues, and it having been discovered by a young gentleman, son to Major Pitcairn of the marines, who was unfortunately lost in the Aurora, we called it PITCAIRN’S ISLAND.

While we were in the neighbourhood of this island, the weather was extremely tempestuous, with long rolling billows from the southward, larger and higher than any I had seen before. The winds were variable, but blew chiefly from the S. S. W.  W. and W. N. W. We had very seldom a gale to the eastward, so that we were prevented from keeping in a high south latitude, and were continually driving to the northward.’

Since it’s discovery Pitcairn Island has had a chequered history. In 1790, it was populated by mutineers from the Bounty and several native Tahitians (most islanders today remain their descendants). Nearly 20 years were to pass before the island was visited by another vessel. The group of islands became a British colony in 1838. The population peaked at over 200 in the 1930s, and is around 50 today. In 2004, several men, including the mayor, were convicted of sexual offences against children, since when restrictions on children visiting have remained in place.

Vice-chancellor Priestley

‘The Emperor blubber itself has a very delicate flavour. As a treat this morning Campbell gave us each a small strip of Emperor’s breast done as a filet-de-boeuf, with a small piece of fat on top, and it was an excellent change after the unvarying stews we have had for months.’ This is Raymond Priestley, born 130 years ago today, writing in his diary while holed up in Antartica with the so-called Northern Party of Scott’s ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition. The Northern Party survived two winters in the region, and Priestley went on to become a highly respected university administrator, and to maintain his diary habit all his working life.

Priestley was born, on 20 July 1886, into a Methodist family in Tewkesbury, England. His father was headmaster of the local grammar school. While studying geology at Bristol university he was recruited to Shackleton’s Nimrod expedition to Antartica (1907-1909). He was also a member of Scott’s ill-fated Terra Nova expedition in 1910-1912, and subsequently wrote Antarctic Adventure. He entered Cambridge University, but when the war intervened, he served as adjutant at the Wireless Training Centre, and then with the 46th divisional signal company in France. During the war, he married Phyllis Mary, and they had two daughters. After the war, he completed his studies, as well as writing several books: Breaking the Hindenburg Line, The Work of the Royal Engineers, 1914–19: the Signal Service, and a work on glaciology. He also helped set up the Scott Polar Research Institute in the University of Cambridge in 1920.

From the 1930s, Priestley held a series of academic and government administrative posts in England, and then in Australia, in particular becoming Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne (1935-1938), and then Vice-Chancellor of Birmingham University (1938-1952). In 1944, he spent several months in the West Indies with a committee from the UK tasked with investigating the possibility of setting up a university in the region. He was knighted in 1949, and retired in 1952, but continued to work in different capacities (including, for example, being president of the Royal Geographical Society from 1961 to 1963). He died in 1974. Further information can be found at the Australian Dictionary of National Biography, University of Birmingham or Wikipedia.

Priestley kept a diary throughout his life, from his Antarctic expedition days to his chancellorship of Birmingham University. He based his first book - Antarctic Adventure - on the diary he kept while with Scott’s expedition. Published by Fisher Unwin in 1914, first editions of this book can sell for over £1,000; however, it is also freely available online at Internet Archive. Although Priestley says, about half way through the narrative, that he has tried to avoid the diary form as much as possible, he then says ‘it is impossible to give a lifelike description of our routine, our thoughts, and our feelings during this abnormal life without the help of some extracts from the records written at the time’. Thereafter, he quotes liberally from his own diary.

The diaries Priestley kept while in Australia were published by Melbourne University Press in 1998 and again in 2002 as The Diary of a Vice-Chancellor: University of Melbourne 1935-1938. A review can be found at Don Atikin website. And, an excellent and detailed summary of all 14 of Priestley’s diaries held by Birmingham University, from 1938-1954, can be found on the university’s website, as can a photograph of one of the manuscript diaries. Furthermore, The University of the West Indies website offers two links to the text of a diary Priestley kept in 1944 while visiting the region. (However,  at the time of writing, the links do not seem to work.)

Here, though, are several extracts from Priestley’s diary as found in Antarctic Adventure.

22 February 1912
‘The worst of a wind is that you can do nothing to it. If you are being annoyed by a man or an animal bigger than yourself, you can at least get on the other side of a fence and throw stones at him or it, but here we are hung up by an infernally cold wind and able to do nothing against it whatever, while it is gradually tearing our tent in pieces. We are all getting less physically fit and feeling the cold more, and this is showing itself by the continual presence of cold feet, and by constant attacks of cramp in different parts of the body. It is to be hoped that the ship is all serene and not blown out north by the wind. Before the gale commenced Levick and Abbott reported that they saw a trail of smoke off the ice tongue, and we therefore think that she may be sheltering in Relief Inlet, but at times like this all of us have strong imaginations. We are all suffering very much, and myself in particular, from an almost intolerable itching of the feet when circulation is restored after they have been very cold. The barometer isn’t much use to us nowadays. As far as I can make out if it goes up it means the gale is going to be stronger, if it goes down the wind is going to increase. When the barometer remains steady the gale remains steady too. Cheerful, isn’t it?’

7 May 1912
‘While still in bed this morning we heard the gale blowing hard outside, and when we got up we found we were snowed in as we have never been before. During the morning Dickason and I tunnelled through the drift and have managed thus to extend the roof of the shaft for about 6 feet in length. We found a regular hurricane outside, but no drift. Levick and Browning have butchered three of the Emperors, and Campbell and Abbott have therefore been cooking under great difficulties, for the galley is full of meat and carcasses, and there is a bad backdraught down the chimney. We had a lot of Emperor penguin meat and blubber in the hoosh to-night. The meat has been a great success, but the blubber has made the gravy pure oil, and has beaten some of us, though I am thankful to say not myself. The Emperor blubber itself has a very delicate flavour. As a treat this morning Campbell gave us each a small strip of Emperor’s breast done as a filet-de-boeuf, with a small piece of fat on top, and it was an excellent change after the unvarying stews we have had for months. I am reading my diary of last year in monthly parts for the amusement of the company. We all find an especial, though a tantalizing pleasure in the few descriptions of meals I have entered as part of our routine at Cape Adare. We still feel the monotonous diet, but are otherwise quite reconciled to our fate.

The cave is keeping quite warm at present, and of course the insulation is much improved by each wind with drift. All the sea ice beyond the bay has gone out again, and the Drygalski Ice Tongue and the moraines are hidden by dense drift, which is just missing us except in the strongest gusts. Dickason and I were both blown down once or twice when we were standing at the entrance to the shaft.’

25 May 1912
‘Westerly wind with heavy drift continues, and we have been drifted up all day. This afternoon we had to do away with the blubber fires because of the smitch, for the drift kept on filling the chimney and preventing the draught from flowing. Afterwards Dickason started the hoosh over the primus, and this rapidly used up our limited supply of oxygen. First of all the reading-lamps went out and refused to be lighted with a flaring spill, and then the spill went out and could not be relighted at the primus. Next the primus went out and could not be relighted because the matches would not burn. By this time we were opening up the chimney and the drift at the entrance to the shaft, and Campbell drove his ice-axe through the latter with immediate relief to everybody. Since then things have gone pretty well, but we all have had bad headaches, which we had put down to the smitch, but which were more probably due directly to lack of oxygen. It is a great nuisance this new danger having arisen after we thought we had avoided the utmost malice of the weather, but it is lucky we were not caught at night and all asphyxiated in our beds. I suppose that the coating of ice which has formed on the inside of the snow-roof has spoiled the ventilation. After dinner Campbell and Abbot cleared the drift from the mouth of the shaft and pushed the flagstaff down the chimney.’

