January 11, 2023 • 37 mins
The Hume and Hovell Expedition of 1824 established some of the earliest knowledge that European colonists had about the interior of the Australian continent. It was also a journey filled with peril, frayed nerves, and bickering.
Research:
- “Hume and Hovell.” State Library New South Wales. https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/stories/hume-and-hovell
- “THE LATE CAPTAIN HOVELL.” Australian Town and Country Journal. Nov. 13, 1875. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/70586936
- Watson, Captain J.H. “William Hilton Hovell.” The Sydney Morning Herald. Nov, 29, 1924. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/16179954
- Perry, T.M. “Hovell, William Hilton (1786-1875).” Australian Dictionary of Biography. https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hovell-william-hilton-2202
- “The Kate Mr. Hamilton Hume.” Australian Town and Country Journal. May 17, 1873. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/70478485
- “Hume, the Explorer.” Illustrated Australian News for Home Readers. May 20, 1873. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/60446913
- Hume, Stuart H. “Hume, Hamilton (1797-1873).” Australian Dictionary of Biography. https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hume-hamilton-2211
- Webster, R.H. “Currency Lad - The Story of Hamilton Hume and the Explorers.” Leisure Magazines. Australia. 1982.
- Hovell, William, and Hamilton Hume. “Journey of Discovery to Port Phillip.” Benediction Classics. 2012.
- Lewis, Allan M. “In the Paths of Explorers.” Sydney Morning Herald. October 2, 1946. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/17997013
- Schuler, G.F.H. “Exploration of Australia.” Illustrated Australian News. January 1, 1891. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/60444046
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So today's
subject is one that any of our Australian listeners will
know well, I have no doubt. It's quite a well
(00:23):
known story there, and in some ways this story reads
a little bit like a sitcom, although it also involves
some very serious physical hardship, some of which sounds just
awful to me. It is about the expedition that really
established some of the earliest knowledge that European colonists had
about the interior of the Australian continent. And just a
(00:44):
heads up, we're going to talk about things like land
grants in this episode, specifically land grants given to Europeans
who moved to Australia, and we won't go into it
every time for context, but obviously that land wasn't really
Britton's to give. And this is a situation where colonialism
kind of blots out the indigenous peoples of an area
(01:04):
and nation in terms of the historical record. And also
there is often a lot of violence, disease in genocide
involved in that The other thing I read recently. My
understanding is that in Aboriginal culture you can on own
land the land owns you, so there's like an extra
added layer of just kind of ignorance and insult to
it um. There are also a lot of instances where
(01:25):
the two men involved in this story are said to
have discovered places. Hello, the people who lived there already
knew they were there. Uh So, of course, once again
that means from the European point of view, it became known,
But discovery isn't really the right word. And the two
men at the center of this story are William Hilton
Hovel and Hamilton's Hume. So we're gonna start by talking
(01:48):
about their lives before they became expedition collaborators. We'll start
with William Hilton Hovell, who was born April six and Yarmouth, Norfolk, England.
Even as a very young boy, he was working at sea.
His father was part owner and captain of a trading
(02:08):
vessel that ran from England to the Mediterranean, and that
ship was captured by the French in when William was
only eight. William's father was held as a prisoner of
war for more than two years because they didn't have
any income from his father, William had to start working
when he was only ten. This would have obviously been
(02:31):
a hard life, but according to one obituary on Hovel,
he was quote made of the right kind of stuff
for life at sea, and that is sort of reflected
in his first command, which was at the very young
age of twenty two in eight o eight. Prior to that,
he was mate on a ship called Zenobia, which made
a trading voyage to Peru, and then his commander commission
(02:52):
was aboard the Juno, which was a trading ship that
was bound for Rio de Janeiro. After that he was
given command of another ship, the Titia, which also made
the journey to Brazil, and then he led a trading
mission to Kittiez, Spain, on a ship called the John
and Thomas. On May tenth, eighteen ten, Hovell married Esther Arndell,
(03:12):
and in the autumn of the following year he applied
for a land grant in New South Wales, Australia. Estor's
father had already lived in Australia for decades by that time.
Hovell was granted his land parcel, and he his wife
and their two children sailed to Australia aboard the Earl Spencer.
They arrived on October nine, eight thirteen. William Hovell and
(03:35):
his family lived in Cumberland County, which was founded in
sevent and named for Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland, who
was the brother of King George the Third in the
eighteen teens. When Hovell arrived, that was the main area
that English immigrants had moved to. Much of the rest
of Australia was pretty much unknown to Europeans. It's a
(03:58):
little unclear happened when the Trial arrived in New Zealand,
but it definitely did not go well. According to Hovell's
cruise accounts, mau reforces attacked the crew of the Trial
and Hovel and his men fought their way back to
the ship and then headed straight back to Sydney. After this,
Hovel commanded several more trade missions, but ultimately turned in
(04:19):
a life at sea for a life on a farm
in eighteen nineteen, and he stayed there for several years.
So now we will pause Hovel's story and we'll talk
about the life of his partner in this tail. Hamilton's
Hume was born on June His parents were Andrew h
Hume and Elizabeth Kennedy Hume. Andrew was the Commissary General
(04:43):
of New South Wales and had moved to Australia the
same year that Hamilton's was born. He had arrived with
Elizabeth on a frigate called the Rue. Hamilton was born
in Paramtta, which at the time was a town in
New South Wales. Today it's more a suburb of Sydney.
Hamilton's was educated at home by his mother for the
(05:04):
most part. In eighteen twelve, when Hamilton's was fifteen, the
family moved roughly sixty kilometers south to the town of Appen,
where Andrew Hume had been given a sizeable land grant.
This meant that they were in an area that had
not really been developed by European inhabitants, and for Hume,
being out in the country sparked his interest in exploration.
(05:26):
When he reached the age of eighteen, Hume was given
his own land grant in Appen, and he was described
in an account of his life as unquote accomplished bushman
by the age of seventeen, and he often took his
young brothers with him on exploring trips around the bush
One such expedition was a trip through the area surrounding
the town of Barrima in the southern Highlands of New
(05:48):
South Wales. This is not to be confused with Barrima,
which exists in the Northern Territory of Australia today. That's
quite a long way away from where Hume was exploring.
Hume took notes on the land as he traveled, and
when he returned to Happen he shared the information that
there was good potential for some farming in this area
(06:09):
surrounding Barrema. Yeah, a lot of these explorations were like
can people move there again European people, Could we have
farms and agriculture? Could we support ourselves? So that's a
lot of the focus of these these explorations and expeditions.
Because of Hume's reputation, he was selected by Governor Lachlan
mcquarie in eighteen seventeen to accompany a surveyor named me
(06:33):
In and traveled the southern country of New South Wales.
Those two men are credited with discovering Lake Bathurst and
the Goulburn Plains, but as we mentioned at the top
of the episode, discovery not really the right word here.
They mapped the area for the British colonial governors. Hume
went on several similar trips at the behest of Governor
McQuary over the next several years with various other travelers.
(06:56):
He explored Jervis Bay, the Clyde River and Yes Janes.
The start of the expedition we're talking about today began
and initially sputtered out, when Sir Thomas Brisbane, who succeeded
Macquarie as governor, wanted to send an expedition to the
area between Lake George and Bass Strait in the early
eighteen twenties, and Hamilton's Hume was recommended as the perfect
(07:20):
man for the job. Brisbane took that recommendation and Hume
was chosen to lead the project, which was envisioned as
starting at Wilson's Promontory on the southern coast of Australia
or Cape how at the southeastern tip of the continent,
and then move north to Sydney. But regardless of route,
that expedition was going to be extremely costly and Brisbane
(07:42):
was ultimately unable to secure financing for it. Hume had
been really enthused about the idea, though, and after Brisbane's
funding fell through he started a plan to create a
similar expedition on his own, this one to the body
of water we now know as the Spencer Gulf west
of Adelaide, Australia. But Hume ran into that same problem money.
