August 22nd
Out of sorts from upset and unable to function. Hill, after a discreet hesitation of a few hours, took over the direction of the men in terms of their responsibilities. At sundown the entire horizon to the west was indigo with clouds and heavy rain. Each of us spent the evening absorbed in the spectacle, unwilling to speak.
I dreamed of my father as I saw him on the pier in Adelaide upon my return. When I awoke Browne was kicking the leg of my cot with his heavy boot. He had today's resolution, he announced. He said, “There was an old man in a Marsh, Whose manners were futile and harsh.”
“That's not a resolution,” I called after him, once I'd found my voice, which was after he'd left.
With what energy we've been able to muster we have been busy all day preparing an excursion to the WNW to try to meet and retrieve some of that rain. This will decide the fate of our expedition. We will take six weeks' provisions, one of the casks, and four or five bullock hides to carry the water back. Browne and I will lead, and Beale, Gould, and Mack will accompany us, along with seven of the horses and one of the drays.
September 12th
Three weeks out. Set out on August 23rd at 4 a.m. The cask is nearly empty. Today we gave our horses as much water as reason would justify before making camp. Their docility under such suffering is heart-rending. They cannot rest and spend the night troublesomely persevering, plodding round the cart and trying to poke their noses into the bung hole. We close our eyes and pretend not to see.
September 16th
A water-hole. A triumph for Browne. The water cloudy and off but purer than any we have for some time seen. Filled the cask and made some tea. The horizon shot through with lightning.
September 21st
Returned to the strictest rationing now that our strength seems somewhat restored. Walking as much as possible to spare the horses. My heels and back lanced with pain. When lying down I feel as though I'm being rolled across a threshing machine. Summer starting to come on. The thermometer between 120 and 133 during the day. Matches held in the hand flare into flame. We must be a sight, I remarked to Browne: burnt by the sun, our clothes in rags, our hats long since shapeless with sweat, covered in insects, each absorbed in his private cell of misery, whether a chafing shoe or an open sore. And almost no quarrels. On this never-ending ribbon of interminable heat. Browne, as if to prove my point, did not answer.
September 30th
This morning we gave Captain, my mount, double breakfast, in hopes it would strengthen him, but it did not. The poor brute staggered rather than walked along. At midnight he fell. We got him up again and, abandoning his saddle, proceeded. At a mile, though, he fell again and could not go on. I sat by him in the night as he expired, after which I felt so desolate I took myself off into the darkness for a while. I had fully intended to purchase him at the sale of the remnants of the expedition, perhaps as a gift for Browne.
October 10th
We have found only a runnel with mud so thick I could not swallow it. Browne managed to drink some of it made into tea. It fell over the lip of his cup like clotted cream, and smeared the horses' noses like clay. They refused it. Browne was then ill all the next day.
October 12th
Some kind of cyclopean boulders now before us. Even the horses regard them with dismay. I dismounted and ascended the first for a bearing. It was no trifling task in our condition and these temperatures. Beale accompanied me with the instruments. “This is more than a Government day's work, sir,” he said on the way back down.
I could not respond. Our view had been over as terrible a region as Man ever saw. Its aspect was so mortifying that it left us with not a tinge of hope. We have to return, with every promise of a better country within reach annihilated. We all stood dumbly in the heat at this understanding, as if concussed by a blow, before eventually retiring to our midday shelter under the dray. Mack and Gould wept. Browne kept up an intermittent continuous hum, like a bush insect. Was it possible to give up, having achieved nothing? I asked myself aloud. One of the horses toppled to its knees as if by way of answer. No one spoke again until sundown, when we turned about and headed back the way we came. We have been defeated, I reminded our little group, by obstacles not to be overcome by human perseverance.
Our bearings record that the farthest point to which we penetrated was to Longitude 138.5.00 and Latitude 24.30.00, and I will in truth affirm that no men ever wandered in a more despairing and hopeless desert. I have no other observations to add on the nature of this country.
November 17th
Made camp yesterday at 6 a.m., nearly done in from lack of food and water. Three of the seven horses lost, the other four nearly useless. All of us are afflicted by a fatigue that seems impossible to overcome. The buttons on our shirts by mid-morning are so heated as to pain us. Few men have ever laid themselves down to rest, if it can be called rest, as bereft as I have been today.
November 20th
Browne has somehow managed another expedition to the south on one of the fresher horses to ascertain how much water remains on our line of retreat. He returned this morning to report that one of the deepest and narrowest channels had long gone dry. With that source lost, there can be no water nearer to us than seventy-eight miles, and perhaps not there.
The horses are at their wits' end. What grass there is flies to powder under their tread. The last ram has taken the staggers and Beale has ordered him killed.
Whirlwinds blowing all morning from the NE increased to a furnacelike gale. The incinerating heat was so withering that I wondered if the very trees would ignite. Everything, animate and inanimate, gave way before it: the horses with their backs to it and noses to the ground, lacking the strength to raise their heads; the sheep and dogs huddled beneath the drays. One of our thermometers, graduated to 157 degrees, burst. Which is a circumstance I believe no traveler on this earth has ever before had to record.
November 24th
A party rebellious to my purposes now intends to strike out to the south in hope of relief. Browne reported this to me. And of whom was this party constituted? I croaked, gazing at him with what I hoped to be severity. Beale, he said. Hamilton and Mabberly Gould. Cuppage. Purdie. Mack and Moorhouse. And Mander-Jones, to lead.
“That's everyone, besides Hill and yourself,” I told him.
He agreed.
“Cuppage is unconscious,” I reminded him.
“Mack says he speaks for Cuppage,” he told me.
I asked after his own status. Was he going south too?
“I have just been there,” he said.
I assembled the group and addressed the assembly without anger. I told them I could only insist upon all I had observed. And that I have always been open to reason. But that I was convinced that at present no hope lay to our south, at least not until the rains returned.
They killed the rest of the bullocks and scraped and sewed their hides to carry water. They will take one cask and leave one. One dray, carrying only Cuppage, the water, and some dried beef and flour. Mander-Jones, who can hardly see from the bites of the flies, is leading nevertheless. He refuses to talk to me at any length. I asked what he wanted done with his specimens and notes and then regretted the meanness of the question.