14 June 1912
‘Half a gale blowing. Clear, and stars shining. Another day in bed. Rather smitchier than usual. We have just had a word who should go out and clear the chimney and cut away a projecting piece of sealskin in our passage roof which is a constant menace to our eyes and noses, and which has perhaps been the cause of more hasty language than any other individual thing about the camp. I have not yet mentioned one essential portion of our equipment - the toothpick. Campbell is the only member of the party who still possesses a toothbrush, and the present diet is eminently suited to cause the collection of small shreds of meat between our teeth. In spite of this we are able to keep them in as good condition as we can at home by the judicious use of bamboo toothpicks with sharp points to remove the meat and of pieces of soft wood to rub the front of the teeth. These latter instruments are made from the white wood of the Fry’s chocolate boxes, and their blunt chisel ends are moistened and chewed first to secure pliability. They are rather better than a toothbrush. The hard biscuit, of course, looks after the grinding surfaces for us. I think at present that I am looking forward to a good bath and a clean up as much as I am to a good meal of bread, butter, and jam, which is saying a good deal. Another tin of oil was finished this morning. We have every reason to be satisfied with the oil consumption, which is becoming less and less, while Dickason watches over his primus like a hen over her chickens. The men are just finishing off their private sewing, and then they start work on their tents. The day after one has been messman is always the pleasantest of the three, for one feels one has earned the right to a day in bed.

To-day has been a great day of controversies. First Levick and myself found ourselves at variance about the chocolate ration, and the amount of chocolate left at Cape Adare. The second argument was whether or not one of the expedition fruit-cakes would freeze at spring sledging temperatures, and this was followed by two lengthy battles between Campbell and Levick on points of national ethics and imperial politics respectively. Finally we had a three-cornered battle as to which is the most economical and soul-satisfying way of eating one’s single biscuit. We are all three set in our own way: Campbell eats his at breakfast, Levick part at breakfast and part in each hoosh, and myself part when I feel the want of it, about midday or a little earlier, and part at dinner.’

6 July 1912
‘The worst of our day as messman is the infernal crick we get in our backs from never being able to stand upright. Mine is at present aching terribly, but the pain soon passes off in our bags.

Levick is too broad for our inner door, and we have just spent an amusing five minutes watching his attempts to get through with a joint of meat in one hand and a cooker in the other. Luckily, as a rule we run to slimness, and no one else has much trouble.

The atmosphere is becoming tolerable again, but we have ruined the pure white of the roof and wall until a few more smitchless days enable pure crystals to form over the dirty ones.

Browning has slight indigestion and Dickason has complained of a bad stitch in his side, but otherwise we are in excellent health.

We are running out of penguins and of bones for the fire, and shall be short of sea ice in a day or two, so I hope for fine weather, for the penguins especially make all the difference between palatable and monotonous hooch.’

The Diary Junction

Encountering the natives

‘It appeared, that the natives entertained the idea, that our clothes were impervious to spears, and had therefore determined on a trial of strength by suddenly overpowering us, for which purpose they had “planted” (i. e. hidden) their spears and all encumbrances, and had told off for each of us, six or eight of their number, whose attack was to be sudden and simultaneous.’ This is Sir Thomas Mitchell, Surveyor-General in colonial Australia who died 160 years ago today, writing in his exploration diary about fears of native plots.

Mitchell was born at Grangemouth in Scotland in 1792, the son of a harbour-master, but he was brought up by his uncle. He joined the British Army as a volunteer, aged 16, and received his first commission as 2nd Lieutenant in the 1st Battalion 95th Rifles. During the Peninsular War in Spain, Mitchell was promoted to major. He had a recognised talent for draughtsmanship, and after the war he remained in Spain and Portugal to complete sketches of the battlefields. With cuts in government funding, he wasn’t able to finish them for many years, and they weren’t published until the late 1830s (within Wyld’s atlas of the Peninsular War).

In 1818, Mitchell married Mary (daughter of General Blunt) with whom he had 12 children. In 1827, he was appointed deputy to the Surveyor-General of the Australian New South Wales colony, and soon became Surveyor-General himself. He set about exploring the colony and establishing a major road system. He made four expeditions between 1831 and 1846, discovering the course of the Darling river among others, and being first to penetrate that area which became known as Australia Felix. On a leave of absence, he visited England in the late 1830s, and is said to have brought specimens of gold and the first diamond found in Australia. During the same visit he published the diaries of his first three expeditions, and was knighted.

In 1841, Mitchell completed a new Gothic-style family home, Carthona, on the water’s edge in Darling Point, Sydney. Three years later, he was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Council. However, he couldn’t marry the roles of a politician with that of a government officer, and he resigned after some months. Increasingly, his survey department came under criticism, and was investigated by a Royal Commission. The Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) article on Mitchell provides this overview of his position at the time:

‘The report of the Royal Commission severely condemned the methods and results of Mitchell’s surveying and the administration of his department but it is not a fair summary of his life’s work. The criticism of his surveying technique is largely a priori and neglects both the substantial accuracy achieved, the inadequate and often primitive means at his disposal and the magnitude of the tasks he was required to perform. Mitchell was, however, a poor administrator. He had too many other interests and ambitions and was too often and too long away from his department either in England or exploring the interior. He had also a fatal inability to delegate responsibility to his subordinates with whom his relations were often very bad, and thus, despite enormous labours, he never got ahead of accumulating business. There was also insufficient supervision of surveyors in the field and consequently opportunities for the lazy and dishonest. But Mitchell was not responsible for the shortage of surveyors, the unrealistically large amount of work expected of them and, in particular, the division of the department into salaried and licensed surveyors which itself was a guarantee of inefficiency.’

Towards the end of his life, Mitchell investigated the Bathurst gold fields, visited England again, and patented a propeller system for steamers. Despite the scandal of delays at the survey department, he remained a popular figure in Australia until his death on 5 October 1855. Further information is available from Wikipedia, ADB, and Roma Reilly’s Australian Explorers website.

In his lifetime, Mitchell published the diaries of his four expeditions: Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, with descriptions of the recently explored region of Australia Felix and of the present colony of New South Wales came out in two volumes in 1838; and Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia, in search of a route from Sydney to the Gulf of Carpentaria, came out in 1848. Both are freely available online through various websites, not least Internet Archive. Much of Mitchell’s daily narratives are concerned with describing the landscape, its topography, geography and flora/fauna, searches for food and water, and encounters with natives. Here are several extracts from Three Expeditions.