(08:04):
He just could not afford to finance a trip like
that on his own. And then a friend of Humes
named Alexander Berry, who was a surgeon and explorer who
had been born in Scotland and moved to Australia, had
an idea to connect Hume with another explorer who might
be able to help, and that is how Hamilton Hume
was introduced to William Hovell. Before we dive into the
(08:26):
time they spent together, let's pause for a quick sponsor break.
While William Hovell had done some exploring overland, his expertise
and experience really was at sea, but his ability to
(08:47):
navigate was what was really valuable for a trip into
unmapped areas. I say unmapped really there were some sketch
maps available, but they really didn't know specific details about
the terrain. When Huvell and Hugh met that you found
shared enthusiasm enough that Huvel offered to not only join
the project but to split the cost of mounting the expedition.
(09:08):
Hovell sold some of his land to raise the money,
and Hume sold a valuable iron plow. This is something
that would have been in high demand in Australia where
people were starting their farms, and not something they could
manufacture there but had to have shipped from overseas. They
also received from assistance from the government in the form
of a tent and some saddles and supplies for their crew,
(09:30):
which was made up in part with convicted men who
were assigned to their service. Once all the logistics were
in place, the team assembled at Hume's home in Appen.
They left there on Saturday October two. The six men
who accompanied human Hovel are described in accounts of the
day as quote assigned servants, so that meant they were
(09:52):
convicted men who had been transported to the British penal
colonies in Australia for various petty crimes. The men assigned
to Hamilton's Hume were Claude Bossla, Henry Angel and James Fitzpatrick.
Hovel's three assigned men were Thomas Boyd, William Ballard and
Thomas Smith. Yeah, there are some accounts that suggest that,
(10:14):
um I read one that said that at least one
of the men had actually been a freeman who had
immigrated but then also had some sort of indenture to
the government or something. It was a little unclear to
me what was going on there, but uh, these were,
like we said, men that had been assigned to them.
The team had two carts loaded with supplies, as well
(10:36):
as several steer and horses. So to get a sense
of how much they packed for an anticipated four month journey,
here's what Hovell noted in his journal. Quote six hundred
forty pounds flower, two hundred pounds pork, one hundred pounds sugar,
fourteen pounds t eight pounds tobacco, twelve pounds soap, salt, coffee, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera,
(10:59):
for myself and three men, together with a musket and
ammunition for each man. This is exclusively for ourselves, as
Mr Hume has supplied, as I understand, the same quantity.
Hume also added a cart, a steer, and two horses
to the cause, and Hovel provided a cart, four steer
and one horse. They also brought along dogs to help
(11:21):
with hunting game, and sketch maps of the area that
we mentioned just a moment ago. Those included information that
had been shared with colonists by Indigenous Australians. The initial
leg of the trip was from Appen to Yas and
as they made that segment of the trip, they visited
with friends along the way. They often had meals with acquaintances.
(11:41):
Hamilton's brother John was with them for that first stretch.
It took ten days to travel roughly two hundred kilometers.
Hovel and Hume estimated the distance at a hundred twenty
three point five miles. The destination of that first stretch
was a station Hume had set up at Yes. They
got there around one pm on October. In addition to
(12:03):
seeing acquaintances and friends, the team also identified problems with
their carts, which they were able to have serviced as
they were passing through these areas that were populated with
colonists rather than brush. Yeah, it was a definitely through
populated area in that first chunk. The following day, after
they got to the station, Human Hovel went to Lake George's,
(12:25):
about twelve miles from the station, to calculate the distance
and to just observe the land. They returned to the
station that same day at dusk. The team had intended
to leave the Ya station on Saturday, October sixte there
was inclement weather and, according to the team account quote,
a native guide who had promised to help them move
south through the area was a no show, so they
(12:48):
didn't actually begin until Sunday the seventeen, and they set
out without a guide early into the trip. On October nineteenth.
After traveling eleven miles that day, they quote found themselves
on the banks of the Murrambijee River, but this posed
a problem. According to their published account quote, the river, however,
is so swollen by the late rains that it appears
(13:10):
utterly impassable, and it is evidently rising. Human Houvel estimated
that the river was thirty to forty yards across, and
in this account that they kept they said the current
was between five and six knots an hour. So initially
they made camp where they were, and they couldn't cross
the next day either, but they did manage to catch
(13:30):
some fresh fish and eat it. On October twenty two,
seeing no evidence that the river was going to diminish
or slow, they decided that they had to go ahead
and attempt a crossing. As they put it quote without
further delay and whatever the risk. But the trees around
the river were water logged from the rains, so they
weren't buoyant and they couldn't be used like to float across.
(13:52):
So they stripped one of the carts down and they
covered it with a tarpaulin to create a raft that
could be passed back and forth across the river if
they could attach it to a rope that was anchored
on the opposite shore. Hume and one of the assistants
took on the task of swimming across the river to
affix this rope, which they had to carry across by
biting it as they swam. Per their account quote. This
(14:15):
was not done without great difficulty and some danger. They
were successful, though they landed farther downstream than they had
initially intended. But once the setup was completed and they
had the rope, they started moving supplies across the river
in that raft. They walked and swam the animals across
with a tow rope. After all the time that it
took to get the supplies and the other cart over,
(14:37):
one of the steer rolled on its back and made
a lot of the crossing in that position. Once they
got everything and all the animals across, they made camp
and they slept on the river bank. I sort of
feel like that's all I would have the energy to
do after all that. Yeah, I mean they talked about
how it took you know, five hours just to get
all the stuff across, and then the animals were a
couple of hours more, uh, because they couldn't do them
(15:00):
all at once since they didn't have enough men to
make sure everything worked. So that's like a full work
day of just crossing this river of terror. But their
troubles were just the beginning. The day after the river crossing,
the expedition traveled ten miles and ended up at kind
of a mountain barrier. Hume and Hovell disagreed on the
way to go to try to get around this obstacle.
(15:22):
They couldn't go straight up. They were really at like
a rock face. Here is the description of what happened
from the jointly published account that they put out some
years later. Sunday, October up to two o'clock. The day
was spent in a laborious but ineffectual attempt to discover
a pass through the mountain barrier. In their advance. The
party now separated Mr. Hovell, with one of the men
(15:45):
following a chain of ponds in the direction northwest for
four or five miles, when these ponds were found to
form a stream which made its escape through a chasm
dividing the Northern and Western Barrier Ranges from each other.
Down this chasm, the stream soon press sipated itself in
numerous falls that it became impracticable to follow it further.
(16:06):
They would now have returned to the tent, but lost
their way in the attempt to find an emu, which
they had killed on their way out. Hume, on the
other hand, headed in a southwest direction. He had followed
a chain of ponds, but unlike Hovel, Hume's route led
to the discovery of a pass through the mountains into
a valley. The jointly published account merely mentions that Hovel
(16:29):
and Boyd rejoined the rest early in the morning, although
biographies of Hume indicate he actually went out and found them.
Yeah they did not find their way back by themselves.
This trip continued to be quite difficult. Over and over
they had trouble with crossing bodies of water and mountain ridges.
