Burke & Wills

After we had seen the Gulf of Carpentaria in a small town of Karumba, it was time to turn back and head towards the centre of Australia. On our way we were following some of the footsteps of the Australian explorers Burke and Wills. On my first trip to the Outback I read a book about their ill-fated expedition and I found it really fascinating.

Gulf of Carpenteria, Karumba

In 1860 Burke and Wills led an expedition aiming to cross the Australian continent from the south (Melbourne) to the north (Gulf of Carpentaria). At the time the inland of Australia was completely unknown and not yet discovered by European settlers. They travelled with 18 men, 25 camels, 22 horses and 20 tonnes of equipment. 

In Coopers Creek they had to set up a base camp and wait for additional supplies. At this point things started to go wrong. Burke was impatient because he wanted to be the first person to reach the north.  He decided to keep going only with 3 other men, Wills, Gray and King, 3 camels, and food for only 3 months. Burke left a man called Brahe in charge in Coopers Creek, and told them to wait for their return for 3 months. 

After an exhausting journey in the summer heat, they reached the Gulf of Carpenteria. They turned back with not much food supplies left. Animals were killed and eaten. Gray was sick, and some time later he died, although there is debate of what really happened to Gray.

Exhausted they finally reached Coopers Creek, only to find it abandoned. The rest of the men had waited for more than 4 months, but decided they have to head back because of illnesses and lack of food. They had left only 9 hours earlier. They had buried some food for Burke and the men underground, and left a message on a tree telling them to dig. This tree is now called the Dig Tree and it is a popular tourist destination. 

Burke and his men were exhausted and as they had no hope of catching up with the rest of the group, they decided to rest a bit and then head to another direction. In case Brahe would come back to search for them, they wrote a letter explaining their intentions and buried it in the same place. 

Burke & Wills statue in Melbourne

After Burke, Wills and King had taken off again towards Mt Hopeless, Brahe decided he has to go back to check if they have reached the camp. When he rode his horse to the camp, he saw that somebody had been there, but assumed it was aboriginals. As the message on the tree was unchanged, he didn't dig to see if the supplies were still there. Burke was only 56 km away. 

Burke, Wills and Gray were soon too weak to continue. Wills died and Burke soon after. King only survived with the help of a friendly aboriginal tribe. He was found a few months later. 

The story is full of irony, incredibly bad luck and mysteries. 

That night we stayed at Burke & Wills roadhouse, in the middle of nowhere and spent the evening looking at the millions of stars in the sky.

Read more: burkeandwills.net.au

The Stolen Generations

I had my first exam yesterday, for the Australian Idol subject. It went really well considering the amount of studying that I did for it, = zero. I had to write two essays. I wrote about the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s apology to the Stolen Generations last year, and if the reconciliation has stagnated after that or not. 

History Lesson: The Stolen Generations refer to the children of the indigenous people that were removed from their families during Australia’s six decades of racist White Australia policy. The European settlers considered Australia as a no-man’s land and to them Aboriginals were doomed to extinction. Aboriginals were denigrated, dehumanized and oppressed because of the false sense of superiority of the European settlers and the aboriginal culture was almost destroyed. The present disadvantages of the indigenous people such as alcoholism, diseases, alienation and other devastation is all because of the European settlers. Even as late as in the 1980s they were for instance denied service in shops or bars and spat on. So, resolving these issues is essential for Australia to truly see itself as a first rate social democracy, the land of the’ fair go’ and better chance. That’s basically what I wrote... But seriously, the indigenous people were denied from all of their basic human rights such as DRINKING!!! Imagine that!!! And I read somewhere, that even if you were 1/128 aboriginal they denied some of your rights! It seems like the apology was merely a symbolic start for true reconciliation. The Rudd Government has committed to some real action such as increasing the education of aboriginal children as well and there have been some improvements.

But reconciliation will be difficult to achieve. It’s a two-way process and requires respect, forgiveness, acceptance and also the will of the aboriginals to help themselves. It’s easier to divide people than it is to unite and people’s attitudes change slower than legislation. I think it’s important that the non-indigenous Australians recognize that it was their ignorance that caused the dispossession of land, culture and language. It doesn’t mean that individual Australians should feel personal guilt over it. It means that the same way they can feel national pride over sporting or the Anzacs, they should be able to feel national shame of past actions.

Okay that was just a summary of it, I could give you a long lecture about it but somehow I doubt that you’d read it…

Another question that I wrote about was about Australian immigration and racial exclusion. I didn’t have that much to say about that. Basically Australian immigration has been really restricted throughout the history. I actually read somewhere that they had this dictation test, where e.g. Maltese people wanting to immigrate to Australia were asked to write a 50-word length statement in DUTCH!! Just to prevent them from entering the country because they were not white enough although they too (to my knowledge) have been under British rule. I think it’s interesting how in just a few decades Australia has managed to become such a multicultural country despite all that...

ANZAC day

It was ANZAC day yesterday. It’s probably the most important national public holiday in Australia and New Zealand. And in the land of the long weekend, uni’s closed on Monday :)

ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps that fought in Gallipoli Peninsula Turkey during World War I. Over 8,000 Australian soldiers were killed. The British plan was doomed to fail from the start and the Anzacs didn’t have a chance, although they weren’t aware of it when they went into war. The Aussie men actually competed of who gets to go to war.

I think it’s funny that in Australia attacking another country is considered to mark the birth of national consciousness. It’s like the US celebrating attacking Iraq. Well, maybe not exactly. To me it seems like the Aussies simply don’t have a special date to celebrate. They can’t really celebrate Australia Day because it is kind of controversial because of the position of the indigenous people. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s good to commemorate the sacrifice of the Anzacs, but making it such a big deal at uni… Finland lost almost 4 times as many men in the Winter War. (See, I have been listening in class! – Correct me if I’m wrong…)Not that it's a competition..

Anyway, so Anzac day is about commemoration. Dawn services – held at dawn, the time of the original landing – are held across the nation. However, it seems that today ANZAC is more about footy. That is, Australian football. Footy is neither like soccer nor like American football. I heard that the ANZAC day footy match is even more popular than the final. I haven’t been to a footy match yet, but I’ve heard it’s like American football but without helmets or such, and that the guys are hot. After the games started, footy is all the locals talk about. And the newspapers. If the front page news is about something else than footy, it must be something huuuuge.

The weather is terrible today and I’m not planning to step outside anymore today. It’s cold and raining and the wind is CRAZY. I guess winter is coming… :( It pisses me off, I can’t imagine that I travelled 20,000 km to find myself in Australia with a weather exactly like in Finland in autumn!!!