4 January 1832
‘Continuing due north, we just avoided some thick scrubs, which either on the right or left would have been very difficult to penetrate. The woods opened gradually however, into a thick copse of Acacia pendula, and at the end of three miles we reached the eastern skirts of an extensive open plain, the ground gently undulating. At 4 3/4 miles, on ascending a slight eminence, we suddenly overlooked a rather deep channel, containing abundance of water in ponds, the opposite banks being the highest ground visible. The vast plains thus watered consist chiefly of a rich dark-coloured earth, to the depth of 30 or 40 feet. Unabraded fragments of trap are not uncommon in the soil of these plains, and I imagined there was a want of symmetry in the hollows and slopes as compared with features more closely connected with hills elsewhere. At 8 1/2 miles, perceiving boundless plains to the northward, I changed the direction of our route 24 degrees east of north. The plains extended westward to the horizon, and opened to our view an extensive prospect towards the north-east, into the country north of the range of Nundewar, a region apparently champaign, but including a few isolated and picturesque hills. Patches of wood were scattered over the level parts, and we hastened towards a land of such promising aspect. Water however was the great object of our search, but I had no doubt that I should find enough in a long valley before us, which descended from the range on the east. In this I was nevertheless mistaken; for although the valley was well escarped, it did not contain even the trace of a watercourse.

Crossing the ridge beyond it, to a valley still deeper, which extended under a ridge of very remarkable hills, we met with no better success; nor yet when we had followed the valley to its union with another, under a hill which I named Mount Frazer, after the botanist of that name.

No other prospect of relief from this most distressing of all privations remained to us, and the day was one of extraordinary heat, for the thermometer, which had never before been above 101 degrees on this journey, now stood at 108 degrees in the shade. The party had travelled sixteen miles, and the cattle could not be driven further with any better prospect of finding water. We therefore encamped in this valley while I explored it upwards, but found all dry and desolate. Mr. White returned late, after a most laborious but equally fruitless search northward, and we consequently passed a most disagreeable afternoon. Unable to eat, the cattle lay groaning, and the men extended on their backs watched some heavy thunderclouds which at length stretched over the sky; the very crows sat on the trees with their mouths open.

The thunder roared and the cloud broke darkly over us, but its liquid contents seemed to evaporate in the middle air. At half-past seven a strong hot wind set in from the north-east and continued during the night. Thermometer 90 degrees. I was suddenly awoke from feverish sleep by a violent shaking of my tent, and I distinctly heard the flapping of very large wings, as if some bird, perhaps an owl, had perched upon it.’

31 May 1836
‘I now ventured to take a north-west course, in expectation of falling in with the supposed Darling. We crossed first a plain about two miles in breadth, when we came to a line of yarra trees which enveloped a dry creek from the north-east, and very like Clover-creek. We next travelled over ground chiefly open, and at four miles crossed a sand-hill, on which was a covered tomb, after the fashion of those on the Murray. On descending from the sand ridge, we approached a line of yarra trees, which overhang a reach of green and stagnant water. I had scarcely arrived at the bank, when my attention was drawn to a fire, about a hundred yards before us, and from beside which immediately sprung up a numerous tribe of blacks, who began to jump, wring their hands, and shriek as if in a state of utter madness or despair. These savages rapidly retired towards others who were at a fire on a further part of the bank, but Piper and his gin going boldly forward, succeeded, at length, in getting within hail, and in allaying their fears.

While he was with these natives, I had again leisure to examine the watercourse, upon which we had arrived. I could not consider it the Darling, as seen by me above, and so little did it seem “the sister stream” to the Murray, as described by Start, that I at first thought it nothing but an ana-branch of that river. Neither did these natives satisfy me about Oolawambiloa, by which I had supposed the Darling was meant, but respecting which they still pointed westward. They, however, told Piper that the channel we had reached contained all the waters of “Wambool,” (the Macquarie), and “Callewatta” (the upper Darling), and I accordingly determined to trace it up, at least far enough to identify it with the latter. But I thought it right that we should endeavour first to recognise the junction with the Murray as seen by Captain Start. The natives said, it was not far off; and I accordingly encamped at two o’clock, that I might measure back to that important point.

Thirteen natives set out, as if to accompany us, for they begged that we would not go so fast. Three of them, however, soon set off at full speed, as if on a message; and the remaining ten fell behind us. We had then passed the camp of their gins, and I supposed at the time, that their only object was to see us beyond these females, Piper being with us. I pursued the river through a tortuous course until sunset, when I was obliged to quit it, and return to the camp by moonlight, without having seen anything of the Murray. I had, however, ascertained that the channel increased very much in width lower down, and when it was filled with the clay-coloured water of the flood then in the Murray, it certainly had the appearance of a river of importance.’

1 June 1836
‘The country to the eastward seemed so dry and scrubby, that I could not hope in returning to join Mr. Stapylton’s party or reach the Murray, by any shorter route, than that of our present track; and I, therefore, postponed any further survey back towards the junction of the Darling and Murray, until I should be returning this way. We accordingly proceeded upwards, and were followed by the natives. They were late in coming near us however, which Piper and his gin accounted for as follows: As soon as it was known to them, the day before, that we were gone to the junction, the strong men of the tribe went by a shorter route; but they were thrown out and disappointed by our stopping short of that “promising” point. There, they had passed the night, and having been busy looking for our track in the morning, the earth’s surface being to them a book they always read, they were late in following our party.

Kangaroos were more numerous and larger here, than at any other part we had yet visited. This day one coming before me I fired at it with my rifle; and a man beside me, after asking my permission, fired also. The animal, nevertheless, ran amongst the party behind, some of whom hastily, and without permission, discharged their carabines also. At this four horses took fright, and ran back at full speed along our track. Several of the men, who went after these horses, fell in with two large bodies of natives coming along this track, and one or two men had nearly fallen into their hands twice. “Tantragee” (McLellan), when running at full speed, pursued by bands of savages, escaped, only by the opportune appearance of others of our men, who had caught the horses and happened to come up. The natives then closed on our carts, and accompanied them in single files on each side; but as they appeared to have got rid of all their spears, I saw no danger in allowing them to join us in that manner. Chancing to look back at them, however, when riding some way ahead, the close contact of such numbers induced me to halt and call loudly, cautioning the men, upon which I observed an old man and several others suddenly turn and run; and, on my going to the carts, the natives fell back, those in their rear setting off at full speed.

Soon after, I perceived the whole tribe running away, as if a plan had been suddenly frustrated. Piper and his gin who had been watching them attentively, now came up, and explained to me these movements. It appeared, that the natives entertained the idea, that our clothes were impervious to spears, and had therefore determined on a trial of strength by suddenly overpowering us, for which purpose they had “planted” (i. e. hidden) their spears and all encumbrances, and had told off for each of us, six or eight of their number, whose attack was to be sudden and simultaneous. A favourable moment had not occurred before they awoke my suspicions; and thus their motives for sudden retreat were to be understood. That party consisted of strong men, neither women nor boys being among them; and although we had little to fear from such an attack, having arms in our hands, the scheme was very audacious, and amounted to a proof, that these savages no sooner get rid of their apprehensions, than they think of aggression. I had, on several occasions, noticed and frustrated dispositions apparently intended for sudden attacks, for the natives seemed always inclined to await favourable opportunities, and were doubtless aware of the advantage of suddenness of attack to the assailants. Nothing seemed to excite the surprise of these natives, neither horses nor bullocks, although they had never before seen such animals, nor white men, carts, weapons, dress, or anything else we had. All were quite new to them, and equally strange, yet they looked at the cattle, as if they had been always amongst them, and they seemed to understand at once, the use of everything.