(16:49):
The pack animals were difficult to steer through a lot
of the treacherous areas, and in some cases, roots which
had been described to them as passable by some of
the indigenous people were possible for a person but not
for a cart. They eventually had to ditch their carts,
but that also meant that the animals each had to
carry more weight, which slowed them down. They also were
(17:11):
pretty plagued with bush flies, march flies, and mosquitoes. At
one point, one of their accounts say something like I
considered taking off all my clothes and just rolling in
the dirt like they were miserable. Um, it's pretty clear
that this entire trip was very difficult and tensions between
human Hovel continued to bubble over throughout. On Monday, November eight,
(17:33):
they had a very good day and Hovel and Hume
became the first Europeans on record to see what was
dubbed the Australian Alps. They had been hiking through various
smaller ranges throughout the trip, and in the jointly published
account it's described as follows, quote Mrs Hovell and Hume
having ascended close to the stream with some difficulty, about
(17:54):
half the height of this range in order to be
the better enabled to decide as to their future opera.
Rations were suddenly surprised by a sight to the utmost degree.
Magnificent mountains, of a conoidal form and of an apparently
immense height, and some of them covered about one fourth
of their height with snow, were now seen, extending semi
(18:16):
circularly from the southeast to south southwest at the supposed
distance of about twenty miles. The sun was bright, it
was about ten or eleven in the forenoon, and gave
them an appearance the most brilliant. The mountains which they
had hitherto seen, compared with these stupendous elevations, were no
more than hillocks, from which also their forum, as well
(18:39):
as their other general characters, rendered them not the less dissimilar.
But that thrilling view led to an argument. For several
days they were kind of moving along and taking in
these mountains, and after having seen them, Hugh really thought
they needed to alter their planned course, because he was
certain they were going to end up trapped if they
(19:01):
continued to head east as they had been. Huvell was
not having it. He did not want to change the
plan at all, and an epic fight ensued. This fight
is often what people reference when they talk about this expedition,
because while it involves too theoretically experienced explorers making fairly
big decisions about their entire team safety, it devolved into
(19:24):
what sounds like a petty sitcom construct. The two men
just could not come to any kind of resolution on
the matter, and so they decided, out in unmapped territory
that neither of them had ever been in before, to
just part ways then and there. Their equitable solution was
to divide the supplies evenly, but that was actually a
(19:47):
problem because when they had dropped their carts to streamline
the journey, they had also eliminated any redundancies they could,
so for a lot of things they needed to use
every day, they only had one and that included the tent.
These two men bickered so much about who had rights
(20:07):
to the tent that they decided that the only solution
was to cut it in half. But Human is said
to have aborted that plan because he realized that half
a tent is really still no tent in terms of
the structure working, so he let Hovel take it. And
then there was the frying pan. This is one of
those details that does not appear in the jointly published account,
(20:29):
but was mentioned in accounts by the attendants. The two
men essentially got into a tug of war over who
was going to get this fry pan, and in both
pulling at it, they broke it into One had the
handle and one had the plate, and they each took
their broken peace and angrily parted ways. I'm curious about
what this frying pan was made of. I know, like
(20:51):
it's not a cast iron pan if they pulled it apart. Yeah,
like I'm imagining in my head an iron skillet. And
so we get to the part where it's just broken
and half in a tug of war. The separation did
not last long. Hume turned west as he had intended,
Hovell continued toward the east, as had been the initially
plotted course. Thomas Boyd was with Hubble, and once the
(21:14):
navigator had calmed down, made the case that they were
going to end up in snowy terrain if they kept
on going as they were, and that they could easily
get stuck there and died. They did not have the
equipment for those kinds of conditions. Huvel acquiesced and they
backtrack and then hurried to catch up with Hume. William
Hovell's journal entry from that day does not mention the
(21:37):
fight or the frying pan or splitting up. He merely states, quote,
as we found it impossible to proceed any further in
that direction without endangering the lives of both men and beasts,
and perhaps to no purpose. I proposed that we should
attempt a passage over the range west of us, and
to endeavor to get fifty or sixty miles in a
(21:59):
westerly direct him. Hume's account reads quote, I found we
were getting in too high a country for the snowy mountains.
The Australian Alps were observed crossing our course. I propose
that we should take a direction more westerly in order
to avoid the formidable barrier which threatens to interrupt our way.
But Mr Howell dissented from my proposal. Hume goes on
(22:22):
to describe their quote wrangling and disputing, each being positive
of the correctness of his own opinion, although he does
not mention the tent or the frying pan. Thomas Boyd's
account lines up with the argument and Hume having proposed
the better course, although he also notes quote I had
to go with Mr Hovell. It is actually Henry Angel's
(22:44):
account that is the one that offers up the details
of the tent and the frying pan, which have been
much repeated ever since. Coming up, we'll talk about Hume's
ongoing quest to get to Australia's southern shore and the
fraying health and nerves of really the entire team. First, though,
we will hear from the sponsors that keep stuffy missed
in history class. Going on November six, the group encountered
(23:17):
a river about which Hume was quite excited, and according
to Thomas Boyd, Hume named it the Hume River after
his father. This was another potentially treacherous crossing. The river
was wide, even wider than the other river that had
given them trouble, and the water was whirling, but Hume
was very eager to go to the other side. That
(23:37):
started another conflict. Hubble thought that the expedition had discovered
quite enough to please the governor and that they really
could turn back for home. At this point, they were
all getting tired, they were doing dangerous things, but Hume
was insistent that they had not finished the intended route,
and that he was going to make it to the coast.
Hume built a boat by using their remaining tarpaulin and
(24:00):
poles and branches cut from trees, and they spent the
next day or so trying to find a good point
for crossing. Hovell wrote in his journal that he followed
the river north and found a crossing point, and at
that point the tarp boat was built in the style
of when he had made before on another expedition. His
account is completely different than that of all the other men. Yeah,
(24:22):
he definitely in his journals makes every good idea sound
like his. Uh. The next river they encountered led to
an even larger disagreement. Hovel really really thought that they
were being rash and continuing to use this tarpaulin for
a boat. He noted that there was only one tarp
(24:43):
and that it was in rough shape, and in response,
Hume reportedly yelled at him quote, I do not think
it necessary to point out the defects in the tarpaulin
to the men, and if they do not like to
risk themselves in it, they can stop and be damned.
He had a plan if the tarp failed to kill
one of the pack animals and use it for food
and then make the hide into a boat. He had
(25:05):
no intention of falling short of completing the expedition, and
he was going to do whatever it took to complete it.
But that finish at all costs attitude was really starting
to rattle the rest of the crew, and Claude Bosswa
decided he agreed with Hovel, which made him furious. Hume
is said to have grabbed Bosswa by the neck and
(25:26):
threatened to throw him in the river if he chose
not to cross. Although it looked like the two leads
were going to split apart again and go their separate ways,
hubbl decided to cross the river with the group at
the last minute. This apparently also really irritated Hume, who
had been kind of relieved that he was not going
to have to be with Huvel any longer. Oh, it's
(25:49):
hard to travel with the group. As the expedition reached
its late stages, things were predictably more and more difficult.
Rations were running low, they had lost all but one
dog to hunt, and the terrain had taken a toll
on the horses in the steer. During a particularly arduous
effort to get through mountains and terrain just north of
(26:11):
modern day Melbourne, sometimes crawling on hands and knees to
do it. Because there was so much shrubbery and brush
around them. The men really started to lose their spirit.
Hubvill didn't want to keep going, but this time no
one else did either except for Hume, and at this
point a lot of their clothes had been destroyed by brush.
