Clarke the Barber
A few convicts were accepted by the Indigenous people, but
the original inhabitants were choosy. Watkin Tench wrote, probably about John
Caesar, a man of African ancestry, who was one of the rejects:
One of the convicts, a negro, had twice eloped, with an
intention of establishing himself in the society of the natives, with a wish to
adopt their customs and to live with them: but he was always repulsed by them;
and compelled to return to us from hunger and wretchedness.
Watkin Tench interviewed the survivors of one group of
escaped convicts known as Bryant’s party and reported that when they approached
land, while sailing along the coast from Sydney to Timor, they often had to
flee when threatened by locals.
Against that, we have the more successful adoption cases of
William Buckley in Port Phillip (said to be the original Buckley of “Buckley’s
chance”), Eliza Fraser of Fraser Island, Barbara Thomson who was rescued from
Torres Strait by the crew of HMS Rattlesnake
and Tarwood’s party, taken in by the Indigenous people at Port Stephens, north
of Newcastle (you will meet them in #11). Some whites were fitted in, and were able to fit in.
And that brings us to a runaway convict called George Clarke,
otherwise known as ‘the barber’. Clarke escaped from the Hunter Valley and
lived among the Kamilaroi people. He had the scars of an initiated man, but he
had been stealing cattle.
Recaptured and questioned in 1831, he had a tale to tell. He
said he had heard of a river called the Kindur, running to the north-west, and
decided to follow it, hoping to reach another country. He claimed to have
followed the Kindur, a fine broad river that flowed to the northwest all the
way to the sea. Ernest Favenc argued plausibly that Clarke’s yarn was
fabricated to save him from a flogging when he returned but, naturally enough,
Clarke the barber claimed that it was all true.
The river was navigable, so ships could sail it, he said, and it
flowed on. He was not sure how far it went, but it never flowed to the south of
west. In other words, here was a perfect path to take people up into northern
Australia, a marvellous river on which to progress toward great riches. He
pitched a good yarn: see for yourself:
I always had a great desire to be free from all restraint,
and the last time, which is the third that I took to the bush, I determined to
proceed as far into the interior as I could get. I also thought, that by making
important discoveries in the interior, I should have been pardoned, and have
received encouragement from the Government.
I soon effected a junction with a tribe of blacks at
Liverpool Plains, and by acquiring their language and assimilating to their
manners, I also acquired their good-will. They treated me as one of themselves.
I quitted my European costume a little at a time, and felt no inconvenience
whatever from the loss. As remaining with this tribe, although attached to me,
was not my object, for fear of being recognised by my countrymen, I joined
another tribe, and went with them to a place called in the native language
Bresa, about 30 miles to the north-west of Liverpool Plains.
I particularly remarked, that the natives, as soon as we got
beyond the stations of the settlers, assumed a more active and cleanly
appearance; indeed, the wild tribes in the interior are a much superior race to
the blacks who frequent our stock stations. From Liverpool Plains I proceeded
with a third tribe to Tuaubilla, about 200 miles north-west from that place
without discerning any thing of note.
The country was remarkably rich in pasture, well supplied
with water, and covered with many large plains. A river, the Numeva, runs from
Liverpool Plains to Tuaubilla, which is well supplied with fish. Proceeding
down the Numeva, a short distance beyond Tuaubilla, the ground became boggy, and
at last presented one vast bog or morass, the river holding its course through
the centre.
We crossed a range of mountains to the north, and after a few
days, arrived at another river of some magnitude, named Keindooa. There
I left the tribe I had come with, as they were returning, and I joined another
who inhabited the country north-west of the river Keindooa. The country
from this river, changed its aspect altogether. The land was low and level,
with few mounts, and without any extended range of hills. The verdure was
luxuriant, quite different to any I had before seen.
Grass herbs in abundance, and in clear parts, a multitude of
enormous sow-thistles. The grass there produces a large seed, which is gathered
by the natives, pounded between stones into a pulp, and baked in the ashes as
food. It was palatable, and resembled bread made from grown wheat.
The Keindooa is divided from the Numeva which last is
known to my countrymen) by a range of mountains difficult of access. There are
few passes over the mountains, but one of them, if improved, would afford an
easy ingress to the flat country for drays and horses. The difficulty in
crossing the range, consists in the scarcity of water, which, unless the
springs be known to the traveller, would leave him exhausted and oblige him to
return.