We continued our journey, and soon found all the usual features of the Darling; the hills of soft red sand near the river, covered with the same kind of shrubs seen so much higher up. The graves had no longer any resemblance to those on the Murrumbidgee and Murray, but were precisely similar to the places of interment we had seen on the Darling, being mounds surrounded by, and covered with, dead branches and pieces of wood. On these lay, the same singular casts of the head in white plaster, which we had before seen only at Fort Bourke. It is, indeed, curious to observe the different modes of burying, adopted by the natives on different rivers. For instance, on the Bogan, they bury in graves covered like our own, and surrounded with curved walks and ornamented ground. On the Lachlan, under lofty mounds of earth, seats being made around them. On the Murrumbidgee and Murray, the graves are covered with well thatched huts, containing dried grass for bedding, and enclosed by a parterre of a particular shape, like the inside of a whale-boat. On the Darling, as above stated, the graves are in mounds, covered with dead branches and limbs of trees, and are surrounded by a ditch, which here we found encircled by a fence of dead limbs and branches. [. . .]

The natives were heard by Piper several times during the day’s journey, in the woods beyond the river, as if moving along the right bank, in a route parallel with ours; but they did not appear near our camp, although their smoke was seen at a distance.’

The Diary Junction

Along the Rocky river

Today marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Edward John Eyre, a rather extraordinary character who travelled to Australia when still a teenager, tried out sheep farming, but then made a name for himself as an explorer and by managing relations between settlers and aborigines. Determined on a career as a colonial administrator, he moved from minor post to minor post but proved rather incompetent. During his final posting in Jamaica, his government was responsible for quashing a rebellion and causing hundreds of deaths in the process. These events led to a huge controversy in Britain, with some calling for Eyre to be prosecuted for murder, and others believing he had saved Jamaica for the empire. There is no evidence he was a diarist by nature, but he did keep a journal on his most important expedition across South Australia from Adelaide to Albany.

Eyre was born into a religious family in Bedfordshire on 5 August 1815, although soon after his family moved to Hornsea, Yorkshire. He was schooled at Louth and Sedbergh, but left at 16 intent on joining the army. Before his papers came through, however, his father suggested Australia as an alternative. He travelled there, when still only 17, with £400 capital, and took work with a sheep farmer in New South Wales (NSW). He tried to establish his own sheep farm but when this failed he turned to overlanding, i.e. driving sheep and cattle from NSW to new settlements in South Australia. This gave him a thirst for exploring. His first expedition lasted six months, and the second, from Adelaide to Albany in Western Australia, a year.

Although this last expedition ruined him financially, Eyre returned to Adelaide something of a hero, and with considerable experience of aborigines. The governor of South Australia, appointed him magistrate and protector of the aborigines. Unlike many settlers, he believed that it was possible for Europeans to co-exist with the aborigines, and he proved a great success in the job. In 1845, he published Manners and Customs of the Aborigines of Australia. That same year, he returned to England and found appointment as lieutenant-governor of the South Island of New Zealand. He sailed for New Zealand at the beginning of 1847, and remained until 1853. However, he was not particularly suited to public office, socially shy and physically awkward, according to biographers; and he was hindered by difficult relations with the settlers and with the governor, Sir George Grey. Adelaide Ormond, who he had met in England, sailed out to marry him in 1850. They would have five children.

In late 1854, Eyre became lieutenant-governor of the island of St Vincent. The couple returned to England on leave in 1857, but Adelaide stayed behind when her husband went back. In 1859, he was appointed temporary governor of Leeward Islands, based in Antigua, before once again returning home the following year. His next appointment was as acting governor of Jamaica, and then, in 1864, as governor-in-chief. The following year, he was faced with a serious riot by hundreds of black people at Morant Bay, and responded by declaring martial law in parts of the country. Government forces dealt with the unrest forcefully, killing or executing over 500 people in the process. George William Gordon, a coloured local politician who had long been a pain in Eyre’s side, was considered responsible for the rebellion, and was soon arrested, tried and hanged. While Eyre was hailed as a hero among the whites in Jamaica, in England he was heavily criticised. A royal commission was set up to look into the rebellion and subsequent events. It proved highly critical of Eyre, and he was dismissed from his post.

On returning home, Eyre’s role in the Morant Bay Rebellion and its aftermath caused great controversy. Some (including Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley) called for him to be indicted for murder; others (such as Charles Dickens and John Ruskin), however, believed he had saved Jamaica for the empire. He managed to avoid prosecution by the government; and he was exonerated in a case brought against him in civil court. Although not offered another post, he did eventually secure a pension, and retired to live a quiet life in Devon. He died in 1901. Further information is available from Wikipedia, the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Excellent Explorers, or from The Life of Edward John Eyre by Hamilton Hume (1867) available at Internet Archive.

Encyclopaedia of New Zealand (1966), which bizarrely gives Yorkshire as Eyre’s place of birth and death, gives this assessment of the man: ‘Eyre was stubborn, obstinate, and unteachable. These qualities, however necessary for the explorer of parched continents, were positive disqualifications for an administrator. In New Zealand he could not do much harm - in fact, he was merely a rather pathetic figure of fun - but in Jamaica nemesis overtook him and he played out his tragedy with the world for his audience. But Carlyle’s view of him as a “hero” possibly penetrates further to the truth than his opponents' conception of him as simply the villain of the piece.’

During his time as an explorer in Australia, Eyre kept diaries, and he prepared them for publication while en route to London by ship in 1844. They were published in two volumes by T & W Boone in 1845 under the title Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia, and Overland from Adelaide to King George’s Sound, in the years 1840-1. The volumes are freely available at Project Gutenberg or the University of Adelaide website. Here are several extracts.

27 June 1840
‘In crossing the southern extremity of these large plains, we came suddenly upon a small party of natives engaged in digging yams of which the plains were full; they were so intent upon their occupation that we were close to them before they were aware of our presence; when they saw us they appeared to be surprised and alarmed, and endeavoured to steal off as rapidly as they could without fairly taking to their heels, for they were evidently either unwilling or afraid to run; finding that we did not molest them they halted, and informed us by signs that we should soon come to water, in the direction we were going. This I knew to be true, and about three o’clock we were in front of a water-course, I had on a former journey named the “Rocky river,” from the ragged character of its bed where we struck it.

We had been travelling for some distance upon a high level open country, and now came to a sudden gorge of several hundred feet below us, through which the Rocky river wound its course. It was a most singular and wild looking place, and was not inaptly named by the men, the “Devil’s Glen;” looking down from the table land we were upon, the valley beneath appeared occupied by a hundred little hills of steep ascent and rounded summits, whilst through their pretty glens, flowed the winding stream, shaded by many a tree and shrub - the whole forming a most interesting and picturesque scene.

The bed of the watercourse was over an earthy slate, and the water had a sweetish taste. Like most of the Australian rivers, it consisted only of ponds connected by a running stream, and even that ceased to flow a little beyond where we struck it, being lost in the deep sandy channel which it then assumed, and which exhibited in many places traces of very high floods. Below our camp the banks were 50 to 60 feet high, and the width from 60 to 100 yards, its course lay through plains to the south-west, over which patches of scrub were scattered at intervals, and the land in its vicinity was of an inferior description, with much prickly grass growing upon it.

Upwards, the Rocky river, after emerging from the gorges in which we found it, descended through very extensive plains from the north-north-east; there was plenty of water in its bed, and abundance of grass over the plains, so that in its upper parts it offers fine and extensive runs for either cattle or sheep, and will, I have no doubt, ere many years be past, be fully occupied for pastoral purposes.’