These men were literally wearing rags at this point, their
(26:33):
boots were falling apart, and they were starting to be
severely malnourished. This is a situation where Hume really held
all the cards. He was by far the most experienced
explorer among them, and the others would have been unlikely
to survive if they turned back and tried to make
it home without him. But instead of merely being insistent,
(26:54):
he made them a deal. He felt like they were
very close to the coast, so he asked him to
go just two more days, and if they hadn't hit
their goal by then, they would all turn back together.
Everyone agreed, a deal was struck, and fortunately the next
couple of days were much easier than a lot of
the trip. Then, on December six, the expedition saw what
(27:17):
it believed to be a stretch of water on the horizon,
and they pressed on until they reached the shore where
they camped. At last, they had reached the destination, which
they believed to be Western Port. This sounds like a wonderful,
happy ending, but remember they had to turn around and
march all the way back with only five weeks worth
of supplies when the trip down had taken eleven weeks.
(27:41):
As they were preparing for the return journey, James Fitzpatrick
had an interaction with two indigenous men while he was
out hunting duck. These two men approached him with spears,
and he claimed he had accidentally fired his gun, although
it was a misfire and hit no one. The two
men chased him back to camp, and Hume engaged them
(28:03):
by showing them his weapon and putting it on the ground,
and then encouraging them to do the same through hand
signals and miming. The indigenous men indicated to the members
of the expedition that they had seen a ship in
the harbor and colonists building shelter. That's believed to have
been a reference to the Botany Bay Colony of the
seventeen eighties. Hume later described the Aboriginal people they had
(28:26):
encountered as quote friendly and peaceable. While Hovel kind of
admired their life free of taxes and industrialization. He talks
about them in this sort of idyllic way, but he
also wrote that their conduct was quote very suspicious and treacherous.
This entry and Hovel's journal may have seemed really foolish
to him. The next morning, when the men returned with
(28:48):
their families, their wives and their children just to visit.
On December eighteenth, Hume, Hovel, and their attendants started their
track home. This time, Hume knew the land well enough
to skirt around the most difficult parts of the trip,
so that sped things along. They had to kill one
of their steer who was injured and couldn't make the trip.
(29:09):
They ate the meat, which they really desperately needed, and
then they used the hide to make shoes, which they
also really desperately needed. Hume was fairly relentless and pushing
the men every day, which he needed to do to
get them all home before their reserves were totally depleted.
There were several instances on the way home where the
expedition met with indigenous communities. It seems like more so
(29:32):
going back than when they they had headed south. Hume
reported later in life that one of the men that
they met along the way actually moved to Yes and
would occasionally visit him over the years and they became friends.
Hume called him Mickey. Hovel tended to opt out of
these social interactions, and when they had these engagements with
people who were part of indigenous communities, he would just
(29:54):
kind of continue on the planned route and right ahead
of Hume and usually wait for them to catch up.
The trip back was almost rougher than the one on
the way out, because despite sticking as often as they
could with more gentle terrain, the men and the animals
were all just depleted. Things looked really grave and early
January until the team was able to relocate the carts,
(30:17):
which were where they had left them. That eased the
situation a little bit. They started to travel almost relay style,
where some of the men would rest while others would
go ahead and then rest while the others caught up. Finally,
on January they had all made at home, although none
of their dogs or steer were with them. Yeah, it's
(30:39):
kind of heartbreaking. I didn't include a lot of it here,
but they really described kind of the degrading state of
the animal's health, because in some cases, you know, if
the men weren't eating, neither were the animals. And they
were still carrying these heavy loads and their their hooves
were really breaking down. They had a very hard time.
Not long after they had made their reports to the
Governor tom As Brisbane about the land, the potential for
(31:02):
farming in various areas, and the ruggedness of the terrain
and others, the governor arranged for a follow up expedition
by sea to the point they had reached on the
continent southern shore. This actually took a little while to
get going, but Huvell was part of that trip and
it was discovered that the team had not actually made
it to Western Ports as they had believed, but to
Port Philip, which sits in a bay about seventy kilometers
(31:25):
that's about forty three miles north of Western Port. This
error was not really considered a problem or a failure.
The expedition was successful in giving the colonial government a
lot of information about the land, and that ultimately led
to the founding of Melbourne the following decade. Both Hume
and Hovel were given very sizeable land grants for their
(31:46):
work Humes and Hovels. Conflict went on past the expedition
as their accounts differred. For example, Hume claimed that he
named the Hume River after his father, but Hubble claimed
that he named the river after his colleague. Now it's
known as the Murray River. Both men asserted that they
(32:06):
had been the head of the expedition and had been
responsible for the greater part of its successes. Anytime one
of them was publicly lauded for the expedition, the other
one became enraged and would publish pamphlets setting the records
straight on their differing versions. Hume married a woman named
Elizabeth Dight in November of eighteen twenty five, so about
(32:28):
ten months after they got back. He also headed up
several additional expeditions like this, and then he became magistrate
Magistrate and Yes, a position that he served in for decades,
right up until his death on April nineteenth, eighteen seventy three,
at the age of seventy five. Despite being eleven years
older than Hume. Hubvell outlived his colleague and fhrenem Me.
(32:51):
He died on November nine, eighteen seventy five, at the
age of eighty nine, so Yes for almost fifty years
they just kind of seethed about each other. Today there
are multiple monuments to the two of them and their
expedition in various places in Australia. And if there's an afterlife,
they're probably bickering about having to share credit on all
(33:14):
of them. Yes, Oh, I have so many thoughts. We'll
talk about those on Friday. UM. I also have listener mail.
We got so much good listener mail about the French
Republican Calendar. You may hear a lot of it, but
this one made me laugh and laugh and laughs from
our listener, Amanda. And it's titled manure Day, My Dad's
(33:36):
Best Break, and Amanda writes, I heard my favorite holiday
mentioned on your Republican Calendar episode and I nearly dropped
my phone. Longtime listener, and this is not what I
thought I would be writing about. My dad is a
Christmas baby. When I was very little, I told him
that I wished I had been born on a holiday too,
(33:56):
and he assured me that I had that I was
born on Manure Day. I had never heard of it
and it was not on the calendar, but he explained
that that's because it was a Canadian holiday. Well, That
satisfied me, and I definitely told a lot of people
that I was born on manure Day at Canadian holiday.
It wasn't until fourth grade at a new school when
(34:16):
I was telling somebody about it at recess and as
the words came out of my mouth, I heard them.
I mean I really heard them for the first time.
The embarrassment. I confronted my dad about it, and he
had no recollection of telling me this. That only made
it worse. When I found out that manure Day was
a real day, I felt vindicated, both personally and on
(34:37):
behalf of my dad. I immediately went to look up
whether I really was born on manure Day. I wasn't.
Manure Day falls around December, while I am a springtime baby.
But to me, my birthday will always be manure Day,
a celebration of an important agricultural resource. I'm including pictures
of my two cats, Bagheera and Shackleton. Yes, like that
(34:58):
other Shackleton who was podcast subjec. There are five year
old litter mates and take care of each other through
thick and thin. Like Sir Ernest Shackleton, He's a bit
of an explorer and he also has endurance. Shacky suffers
from UM I'm probably gonna mispronounce this I sinophilic granuloma
complex and sometimes has flare ups causing serious facial and
(35:18):
tongue swelling and sores. But through it all he endures
is the most affectionate can and if he's having a
flare up and can't groom everyone in the house, Bagheera
will pick up the slack and groom him. I feel
lucky to have him on my crew. These two are
like two cute. I can't deal with it. See Shackleton
the adventure getting into the space ut of the tub
and between the ceiling floor via the plumbing access in
(35:40):
the wall, and also then being wishes thank you for
being wonderful, Amanda. I love this story so much. This
is the kind of thing that would go on, I
am sure amongst my friends or something, and I probably
would have told everyone my birthday was manure Day too.