The part where we made the river Keindooa (after
crossing the range) was called Curribingee. Thence we proceeded down the river
about west. About 250 miles to the north-west of Curribingee, there is a
burning mountain called Coorala. The flame and smoke emitted from the mountain
can be seen a great distance. I did not ascend the mountain. Round the base is
a quantity of red stone, resembling pumice stone; also a substance resembling
allum, which, dissolved in water, had the same taste. The natives say, it is to
be had in large quantities. It is called by them Boullau.
We proceeded down the river and at last made the sea, into
which the Keindooa discharges itself with a broad mouth. The coast was
rather low as far as we could see, and just in sight to the south-west we saw
an island; but no other land to sea-ward Along the coast, trees, the wood of
which is of a deep red colour, had been felled apparently with a small blunt
axe; the barrel of each tree (of a good length) had been cut out by a similar
instrument, but was gone.
The natives informed me, that people of a light colour came
there with large boats, and took the wood away to the northward. I determined
to keep with this tribe, until the return of the adventurers, and then to join
them; but in the mean time, we again proceeded into the interior. The coast
presents a low bleak appearance, and about mile and a half from the sea, the
strand is bounded by a low range of mountains, which run along the coast.
When this range is crossed, the country is fertile in the
extreme, and very beautiful, as I have before described. There is another
species of wood there, which I never saw before, milk white, with a very fine
grain, but so hard, that it is difficult to cut it, The natives make their
bumbarines and other instruments of war out of this wood, which never breaks;
the leaf is in shape like that of the oak, but very rough.
The trees cut by the strangers and removed, were low and very
umbrageous; the leaf of a dark blue colour. The pine tree grows in abundance in
this country, and is very tall and straight. The natives are remarkably
cleanly, kind, and industrious; in nowise like the blacks about the settlements
of the Colony. They are provided with tomahawks and knives made from a blue
transparent stone, of uncommon hardness, seldom or never breaking.
They grind them to a fine edge by means of other stones. The
river Keindooa abounds with fish; one in particular being very fine,
resembling a cod-fish, only having very large sharp fins. In the country at the
upper part of the river is found stones of beautiful appearance, but what to
call them I know not. There are no kangaroos in that country, but there is a
small species of bush wallaby, very small; plenty of emu however and black swans,
geese, ducks, and birds of fine plumage.
In hopes of being able to provide myself with a few
necessaries from my countrymen at Bathurst, I returned by another route to
Mullala (250 miles from Bathurst), where I was captured by Serjeant Wilcox. As
I never committed any crimes beyond those of theft; I was in hopes my
sufferings and my discoveries would have induced the Governor to extend a
pardon to me at once, when I would willingly have conducted a party to the
places I now describe, and I would also have made other discoveries, which
might have proved of service to my country.
GEORGE CLARK
H. M. Gaol, Sydney, Jan. 1832.
The government fell for it, as governments will, because
they wanted to believe. A navigable river would be better than an inland sea,
and the acting governor of New South Wales, Sir Patrick Lindesay, sent Major
Thomas Mitchell out to investigate in November 1831. He went across the Peel,
over the Hardwicke Range, and reached the Namoi River about three weeks later.
Expecting a navigable waterway, the party had come equipped
with canvas boats, but these snagged in the river, so the party reverted to
horseback. They reached the Gwydir, turned west along it for 80 miles (128
kilometres), then struck north to a grand river known locally as Karaula.
Mitchell followed this down till the Gwydir joined it and, given that it was
heading south, deduced that this was Sturt’s Darling River.
Some of the early explorers who were born and raised in Europe
had problems when it came to travelling in Australia. They followed river
valleys, because they were used to glaciated landforms where the valleys were
broad and easy to walk along. In the old Australian geology, where chasms had
been carved by millennia of rare floods, that was not a good move.
Australian valleys were often steep-sided and hard to get out
of, and the narrow defile at the bottom was usually blocked by rock fragments
that had tumbled down at some point after the valley was carved. Worst of all,
there was usually no crystal stream gurgling along, as there would be in any
decent European valley.
In the same way, based on what was known of other continents,
Major Mitchell, like Banks, Grey and others, was willing to believe in the myth
of a great river, stretching across the continent, even though careful mapping
of the coast had failed to reveal the mouth of any such river. He had been told
by a liar that the river existed, and that was enough.
All the same, if the Kindur River was a non-starter, the rivers
had to flow somewhere, so the prospect of an inland sea remained good. Just as
the Greek and Roman originators of the European culture once saw their world as
surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, so the new Australians dreamed of a
continent surrounding an inland sea, hopefully with snow-capped alps somewhere
about the Gibson Desert—but not everybody was convinced. Eyre certainly was
doubtful.