19 September 1840
‘This morning I unloaded the dray of every thing except the water casks, and pitching my tent among the scrub took up my quarters alone, whilst I sent back the man, the native boy, the dray, and all the horses with Mr. Scott to Baxter’s range. As they made an early start, I gave them instructions to push on as rapidly as possible, so as to get the range that night, to rest the horses next day and fill the casks with water, and on the third day, if possible, to return the whole distance and rejoin me.

Having seen them fairly away, I occupied myself in writing and charting during the day, and at night amused myself in taking stellar observations for latitude. I had already taken the altitude of Vega, and deduced the latitude to be 32 degrees 3 minutes 23 seconds S.; leaving my artificial horizon on the ground outside whilst I remained in the tent waiting until Altair came to the meridian, I then took my sextant and went out to observe this star also; but upon putting down my hand to take hold of the horizon glass in order to wipe the dew off, my fingers went into the quick-silver - the horizon glass was gone, and also the piece of canvass I had put on the ground to lie down upon whilst observing so low an altitude as that of Vega. Searching a little more I missed a spade, a parcel of horse shoes, an axe, a tin dish, some ropes, a grubbing hoe, and several smaller things which had been left outside the tent, as not being likely to take any injury from the damp.

It was evident I was surrounded by natives, who had stolen all these things during the short time I had been in my tent, certainly not exceeding half an hour. The night was very windy and I had heard nothing, besides I was encamped in the midst of a very dense brush of large wide-spreading tea-trees and other bushes, any of which would afford a screen for a considerable number of natives. In daylight it was impossible to see many yards in distance, and nothing could be discerned at night. The natives must have watched the dray go away in the morning, and waited until dark for their opportunity to rob me; and most daringly and effectually had they done it. At the time that I lay on the ground, taking the star’s altitude, they must have been close to me, and after I went into the tent, they doubtless saw me sitting there by the light of the candle, since the door was not quite closed, and they had come quite in front to obtain some of the things they had stolen. The only wonder with me was that they had not speared me, as they could scarcely have been intimidated by my individual presence.

As soon as I missed my horizon glass, and entertained the suspicion of natives being about, I hurried into the tent and lighting a large blue light, run with it rapidly through the bushes around me. The effect of this was very beautiful amidst the darkness and gloom of the woods, and for a great distance in every direction objects could be seen as well as by day; the natives, however, were gone, and I could only console myself by firing a couple of balls after them through the underwood to warn them of the danger of intruding upon me again; I then put every thing which had been left outside, into the tent, and kept watch for an hour or two, but my visitors came no more. The shots, or the blue light, had effectually frightened them. They had, however, in their turn, produced as great an effect upon me, and had at least deprived me of one night’s rest.’

20 September 1840
‘Rising very early I set to work, with an axe, to clear away the bushes from around my tent. I now discovered that the natives had been concealed behind a large tea-tree not twenty yards from the tent; there were numerous foot-marks there, and the remains of fire-sticks which they had brought with them, for a native rarely moves at night without fire.

By working hard I cleared a large circle with a radius of from thirty to forty yards, and then piling up all the bushes outside and around the tent, which was in the centre, I was completely fortified, and my sable friends could no longer creep upon me to steal without my hearing them. I spent great part of the day in charting, and took a few angles from the tent, but did not dare to venture far away. At night, when it was dark, I mounted guard with my gun for three hours, walking round outside the tent, and firing off my gun before I lay down, which I did with my clothes on, ready to get up at a moment’s notice. Nothing, however, disturbed me.’

21 September 1840
‘I had been occupied during the greater part of the day in charting, and in the evening was just shouldering my gun to mount guard again, when I was delighted to see Mr. Scott returning with the dray, and the party all safe. They had executed the duty entrusted to them well, and had lost no time in rejoining me; the horses were, however, somewhat fatigued, having come all the way from the range in one day. Being now reinforced, I had no longer occasion to mount guard, and for the first time since the natives had stolen upon me, enjoyed a sound sleep.’

18 May 1841
‘This morning we had to travel upon a soft heavy beach, and moved slowly and with difficulty along, and three of the horses were continually attempting to lie down on the road. At twelve miles, we found some nice green grass, and although we could not procure water here, I determined to halt for the sake of the horses. The weather was cool and pleasant. From our camp Mount Ragged bore N. 35 degrees W., and the island we had seen for the last two days, E. 18 degrees S. Having seen some large kangaroos near our camp, I sent Wylie with the rifle to try and get one. At dark he returned bringing home a young one, large enough for two good meals; upon this we feasted at night, and for once Wylie admitted that his belly was full. He commenced by eating a pound and a half of horse-flesh, and a little bread, he then ate the entrails, paunch, liver, lights, tail, and two hind legs of the young kangaroo, next followed a penguin, that he had found dead upon the beach, upon this he forced down the whole of the hide of the kangaroo after singeing the hair off, and wound up this meal by swallowing the tough skin of the penguin; he then made a little fire, and laid down to sleep, and dream of the pleasures of eating, nor do I think he was ever happier in his life than at that moment.’

Ran about all day

The Australian cricketer Victor Trumper, once called the best batsman in the world, died a century ago today - and he was only in his late 30s. He is particularly remembered for the astonishing feat of scoring 100 runs before lunch on the first day of a Test Match in England. While researching a biography of Trumper in the 1980s, the author Ashley Mallett found a small diary Trumper had kept during that match and others of the 1902 tour to England. While history has made much of that tour and Trumper’s role in it, the man himself - rather amusingly in retrospect - seems to have hardly noticed the excitement, and more often than not simply recorded in his diary ‘as usual ran about all day’.

Victor Thomas Trumper was born in 1877 in Sydney, and was, according to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, probably a great-grandson of Charles Trumper, hatter, and his wife Jane, née Samson, who were married in London in 1834 and migrated to Sydney in 1837. Victor’s father was probably a footwear manufacturer, and well off enough to keep him at Crown Street Superior Public School. On leaving school, Victor became a junior clerk in the Treasury.

However, cricket was taking up much of Trumper’s time. When still only 17, he had played at Sydney Cricket Ground, scoring well in a game against a touring English team; soon after he played for New South Wales against South Australia. In 1899, he was selected for Australia’s tour of England, where he is known to have impressed the famous W. G. Grace. And, in 1902, Trumper had a remarkable season in England scoring an average of 48.49 runs. During that tour, he also became the first player to score a century on the first morning of a Test Match. That year he was described by the cricketer’s bible Wisden as ‘the best batsman in the world’. He was also a clean living young man - a teetotaller, non-smoking, Anglican.

In 1904, Trumper married Sarah Ann Briggs, a sister-in-law of J. J. Kelly, Australia’s wicket-keeper. The same year Trumper, with Hanson Carter, opened a sports store in Sydney. As well as cricket, Trumper was involved with rugby, and this involvement increased during 1907 when meetings for players discontent with the current administration met in his store. Discussions continued and led to the formation of the New South Wales Rugby Football League, with Trumper as treasurer. He continued playing cricket through to 1914, valued as much for his ability to play on bad wickets as for his scoring ability per se, but his health failed rapidly thereafter, and he died on 28 June 1915. Further information is available at Wikipedia, the Australian Dictionary of Biography, or ESPN Cricinfo.