But it's very very charming um and it reclaims manure Day.
I love that you celebrate it. It's an important resource day.
(36:02):
Although I will also say that like I wish my
birthday were on a holiday, thing is probably made by
people who don't you know, realize that when your birthday
is on a holiday, you also have to share that
day with the holiday. Listen. One of us on this
podcast turned twenty one a Memorial Day when all the
bars closed. I'm just saying, big problem. So if you
(36:27):
would like to write to us and share your perhaps
frech Republican calendar birthday, you can do that at History
Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. You can also find
us as Missed in History pretty much everywhere, and if
you would like to subscribe to the podcast and haven't,
you can do that on the iHeart Radio app or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff You Missed
(36:51):
in History Class is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen into
your favorite shows. H
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So today's
subject is one that any of our Australian listeners will
know well, I have no doubt. It's quite a well
(00:23):
known story there, and in some ways this story reads
a little bit like a sitcom, although it also involves
some very serious physical hardship, some of which sounds just
awful to me. It is about the expedition that really
established some of the earliest knowledge that European colonists had
about the interior of the Australian continent. And just a
(00:44):
heads up, we're going to talk about things like land
grants in this episode, specifically land grants given to Europeans
who moved to Australia, and we won't go into it
every time for context, but obviously that land wasn't really
Britton's to give. And this is a situation where colonialism
kind of blots out the indigenous peoples of an area
(01:04):
and nation in terms of the historical record. And also
there is often a lot of violence, disease in genocide
involved in that The other thing I read recently. My
understanding is that in Aboriginal culture you can on own
land the land owns you, so there's like an extra
added layer of just kind of ignorance and insult to
it um. There are also a lot of instances where
(01:25):
the two men involved in this story are said to
have discovered places. Hello, the people who lived there already
knew they were there. Uh So, of course, once again
that means from the European point of view, it became known,
But discovery isn't really the right word. And the two
men at the center of this story are William Hilton
Hovel and Hamilton's Hume. So we're gonna start by talking
(01:48):
about their lives before they became expedition collaborators. We'll start
with William Hilton Hovell, who was born April six and Yarmouth, Norfolk, England.
Even as a very young boy, he was working at sea.
His father was part owner and captain of a trading
(02:08):
vessel that ran from England to the Mediterranean, and that
ship was captured by the French in when William was
only eight. William's father was held as a prisoner of
war for more than two years because they didn't have
any income from his father, William had to start working
when he was only ten. This would have obviously been
(02:31):
a hard life, but according to one obituary on Hovel,
he was quote made of the right kind of stuff
for life at sea, and that is sort of reflected
in his first command, which was at the very young
age of twenty two in eight o eight. Prior to that,
he was mate on a ship called Zenobia, which made
a trading voyage to Peru, and then his commander commission
(02:52):
was aboard the Juno, which was a trading ship that
was bound for Rio de Janeiro. After that he was
given command of another ship, the Titia, which also made
the journey to Brazil, and then he led a trading
mission to Kittiez, Spain, on a ship called the John
and Thomas. On May tenth, eighteen ten, Hovell married Esther Arndell,
(03:12):
and in the autumn of the following year he applied
for a land grant in New South Wales, Australia. Estor's
father had already lived in Australia for decades by that time.
Hovell was granted his land parcel, and he his wife
and their two children sailed to Australia aboard the Earl Spencer.
They arrived on October nine, eight thirteen. William Hovell and
(03:35):
his family lived in Cumberland County, which was founded in
sevent and named for Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland, who
was the brother of King George the Third in the
eighteen teens. When Hovell arrived, that was the main area
that English immigrants had moved to. Much of the rest
of Australia was pretty much unknown to Europeans. It's a
(03:58):
little unclear happened when the Trial arrived in New Zealand,
but it definitely did not go well. According to Hovell's
cruise accounts, mau reforces attacked the crew of the Trial
and Hovel and his men fought their way back to
the ship and then headed straight back to Sydney. After this,
Hovel commanded several more trade missions, but ultimately turned in
(04:19):
a life at sea for a life on a farm
in eighteen nineteen, and he stayed there for several years.
So now we will pause Hovel's story and we'll talk
about the life of his partner in this tail. Hamilton's
Hume was born on June His parents were Andrew h
Hume and Elizabeth Kennedy Hume. Andrew was the Commissary General
(04:43):
of New South Wales and had moved to Australia the
same year that Hamilton's was born. He had arrived with
Elizabeth on a frigate called the Rue. Hamilton was born
in Paramtta, which at the time was a town in
New South Wales. Today it's more a suburb of Sydney.
Hamilton's was educated at home by his mother for the
(05:04):
most part. In eighteen twelve, when Hamilton's was fifteen, the
family moved roughly sixty kilometers south to the town of Appen,
where Andrew Hume had been given a sizeable land grant.
This meant that they were in an area that had
not really been developed by European inhabitants, and for Hume,
being out in the country sparked his interest in exploration.
(05:26):
When he reached the age of eighteen, Hume was given
his own land grant in Appen, and he was described
in an account of his life as unquote accomplished bushman
by the age of seventeen, and he often took his
young brothers with him on exploring trips around the bush
One such expedition was a trip through the area surrounding
the town of Barrima in the southern Highlands of New
(05:48):
South Wales. This is not to be confused with Barrima,
which exists in the Northern Territory of Australia today. That's
quite a long way away from where Hume was exploring.
Hume took notes on the land as he traveled, and
when he returned to Happen he shared the information that
there was good potential for some farming in this area
(06:09):
surrounding Barrema. Yeah, a lot of these explorations were like
can people move there again European people, Could we have
farms and agriculture? Could we support ourselves? So that's a
lot of the focus of these these explorations and expeditions.
Because of Hume's reputation, he was selected by Governor Lachlan
mcquarie in eighteen seventeen to accompany a surveyor named me
(06:33):
In and traveled the southern country of New South Wales.
Those two men are credited with discovering Lake Bathurst and
the Goulburn Plains, but as we mentioned at the top
of the episode, discovery not really the right word here.
They mapped the area for the British colonial governors. Hume
went on several similar trips at the behest of Governor
McQuary over the next several years with various other travelers.
(06:56):
He explored Jervis Bay, the Clyde River and Yes Janes.
The start of the expedition we're talking about today began
and initially sputtered out, when Sir Thomas Brisbane, who succeeded
Macquarie as governor, wanted to send an expedition to the
area between Lake George and Bass Strait in the early
eighteen twenties, and Hamilton's Hume was recommended as the perfect
(07:20):
man for the job. Brisbane took that recommendation and Hume
was chosen to lead the project, which was envisioned as
starting at Wilson's Promontory on the southern coast of Australia
or Cape how at the southeastern tip of the continent,
and then move north to Sydney. But regardless of route,
that expedition was going to be extremely costly and Brisbane
(07:42):
was ultimately unable to secure financing for it. Hume had
been really enthused about the idea, though, and after Brisbane's
funding fell through he started a plan to create a
similar expedition on his own, this one to the body
of water we now know as the Spencer Gulf west
of Adelaide, Australia. But Hume ran into that same problem money.
(08:04):
He just could not afford to finance a trip like
that on his own. And then a friend of Humes
named Alexander Berry, who was a surgeon and explorer who
had been born in Scotland and moved to Australia, had
an idea to connect Hume with another explorer who might
be able to help, and that is how Hamilton Hume
was introduced to William Hovell. Before we dive into the
(08:26):
time they spent together, let's pause for a quick sponsor break.
While William Hovell had done some exploring overland, his expertise
and experience really was at sea, but his ability to
(08:47):
navigate was what was really valuable for a trip into
unmapped areas. I say unmapped really there were some sketch
maps available, but they really didn't know specific details about
the terrain. When Huvell and Hugh met that you found
shared enthusiasm enough that Huvel offered to not only join
the project but to split the cost of mounting the expedition.
(09:08):
Hovell sold some of his land to raise the money,
and Hume sold a valuable iron plow. This is something
that would have been in high demand in Australia where
people were starting their farms, and not something they could
manufacture there but had to have shipped from overseas. They
also received from assistance from the government in the form
of a tent and some saddles and supplies for their crew,
(09:30):
which was made up in part with convicted men who
were assigned to their service. Once all the logistics were
in place, the team assembled at Hume's home in Appen.
They left there on Saturday October two. The six men
who accompanied human Hovel are described in accounts of the
day as quote assigned servants, so that meant they were
(09:52):
convicted men who had been transported to the British penal
colonies in Australia for various petty crimes. The men assigned
to Hamilton's Hume were Claude Bossla, Henry Angel and James Fitzpatrick.
Hovel's three assigned men were Thomas Boyd, William Ballard and
Thomas Smith. Yeah, there are some accounts that suggest that,
(10:14):
um I read one that said that at least one
of the men had actually been a freeman who had
immigrated but then also had some sort of indenture to
the government or something. It was a little unclear to
me what was going on there, but uh, these were,
like we said, men that had been assigned to them.
The team had two carts loaded with supplies, as well
(10:36):
as several steer and horses. So to get a sense
of how much they packed for an anticipated four month journey,
here's what Hovell noted in his journal. Quote six hundred
forty pounds flower, two hundred pounds pork, one hundred pounds sugar,
fourteen pounds t eight pounds tobacco, twelve pounds soap, salt, coffee, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera,
(10:59):
for myself and three men, together with a musket and
ammunition for each man. This is exclusively for ourselves, as
Mr Hume has supplied, as I understand, the same quantity.
Hume also added a cart, a steer, and two horses
to the cause, and Hovel provided a cart, four steer
and one horse. They also brought along dogs to help
(11:21):
with hunting game, and sketch maps of the area that
we mentioned just a moment ago. Those included information that
had been shared with colonists by Indigenous Australians. The initial
leg of the trip was from Appen to Yas and
as they made that segment of the trip, they visited
with friends along the way. They often had meals with acquaintances.
(11:41):
Hamilton's brother John was with them for that first stretch.
It took ten days to travel roughly two hundred kilometers.
Hovel and Hume estimated the distance at a hundred twenty
three point five miles. The destination of that first stretch
was a station Hume had set up at Yes. They
got there around one pm on October. In addition to
(12:03):
seeing acquaintances and friends, the team also identified problems with
their carts, which they were able to have serviced as
they were passing through these areas that were populated with
colonists rather than brush. Yeah, it was a definitely through
populated area in that first chunk. The following day, after
they got to the station, Human Hovel went to Lake George's,
(12:25):
about twelve miles from the station, to calculate the distance
and to just observe the land. They returned to the
station that same day at dusk. The team had intended
to leave the Ya station on Saturday, October sixte there
was inclement weather and, according to the team account quote,
a native guide who had promised to help them move
south through the area was a no show, so they
(12:48):
didn't actually begin until Sunday the seventeen, and they set
out without a guide early into the trip. On October nineteenth.
After traveling eleven miles that day, they quote found themselves
on the banks of the Murrambijee River, but this posed
a problem. According to their published account quote, the river, however,
is so swollen by the late rains that it appears
(13:10):
utterly impassable, and it is evidently rising. Human Houvel estimated
that the river was thirty to forty yards across, and
in this account that they kept they said the current
was between five and six knots an hour. So initially
they made camp where they were, and they couldn't cross
the next day either, but they did manage to catch
(13:30):
some fresh fish and eat it. On October twenty two,
seeing no evidence that the river was going to diminish
or slow, they decided that they had to go ahead
and attempt a crossing. As they put it quote without
further delay and whatever the risk. But the trees around
the river were water logged from the rains, so they
weren't buoyant and they couldn't be used like to float across.
(13:52):
So they stripped one of the carts down and they
covered it with a tarpaulin to create a raft that
could be passed back and forth across the river if
they could attach it to a rope that was anchored
on the opposite shore. Hume and one of the assistants
took on the task of swimming across the river to
affix this rope, which they had to carry across by
biting it as they swam. Per their account quote. This
(14:15):
was not done without great difficulty and some danger. They
were successful, though they landed farther downstream than they had
initially intended. But once the setup was completed and they
had the rope, they started moving supplies across the river
in that raft. They walked and swam the animals across
with a tow rope. After all the time that it
took to get the supplies and the other cart over,
(14:37):
one of the steer rolled on its back and made
a lot of the crossing in that position. Once they
got everything and all the animals across, they made camp
and they slept on the river bank. I sort of
feel like that's all I would have the energy to
do after all that. Yeah, I mean they talked about
how it took you know, five hours just to get
all the stuff across, and then the animals were a
couple of hours more, uh, because they couldn't do them
(15:00):
all at once since they didn't have enough men to
make sure everything worked. So that's like a full work
day of just crossing this river of terror. But their
troubles were just the beginning. The day after the river crossing,
the expedition traveled ten miles and ended up at kind
of a mountain barrier. Hume and Hovell disagreed on the
way to go to try to get around this obstacle.
(15:22):
They couldn't go straight up. They were really at like
a rock face. Here is the description of what happened
from the jointly published account that they put out some
years later. Sunday, October up to two o'clock. The day
was spent in a laborious but ineffectual attempt to discover
a pass through the mountain barrier. In their advance. The
party now separated Mr. Hovell, with one of the men
(15:45):
following a chain of ponds in the direction northwest for
four or five miles, when these ponds were found to
form a stream which made its escape through a chasm
dividing the Northern and Western Barrier Ranges from each other.
Down this chasm, the stream soon press sipated itself in
numerous falls that it became impracticable to follow it further.
(16:06):
They would now have returned to the tent, but lost
their way in the attempt to find an emu, which
they had killed on their way out. Hume, on the
other hand, headed in a southwest direction. He had followed
a chain of ponds, but unlike Hovel, Hume's route led
to the discovery of a pass through the mountains into
a valley. The jointly published account merely mentions that Hovel
(16:29):
and Boyd rejoined the rest early in the morning, although
biographies of Hume indicate he actually went out and found them.
Yeah they did not find their way back by themselves.
This trip continued to be quite difficult. Over and over
they had trouble with crossing bodies of water and mountain ridges.
(16:49):
The pack animals were difficult to steer through a lot
of the treacherous areas, and in some cases, roots which
had been described to them as passable by some of
the indigenous people were possible for a person but not
for a cart. They eventually had to ditch their carts,
but that also meant that the animals each had to
carry more weight, which slowed them down. They also were
(17:11):
pretty plagued with bush flies, march flies, and mosquitoes. At
one point, one of their accounts say something like I
considered taking off all my clothes and just rolling in
the dirt like they were miserable. Um, it's pretty clear
that this entire trip was very difficult and tensions between
human Hovel continued to bubble over throughout. On Monday, November eight,
(17:33):
they had a very good day and Hovel and Hume
became the first Europeans on record to see what was
dubbed the Australian Alps. They had been hiking through various
smaller ranges throughout the trip, and in the jointly published
account it's described as follows, quote Mrs Hovell and Hume
having ascended close to the stream with some difficulty, about
(17:54):
half the height of this range in order to be
the better enabled to decide as to their future opera.