During that famous 1902 tour in England, Trumper kept a simple, brief diary. Here is Ashley Mallett - author of Trumper - The Illustrated Biography: The greatest batsman of cricket’s Golden Age (Macmillan 1985) - explaining how he found the diary:

‘During my research into the Trumper story, I came across a tiny Collins diary. The diary, with its gold edged pages, was Victor Trumper’s diary - the one he carried with him on the 1902 tour. As a cricket writer the Trumper diary meant as much to me as stumbling across the Lost City of Atlantis would to an archaeologist. It provides us with a fascinating link with the 1902 tour. The diary is not one in the mould of a ship captain’s log, but the sort of small notebook a young cricketer might keep to note coming events, travel arrangements, shows, test and county game dates and the like. Perhaps Trumper wanted to record events chronologically for later reference, perhaps with the idea of writing a book. Yet Trumper was very much a self-effacing man. He hated publicity for publicity’s sake and if he disliked anyone, it was the man who boasted about his achievements. The contents of this diary have not seen the public light of day for some 83 years. Perhaps it was high time we delved deeper into the mystery of Victor Trumper.’

Mallett’s chapter on the 1902 tour - called Diary of a Champion - at 50 pages is easily the longest chapter in the biography. Every day of the tour is described in great detail - in contrast to the laconic entries of Trumper’s diary! Here are several entries, as found in Mallet’s book, many of them about the days of the Test Matches (which were played over three days at the time).

26 May 1902
‘Played MCC [Marylebone Cricket Club, based at Lords]. . . ran about all day. Hard ground . . . 41 not out. MCC dinner at night.’

27 May 1902
‘Continued innings made 105. Side made 270. Poor score. They did not do so well. Very tired. Stayed in and packed up.’

28 May 1902
‘Last men ran us about. Mitchell made 44, 3 hrs and gave 4 chances. I made 86 . . . wanted double century [i.e. two centuries for match]. Left for Birmingham.’

29 May 1902
‘England won toss. As usual ran about all day . . . very tired. Wrote letters home.’

30 May 1902
‘Finished innings. Raining . . . wet wickets. A made 36 . . . batted badly. 2nd innings made 8 n.o. Total score for no wickets. Theatre flag half mast.’

31 May 1902
‘Still raining leave for ground at 1 o’clock. Started match 5.15pm simply to get the crowd in a good humour. Match a draw. Saved us from a good hiding.’

12 June 1902
‘Test match . . . raining hard . . . Mac[Laren] won toss, batted. Two for none . . . had four chances off me . . . wrote letters.’

13 June 1902
‘Rain, no play. Saw Gay Lord Queux [Gay Lord Quex - a play by Arthur Wing Pinero] . . . passable.’

14 June 1902
‘No play. Rain. Saw Opera, Covent Garden. L’elisir d’amor, The Elixir of Love . . . good. HC with me.’

3 July 1902
‘Match started. Made 1. Our chaps made 190 odd. Abel and Archie batted well.’

4 July 1902
‘England 49 behind. Wickets rolled on the quiet. Made 62 in 47 minutes. Clem [Hill] 100. England, Jessop 50 not out, bowled fast.’

5 July 1902
‘Hurras. Won match. Glorious. All drunk . . . Left for Birmingham. Arrived 12pm.’

24 July 1902
‘Wet wicket. Fourth Test. Won toss, made 299. Self 104, RAD 50. 1st W 135. England 5 for 70. Tate 1st test. Fire G Peak and Coy.’ [This was the day Trumper made his record-breaking 100 before lunch!]

25 July 1902
‘England 262. Jackson 122. Bowlers done badly. Australia 8 for 85. Things gloomy. Darling 37. Refused admission theatre.’

26 July 1902
‘Won by three runs. Australia 86, England 120. MacL 35, Theatre Knowles . . . glorious time.’

27 July 1902
‘Left for London. Done out of compartment by women. All have sore heads.’

11 August 1902
‘Test match. Good crowd. Made 42, batted fairly well. Side shaped well.’

12 August 1902
‘Wicket worse. Lead of over 100 for 2nd inngs. Run out 2 . . . easy run. Clem 30. WA not out. HT and JK to go in.’

13 August 1902
‘Test over. England a glorious game. Deserved to win. Wicket bad. Catches missed. Great excitement. Glad Tests all over . . .’

Devastation in Darwin

Forty years ago today, Cyclone Tracy devastated the Australian town of Darwin, destroying 80% of houses, making 41,000 out of the 47,000 residents homeless, and killing 66 people. The Age newspaper called it a ‘disaster of the first magnitude . . . without parallel in Australia’s history.’ I was there, having arrived from Bali just a few weeks earlier after spending six months travelling across Asia. I’d got a job working in the power station, and I had a room in a house of travellers owned by Dutch Peter. It was Christmas Eve when the wind started blowing, and most people expected Tracy to veer away from land -  like a cyclone earlier in the year - but in the early hours of the morning of Christmas Day it struck with a vengeance, blowing at over 100 mph. Around 3 in the morning, after the eye had given us all a few minutes peace, Dutch Peter’s house exploded, the wooden walls and all its contents, including us, were catapulted into the night. What follows is my (rather poorly written) diary account of that night and the following few days.

24-30 December 1974
‘And suddenly it is Christmas Eve. Work [I was employed by the local power station] isn’t really work (yesterday it was quite interesting - we had to take the complete two ton end of the cylinder off - I was a little afraid the hoist wasn't going to hold). I finish work at 12:00 and then at 2:00 there’s a nice little work social at the Rugby Union club - beer as free as the air and a constant flow of steaks. I talk to a range of people including the foreman - I am really pissed. He invites me round to lunch tomorrow - I am beginning to get blotto - the beer is running out but he keeps giving me cans - at one point he informs me about the cyclone heading straight for Darwin. I've no idea how I get home. Later, Gus tells me I shouted ‘the cyclone’s really coming’ and passed out, and that all attempts to wake me for dinner were in vain.

I wake early in the evening and go upstairs with a splitting headache. I sleep some more until I wake up absolutely soaking - the rain is howling in through the window and the floor is flooded. I join the others downstairs - it’s pretty bad here too. For some reason we all go to Peter’s room or the room behind it, at least it’s dry there. The wind is getting pretty heavy - Wayne is fairly drunk and jolly - doors are banging - the wind continues to get stronger. We make expeditions outside - first one, just after midnight, is to see why a car has stopped - it is virtually impossible to walk, the wind is so strong. Inside again, I go to fetch my diary and clutch onto it - things are getting a little serious - I suggest going to the hospital or somewhere safe, but there are no takers. I fetched my ‘mustn’t lose’ things such as money, passport etc and put them in a plastic bag with the diary. I sleep a while along with Pete and Go and Gus - Wayne falls asleep in the cupboard - Paul and Susie are asleep in the other dry room. When the eye comes, sometime between 2 and 3, it is a chance to sleep undisturbed

When the eye has passed, the wind comes back with a vengeance in the other direction blowing against the windows of the room I’m in - the gusts reach a tremendous force (from virtually nothing at all in a matter of minutes) - Gus is still half asleep, I wake him and he jumps in the cupboard with Wayne - Go and I have drawers over our heads and we crouch down behind the bed - we can’t get out of the room, the door won’t open - the whole wall is going to go - Jesus - I reach up with my hand up to the bed for my plastic bag and pull it down to me - and the house explodes.