Rations were suddenly surprised by a sight to the utmost degree.
Magnificent mountains, of a conoidal form and of an apparently
immense height, and some of them covered about one fourth
of their height with snow, were now seen, extending semi
(18:16):
circularly from the southeast to south southwest at the supposed
distance of about twenty miles. The sun was bright, it
was about ten or eleven in the forenoon, and gave
them an appearance the most brilliant. The mountains which they
had hitherto seen, compared with these stupendous elevations, were no
more than hillocks, from which also their forum, as well
(18:39):
as their other general characters, rendered them not the less dissimilar.
But that thrilling view led to an argument. For several
days they were kind of moving along and taking in
these mountains, and after having seen them, Hugh really thought
they needed to alter their planned course, because he was
certain they were going to end up trapped if they
(19:01):
continued to head east as they had been. Huvell was
not having it. He did not want to change the
plan at all, and an epic fight ensued. This fight
is often what people reference when they talk about this expedition,
because while it involves too theoretically experienced explorers making fairly
big decisions about their entire team safety, it devolved into
(19:24):
what sounds like a petty sitcom construct. The two men
just could not come to any kind of resolution on
the matter, and so they decided, out in unmapped territory
that neither of them had ever been in before, to
just part ways then and there. Their equitable solution was
to divide the supplies evenly, but that was actually a
(19:47):
problem because when they had dropped their carts to streamline
the journey, they had also eliminated any redundancies they could,
so for a lot of things they needed to use
every day, they only had one and that included the tent.
These two men bickered so much about who had rights
(20:07):
to the tent that they decided that the only solution
was to cut it in half. But Human is said
to have aborted that plan because he realized that half
a tent is really still no tent in terms of
the structure working, so he let Hovel take it. And
then there was the frying pan. This is one of
those details that does not appear in the jointly published account,
(20:29):
but was mentioned in accounts by the attendants. The two
men essentially got into a tug of war over who
was going to get this fry pan, and in both
pulling at it, they broke it into One had the
handle and one had the plate, and they each took
their broken peace and angrily parted ways. I'm curious about
what this frying pan was made of. I know, like
(20:51):
it's not a cast iron pan if they pulled it apart. Yeah,
like I'm imagining in my head an iron skillet. And
so we get to the part where it's just broken
and half in a tug of war. The separation did
not last long. Hume turned west as he had intended,
Hovell continued toward the east, as had been the initially
plotted course. Thomas Boyd was with Hubble, and once the
(21:14):
navigator had calmed down, made the case that they were
going to end up in snowy terrain if they kept
on going as they were, and that they could easily
get stuck there and died. They did not have the
equipment for those kinds of conditions. Huvel acquiesced and they
backtrack and then hurried to catch up with Hume. William
Hovell's journal entry from that day does not mention the
(21:37):
fight or the frying pan or splitting up. He merely states, quote,
as we found it impossible to proceed any further in
that direction without endangering the lives of both men and beasts,
and perhaps to no purpose. I proposed that we should
attempt a passage over the range west of us, and
to endeavor to get fifty or sixty miles in a
(21:59):
westerly direct him. Hume's account reads quote, I found we
were getting in too high a country for the snowy mountains.
The Australian Alps were observed crossing our course. I propose
that we should take a direction more westerly in order
to avoid the formidable barrier which threatens to interrupt our way.
But Mr Howell dissented from my proposal. Hume goes on
(22:22):
to describe their quote wrangling and disputing, each being positive
of the correctness of his own opinion, although he does
not mention the tent or the frying pan. Thomas Boyd's
account lines up with the argument and Hume having proposed
the better course, although he also notes quote I had
to go with Mr Hovell. It is actually Henry Angel's
(22:44):
account that is the one that offers up the details
of the tent and the frying pan, which have been
much repeated ever since. Coming up, we'll talk about Hume's
ongoing quest to get to Australia's southern shore and the
fraying health and nerves of really the entire team. First, though,
we will hear from the sponsors that keep stuffy missed
in history class. Going on November six, the group encountered
(23:17):
a river about which Hume was quite excited, and according
to Thomas Boyd, Hume named it the Hume River after
his father. This was another potentially treacherous crossing. The river
was wide, even wider than the other river that had
given them trouble, and the water was whirling, but Hume
was very eager to go to the other side. That
(23:37):
started another conflict. Hubble thought that the expedition had discovered
quite enough to please the governor and that they really
could turn back for home. At this point, they were
all getting tired, they were doing dangerous things, but Hume
was insistent that they had not finished the intended route,
and that he was going to make it to the coast.
Hume built a boat by using their remaining tarpaulin and
(24:00):
poles and branches cut from trees, and they spent the
next day or so trying to find a good point
for crossing. Hovell wrote in his journal that he followed
the river north and found a crossing point, and at
that point the tarp boat was built in the style
of when he had made before on another expedition. His
account is completely different than that of all the other men. Yeah,
(24:22):
he definitely in his journals makes every good idea sound
like his. Uh. The next river they encountered led to
an even larger disagreement. Hovel really really thought that they
were being rash and continuing to use this tarpaulin for
a boat. He noted that there was only one tarp
(24:43):
and that it was in rough shape, and in response,
Hume reportedly yelled at him quote, I do not think
it necessary to point out the defects in the tarpaulin
to the men, and if they do not like to
risk themselves in it, they can stop and be damned.
He had a plan if the tarp failed to kill
one of the pack animals and use it for food
and then make the hide into a boat. He had
(25:05):
no intention of falling short of completing the expedition, and
he was going to do whatever it took to complete it.
But that finish at all costs attitude was really starting
to rattle the rest of the crew, and Claude Bosswa
decided he agreed with Hovel, which made him furious. Hume
is said to have grabbed Bosswa by the neck and
(25:26):
threatened to throw him in the river if he chose
not to cross. Although it looked like the two leads
were going to split apart again and go their separate ways,
hubbl decided to cross the river with the group at
the last minute. This apparently also really irritated Hume, who
had been kind of relieved that he was not going
to have to be with Huvel any longer. Oh, it's
(25:49):
hard to travel with the group. As the expedition reached
its late stages, things were predictably more and more difficult.
Rations were running low, they had lost all but one
dog to hunt, and the terrain had taken a toll
on the horses in the steer. During a particularly arduous
effort to get through mountains and terrain just north of
(26:11):
modern day Melbourne, sometimes crawling on hands and knees to
do it. Because there was so much shrubbery and brush
around them. The men really started to lose their spirit.
Hubvill didn't want to keep going, but this time no
one else did either except for Hume, and at this
point a lot of their clothes had been destroyed by brush.
These men were literally wearing rags at this point, their
(26:33):
boots were falling apart, and they were starting to be
severely malnourished. This is a situation where Hume really held
all the cards. He was by far the most experienced
explorer among them, and the others would have been unlikely
to survive if they turned back and tried to make
it home without him. But instead of merely being insistent,
(26:54):
he made them a deal. He felt like they were
very close to the coast, so he asked him to
go just two more days, and if they hadn't hit
their goal by then, they would all turn back together.
Everyone agreed, a deal was struck, and fortunately the next
couple of days were much easier than a lot of
the trip. Then, on December six, the expedition saw what
(27:17):
it believed to be a stretch of water on the horizon,
and they pressed on until they reached the shore where
they camped. At last, they had reached the destination, which
they believed to be Western Port. This sounds like a wonderful,
happy ending, but remember they had to turn around and
march all the way back with only five weeks worth
of supplies when the trip down had taken eleven weeks.