I remember shouting and swearing and somersaulting through the air and landing on a load of rubbish - I may have been unconscious for a while. The next thing I know is that thousands of pieces of glass are hitting in my back - I lie down and grope with my hand for some cover - I feel so lucky because I find a board just big enough to cover me - I hold onto it with my life to stop the wind blowing it away. I am lying on my side on glass and wood - I dare not move my left leg because I think it’s slit open or broken - I can’t see much - I think I’m facing away from the house but I’m afraid to move and look round. Rocks hit my board, and sometimes I nearly lose it (the board) - I think through what I’ll do if the board does fly, and I decide to make a run for it. It is cold too - I find a plastic mac by me and wrap myself in it but the wind keeps blowing it off - I am shivering - I can’t decide if I’m going to live - when I think I see lights I shout several times but my voice can’t rise up above the roar of the storm - I am sure all the others [from the house] are dead - I can’t see how they can be alive - I am feeling so lucky that I’m not in pain and that I found the board to protect me.

I lie in two inches of water thinking, working out plans, looking, but never moving other than my hand, which keeps searching around for more protection. Occasionally a light glimmers from across the way - I can’t work out which direction it is, nor can I work out what a bridge-like structure is (it has cars underneath). Later, as visibility improves, I see lights and a house nearby - I am shouting more often now as the dense mistiness lifts.

More than two hours later, and dawn is approaching and the wind is abating to nothing more than a strong gale. I look around a little more and discover that my board has only remained where it is because it’s wedged down by the bed that I’d been hiding behind. Then I hear voices behind me - there are people alive - I pull myself together to turn over - it is the first time I’ve moved properly in two and a half hours, There is a light and I can see Peter and the van. There is no cut in my leg, or anything seriously wrong with it, but I still have to hobble when I walk. I go to the van where I find Gerry. Willem joins us shortly. Paul and Susie are safe in a cupboard. Only Wayne and Gus are missing - Peter and Joel are searching for them frantically but there is no sign. We are really worried that they are under the pile of debris where Peter’s house once stood.

Long after it is light and the wind has fallen still more, we hear that they are next door. I am crying with joy. Incredible. We all have little wounds but nobody is seriously hurt - Gus, Wayne, Paul, Joel and Peter start a frantic search of neighbouring houses, and then they take a couple of cars and start taking people down to the hospital. I really want to be part of this operation - I even try to join them at one point but my knee is really crook. The whole town is completely devastated - steel telegraph poles are bent to the ground - palm trees completely uprooted - roofs lying around everywhere except on the tops of houses. All that is left of Peter’s house is the bathroom on stilts and one of the long walls at a 45 degree angle, not a thing else upstairs. The dining room and kitchen below are wrecked. Everything, absolutely everything, is 100% wet - there are glass, wood, mosquito netting, nails, doors, clothes, books, everywhere. I take a ride down to the hospital - it is fenced in (the wire around the entrance had been put up before to stop hoards of people). I talk to someone at the hospital within 15 minutes but they aren’t interested in my problems and I’m not surprised - many people are bleeding or crying or nursing wounded children - all around is tragedy, tragedy tragedy.

I hitch back to the others - there’s not a building left in tact - corrugated iron, power lines, cars, caravans, trees are strewn everywhere - some of the road is under 6-8 in of water - destruction is everywhere you look.

When I get back, Peter and Wayne are hanging about the house, while most of the others have gone to the first aid centre. I chuck a few things in the van - Paul and I drive to the centre with some food and wine - we find the others from the house huddled in warm blankets - I join them and we swap stories. Gus has some bad cuts by the ear, Joel cut his foot running around helping people afterwards. Peter and Gerry had sheltered in the van soon after the house exploded; Wayne had lain on the grass in the middle of the road, he’d lost his way following Gus who ran to the other house. Gus, Gerry and I are the worst injured. After a couple of hours, a doctor comes, but again he’s not interested in me - Gus and Gerry get some stitches. Willem is OK even though he had been trapped and needed rescuing by Joel and Peter - Go is OK but for some cut knuckles. It’s Christmas Day.

Paul ferries us all to Darwin High School in little groups with blankets as our only clothes. I have real trouble bending my leg, and it takes time to get in and out of the purloined Volkswagen. We are among the first to arrive at the school. Everywhere is under water, but there’s not too much damage. We annex a dryish room for ourselves, but we can’t get the water out because the corridor is under water too. Peter is alternating between fits of crying and fits of trying to organise everybody, and boss them around. Paul goes back to pick up all the obvious things lying about round the house pile, and then he returns the car, and gets Peter’s wagon going

I have a little cry at the thought of Julian and Melanie waking Mum and Dad, then sitting down excitedly for breakfast and turning on the radio and hearing about Darwin. We all manage to send a telegram off home for free, and, a day later, we get a free telephone call. I am emotionally distraught hearing all their voices after so long.

The Aussie prime minister Whitlam flies back from his European tour and spends an afternoon here; Jim Cairns stays a little longer. The head of a newly formed disaster squad is working 25 hours a day, and, apparently, nearly breaking down sometimes.

People begin to pour into the school, and it becomes a main centre where all goods (food, clothes, cigarettes) are brought before distribution. There is a small team of dedicated cooks - so we have good food. My knee doubles in size. I am so incapacitated that I really can’t walk, it is as much as I can do to go to the toilet. Willem, Gerry and Gus do nothing either.

Around us, the authorities (concerned largely about health and disease because the water supply broke down) have acted efficiently. People were already being evacuated on Boxing Day, and by the third day they had got 6,000 people out by plane. The radio station was working again quite quickly, which helped everyone know what was going on, and what to do.

Some of our group keep going back to the house looking for their stuff, and especially for Peter’s money which was supposed to be in an attache case. Poor Peter, having lost his house, never found his money, and one day he just left, in his combie van, for Sydney. By the end, I had really begun to dislike him - he was so egotistical. Everyone was bringing food and giving to the community but Peter would just stand in the middle of a room, hold a bag of sugar high up, and shout ‘who wants a bag of sugar?’.

Paul, Joel and Wayne work consistently - Susie and I do a little work in the kitchen - I prefer to wash dishes for two hours, and then get my meal immediately than to queue for half an hour. There are almost 800 people here, I think, and the queues are unbelievable. The evacuation programme continues and is going better than expected.

On 29th December the radio informs us that single men can now be evacuated.

Susie is going to Sydney. Willem is unsure how he is going to make it back to the island where he was working. Kiki is living and working at the Travel Lodge, and is happy to stay here.

Originally, I had planned to fly to Townsville and hitch down the coast (wanting to see something of Australia) but the evacuation planes are only flying to state capitals. I feel Brisbane is already too far south so I decide I might as well go with Gerry to Sydney. There is a lot of messing about before we are finally taken to the airport (in a beaut air-conditioned bus). However, the officials aren’t expecting another coach load, and there are queues and queues waiting to get on the one plane standing. We, and a lot of others already there, don’t make it - we sleep in the destroyed airport buildings. We spend the next day in the airport watching coach loads of women and children being evacuated; we are given food and drink all day long by the Salvation Army. There are newspapers lying around with long stories about Darwin. I talk for a while to one of the people from the school - he adores Joni Mitchell, but didn’t enjoy his overland trip.