(27:41):
As they were preparing for the return journey, James Fitzpatrick
had an interaction with two indigenous men while he was
out hunting duck. These two men approached him with spears,
and he claimed he had accidentally fired his gun, although
it was a misfire and hit no one. The two
men chased him back to camp, and Hume engaged them
(28:03):
by showing them his weapon and putting it on the ground,
and then encouraging them to do the same through hand
signals and miming. The indigenous men indicated to the members
of the expedition that they had seen a ship in
the harbor and colonists building shelter. That's believed to have
been a reference to the Botany Bay Colony of the
seventeen eighties. Hume later described the Aboriginal people they had
(28:26):
encountered as quote friendly and peaceable. While Hovel kind of
admired their life free of taxes and industrialization. He talks
about them in this sort of idyllic way, but he
also wrote that their conduct was quote very suspicious and treacherous.
This entry and Hovel's journal may have seemed really foolish
to him. The next morning, when the men returned with
(28:48):
their families, their wives and their children just to visit.
On December eighteenth, Hume, Hovel, and their attendants started their
track home. This time, Hume knew the land well enough
to skirt around the most difficult parts of the trip,
so that sped things along. They had to kill one
of their steer who was injured and couldn't make the trip.
(29:09):
They ate the meat, which they really desperately needed, and
then they used the hide to make shoes, which they
also really desperately needed. Hume was fairly relentless and pushing
the men every day, which he needed to do to
get them all home before their reserves were totally depleted.
There were several instances on the way home where the
expedition met with indigenous communities. It seems like more so
(29:32):
going back than when they they had headed south. Hume
reported later in life that one of the men that
they met along the way actually moved to Yes and
would occasionally visit him over the years and they became friends.
Hume called him Mickey. Hovel tended to opt out of
these social interactions, and when they had these engagements with
people who were part of indigenous communities, he would just
(29:54):
kind of continue on the planned route and right ahead
of Hume and usually wait for them to catch up.
The trip back was almost rougher than the one on
the way out, because despite sticking as often as they
could with more gentle terrain, the men and the animals
were all just depleted. Things looked really grave and early
January until the team was able to relocate the carts,
(30:17):
which were where they had left them. That eased the
situation a little bit. They started to travel almost relay style,
where some of the men would rest while others would
go ahead and then rest while the others caught up. Finally,
on January they had all made at home, although none
of their dogs or steer were with them. Yeah, it's
(30:39):
kind of heartbreaking. I didn't include a lot of it here,
but they really described kind of the degrading state of
the animal's health, because in some cases, you know, if
the men weren't eating, neither were the animals. And they
were still carrying these heavy loads and their their hooves
were really breaking down. They had a very hard time.
Not long after they had made their reports to the
Governor tom As Brisbane about the land, the potential for
(31:02):
farming in various areas, and the ruggedness of the terrain
and others, the governor arranged for a follow up expedition
by sea to the point they had reached on the
continent southern shore. This actually took a little while to
get going, but Huvell was part of that trip and
it was discovered that the team had not actually made
it to Western Ports as they had believed, but to
Port Philip, which sits in a bay about seventy kilometers
(31:25):
that's about forty three miles north of Western Port. This
error was not really considered a problem or a failure.
The expedition was successful in giving the colonial government a
lot of information about the land, and that ultimately led
to the founding of Melbourne the following decade. Both Hume
and Hovel were given very sizeable land grants for their
(31:46):
work Humes and Hovels. Conflict went on past the expedition
as their accounts differred. For example, Hume claimed that he
named the Hume River after his father, but Hubble claimed
that he named the river after his colleague. Now it's
known as the Murray River. Both men asserted that they
(32:06):
had been the head of the expedition and had been
responsible for the greater part of its successes. Anytime one
of them was publicly lauded for the expedition, the other
one became enraged and would publish pamphlets setting the records
straight on their differing versions. Hume married a woman named
Elizabeth Dight in November of eighteen twenty five, so about
(32:28):
ten months after they got back. He also headed up
several additional expeditions like this, and then he became magistrate
Magistrate and Yes, a position that he served in for decades,
right up until his death on April nineteenth, eighteen seventy three,
at the age of seventy five. Despite being eleven years
older than Hume. Hubvell outlived his colleague and fhrenem Me.
(32:51):
He died on November nine, eighteen seventy five, at the
age of eighty nine, so Yes for almost fifty years
they just kind of seethed about each other. Today there
are multiple monuments to the two of them and their
expedition in various places in Australia. And if there's an afterlife,
they're probably bickering about having to share credit on all
(33:14):
of them. Yes, Oh, I have so many thoughts. We'll
talk about those on Friday. UM. I also have listener mail.
We got so much good listener mail about the French
Republican Calendar. You may hear a lot of it, but
this one made me laugh and laugh and laughs from
our listener, Amanda. And it's titled manure Day, My Dad's
(33:36):
Best Break, and Amanda writes, I heard my favorite holiday
mentioned on your Republican Calendar episode and I nearly dropped
my phone. Longtime listener, and this is not what I
thought I would be writing about. My dad is a
Christmas baby. When I was very little, I told him
that I wished I had been born on a holiday too,
(33:56):
and he assured me that I had that I was
born on Manure Day. I had never heard of it
and it was not on the calendar, but he explained
that that's because it was a Canadian holiday. Well, That
satisfied me, and I definitely told a lot of people
that I was born on manure Day at Canadian holiday.
It wasn't until fourth grade at a new school when
(34:16):
I was telling somebody about it at recess and as
the words came out of my mouth, I heard them.
I mean I really heard them for the first time.
The embarrassment. I confronted my dad about it, and he
had no recollection of telling me this. That only made
it worse. When I found out that manure Day was
a real day, I felt vindicated, both personally and on
(34:37):
behalf of my dad. I immediately went to look up
whether I really was born on manure Day. I wasn't.
Manure Day falls around December, while I am a springtime baby.
But to me, my birthday will always be manure Day,
a celebration of an important agricultural resource. I'm including pictures
of my two cats, Bagheera and Shackleton. Yes, like that
(34:58):
other Shackleton who was podcast subjec. There are five year
old litter mates and take care of each other through
thick and thin. Like Sir Ernest Shackleton, He's a bit
of an explorer and he also has endurance. Shacky suffers
from UM I'm probably gonna mispronounce this I sinophilic granuloma
complex and sometimes has flare ups causing serious facial and
(35:18):
tongue swelling and sores. But through it all he endures
is the most affectionate can and if he's having a
flare up and can't groom everyone in the house, Bagheera
will pick up the slack and groom him. I feel
lucky to have him on my crew. These two are
like two cute. I can't deal with it. See Shackleton
the adventure getting into the space ut of the tub
and between the ceiling floor via the plumbing access in
(35:40):
the wall, and also then being wishes thank you for
being wonderful, Amanda. I love this story so much. This
is the kind of thing that would go on, I
am sure amongst my friends or something, and I probably
would have told everyone my birthday was manure Day too.
But it's very very charming um and it reclaims manure Day.
I love that you celebrate it. It's an important resource day.
(36:02):
Although I will also say that like I wish my
birthday were on a holiday, thing is probably made by
people who don't you know, realize that when your birthday
is on a holiday, you also have to share that
day with the holiday. Listen. One of us on this
podcast turned twenty one a Memorial Day when all the
bars closed. I'm just saying, big problem. So if you
(36:27):
would like to write to us and share your perhaps
frech Republican calendar birthday, you can do that at History
Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. You can also find
us as Missed in History pretty much everywhere, and if
you would like to subscribe to the podcast and haven't,
you can do that on the iHeart Radio app or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff You Missed
(36:51):
in History Class is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen into
your favorite shows. H
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com