Early evening the Starlifter we’d been promised arrives. It is going to take us all away from this devastated disaster area - we all fetch our bags and rush to the buses. I am horrified at the way the Americans are squeezing every last person in. We have to sit cross-legged in about 1 sq ft - from front to back nobody is going to be able to move. I still can’t bend my legs properly and so decide to get off - I’m not that desperate. I think the American was going for some sort of people record - he left all the baggage behind. Early this morning, on the first flight, they were trying hard to find people to go to Townsville - I should have gone, as I’d planned, but I was loathe to leave new friends after so long travelling. It was sad any way to leave Paul, Wayne and Gus - I had some good times with them.

The following morning I take the first plane - a Hercules to Brisbane. We sit on seats, and are allowed in the cockpit to have a smoke - it’s a beautiful serene sight, floating above the clouds. The journey takes five hours and we land in late afternoon - we are shuttled across a boring-looking town to an evacuation centre - an empty bus garage with clothes, social services, Sally Army, airline officials. We register, are given $62, and then booked onto a flight to Sydney. We eat, and I put on some new underpants.’

Churchill grows on me

Robert Menzies, Australia’s longest serving prime minister, was born 120 years ago today. His first term in office coincided with the start of the Second World War, and he chose to spend four months in London, in 1941, discussing strategy with Allied leaders. On returning to Australia his political position was so weakened that he was forced to resign. During his trip, however, he kept a diary which is, today, considered of great historical importance.

Menzies was born in Jeparit, Victoria, in the family grocery store, on 20 December 1894. His father became a member of the Victoria Parliament, and his uncle became a member of the federal House of Representatives. Robert studied at Grenville and Wesley Colleges, then then did law at Melbourne University. He was admitted to the Victorian Bar, and then to the High Court of Australia in 1918. After establishing his own practice, he soon became one of Melbourne’s leading lawyers. In 1920 he married Pattie Leckie, and they had three children.

Menzies was first appointed to Parliament in 1928, but resigned in a protest against rural employment subsidies. In 1932, he joined the United Australia Party (UAP), and two years later won the federal seat of Kooyong, becoming the party’s deputy leader. He served as Attorney General and Minister for Industry under Joseph Lyons, but when Lyons died suddenly, Menzies was elected by the UAP to take over as Prime Minister. When Britain declared war on Germany in 1939, he mobilised Australian troops. He spent the first half of 1941 in Britain discussing war strategy with Churchill and other leaders, but, by the time, he returned to Australia he had lost political support, and was forced to resign.

Subsequently, Menzies formed a new Liberal Party, which went on to win a general election in 1949. He then remained Prime Minister until 1966, winning a record seven consecutive elections. He presided over rapid industrial expansion, improved foreign policy links with the US, Japan and nations in Southeast Asia, a university building programme, and the development of Canberra as the nation’s capital. He was knighted in 1963. In retirement, he became Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, from 1967 to 1972, and published two volumes of memoirs. He died in 1978. Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia, National Archives of Australia or the Australian Dictionary of Biography.

Menzies kept a diary record of his extended trip to London in 1941, the original of which is held by the National Library of Australia. The Library published the diary in 1993 under the title Dark and Hurrying Days. More recently, the Museum of Australian Democracy has set up a website to make the diary - which is divided up into themes such as ‘Travelling by air’, ‘The War Cabinet’, and ‘The Blitz’ - more freely available. According to the website, the diary is ‘a candid record of decision-making in foreign and military policy’, and includes Menzies’  doubts ‘over the leadership style of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’. There is no known equivalent in Australian political history, the website says, and ‘the diary would undoubtedly have been political dynamite if it had fallen into the wrong hands during the war’. Here are several extracts.

21 February 1941
‘Up to London. Snow still lying. First type of balloon barrage - silvery looking “blimps” a few thousand feet up. Not in rows, but singly or in small groups.

So to the Dorchester, where, on the 1st floor, I have the suite which was occupied by Wendell Willkie. As the building is modern and there are seven floors above me, it is considered as good as an air raid shelter. Curtains are closely drawn at sunset: the windows are coated with some anti-shatter mixture. Day raids have for the time [being] been practically discontinued, and the street traffic on the way to the Dept of Information (London University) and Australia House seemed almost normal.

So far I have seen only a few bombed places, including the house in Piccadilly where the Duke of York lived. Sandbags everywhere; barbed wire; the front (to the Mall) of Carlton House Terrace rather battered; King Charles at Charing Cross in a corrugated iron container; police in tin hats; not many people carrying their gas masks; AIR RAID SHELTER, or AIR RAID TRENCHES signs everywhere; windows bricked or boarded up. At Information Dept I have a guard of Honour of the Home Guard (who work in offices and do their stuff as guards so many nights a week!) and some Australians still left here

At Australia House, meet the whole staff and thank them for prompt and devoted work. This timely and much appreciated.’

22 February 1941
‘Winston is completely certain of America’s full help, of her participation in a Japanese war, and of Roosevelt’s passionate determination to stamp out the Nazi menace from the earth. Is he right? I cannot say. If the P.M. were a better listener and less disposed to dispense with all expert or local opinion, I might feel a little easier about it. But there’s no doubt about it; he’s a holy terror - I went to bed tired!’

2 March 1941
‘Churchill grows on me. He has an astonishing grasp of detail and, by daily contact with the service headquarters, knows of disposition and establishment quite accurately. But I still fear that (though experience of Supreme Office has clearly improved and steadied him) his real tyrant is the glittering phrase - so attractive to his mind that awkward facts may have to give way.

But this is the defect of his quality. Reasoning to a predetermined conclusion is mere advocacy; but it becomes something much better when the conclusion is that you are going to win a war, and that you’re damned if anything will stand in your way. Churchill’s course is set. There is no defeat in his heart.’

16 April 1941
‘Tonight the enemy is passing overhead. You can hear him. The search lights are operating – and the crack of the guns in the park opposite is deafening. To look out of window you switch out the lights and peep through the curtain. An eerie experience, the sky occasionally flashing like lightning with the explosion of the A.A. shells. London is so vast that the German bombers pass over it on their way to any of the Midland or Northern cities. But how many A.A. shells are fired per hit God only knows. While the uproar goes on the buses and taxis still rumble along Park Lane!

Later. I was wrong. They were not passing. 460 of them were attacking London, and a dozen large bombs fell within 100 yards of the Dorchester. It was a terrible experience. Invited up to the second floor for a drink with two elderly ladies (one of them John Lowther’s mother), we had scarcely sat down when a great explosion and blast shattered the windows of the room, blew the curtains in, split the door, and filled the room with acrid fumes. Twice the whole building seemed to bounce with the force of the concussion. Twice I visited the ground floor, and found it full of white-faced people. Tritton went out to escort a guest home, got into the blitz, had his taxi driver wounded and the wind-screen broken, and took the wheel himself!

The sky beyond the Palace was red with fire and smoke, the sky was flashing like lightning. It is a horrible sound to hear the whistle of a descending stick of bombs, any one of them capable of destroying a couple of five-storey houses, and to wonder for a split second if it is going to land on your windows!

Just before dawn, at about 5 a.m., Tritton, Landau and I went for a walk to see the damage. There were buildings down and great craters within 100 yards of the hotel on the side away from the park. In Brook Street buildings were blazing. A great plume of red smoke rose from Selfridge’s. Gas mains blazed in Piccadilly. The houses fronting the Green Park were red and roaring. There were craters and fallen masonry in the streets, and the fear of an unexploded bomb lurking around every corner. Wherever we walked, we crunched over acres of broken glass. This is the “new order”. How can it go on for years?’