Menindee. The detailed memorial to the Burke and Wills Expedition outside the Menindee Hotel. : 無料・フリー素材/写真
Menindee. The detailed memorial to the Burke and Wills Expedition outside the Menindee Hotel. / denisbin
| ライセンス | クリエイティブ・コモンズ 表示-改変禁止 2.1 |
|---|---|
| 説明 | Burke and Wills Menindee Camp Pamamaroo Creek 26/10/1860 to 26/01/1861. The story of Burke and Wills has become an integral part of the Australian consciousness. Burke and Wills and their fate seem to encapsulate and justify the fear that many urban Australians have of the vast, lonely, dry wilderness which occupies over two-thirds of the continent. Of course the truth about the ignominious demise of Burke and wills is more pedestrian. What went wrong with their expedition can best be summed up by those well-known human failings - incompetence, arrogance, inflexibility and racial bigotry. The expedition was ill-conceived from the outset. It is now generally agreed that the raison d'etre of the whole undertaking was overwhelming pride. This pride was a result of the newly found wealth of Melbourne (a direct result of the gold rushes) and the newly created colonial independence of Victoria. Public enthusiasm for the expedition was high. Public subscriptions exceeded £3000 and the government contributed £6000. Under ordinary circumstances this would have been adequate funding but over half of the funds were spent on purchasing and importing twenty-four camels from Afghanistan. The committee then advertised for a man to lead the expedition. They had thirteen applicants out of whom they chose Irish-born police inspector Robert O'Hara Burke. Burke had no experience and no apparent knowledge of the Australian bush. Why he was chosen to lead an expedition which was going to travel across thousands of miles of rugged and unknown terrain remains a mystery. It was not so much an expedition as a public display. The camels and packhorses were carrying twenty-one tons of equipment including 120 mirrors as presents for Aborigines, sixty gallons of rum, four gallons of brandy, supplies of rockets, arms and vast qualities of dried food. On 6 September when the expedition reached Swan Hill Burke sold off a large quantity of stores and hired two new men. In Balranald the foreman, Ferguson, quit; Burke dismissed Creber, Cowen, Fletcher, the cook Drakeford, and Langan; and some stores including the expedition's entire supply of lime juice were sold. At the Darling River camp at Pamamaroo Creek Burke insisted that all items weighing over thirty pounds be abandoned. This decision meant that neither Dr Beckler nor the naturalist Ludwig Becker could carry their instruments. Becker left the expedition at Menindee. Prior to Becker's departure the second-in-command, Landells, realised that he would never be able to work with Burke and resigned. At Menindee news arrived from Melbourne that another continental crossing was about to commence. All pretence about the desire to 'enquire into the report upon the exploration of the Australian interior' was abandoned. Burke could not tolerate the thought that he might be beaten. On 19 October Burke, Wills, Brabe, King, Gray, McDonough, Patton and an Afgan cameleer Dost Mohammed left Menindee. Wright was left behind with instructions to bring stores and provisions and to follow the main party in a week to Cooper’s Creek. The main party reached Cooper Creek on 11 November and on 27 November the famous Camp 65 was established under a coolibah tree on the banks of the river. On 16 December 1860 with six camels, one pony, and Wills, Gray and King, Burke began the final push north to the Gulf of Carpentaria. Disaster now followed disaster on the trip north and back to Cooper Creek. On 17 April on the way back Charley Gray died. Four days later Burke, Wills and King reached the Cooper Creek depot. They were exhausted and in desperate need of fresh supplies. To their horror the depot had been abandoned only hours earlier. On a tree William Brahe, the depot foreman, had carved DIG. Confronted with an empty depot, a small cache of supplies and the prospect of starvation, Burke had to decide whether he was going to go back to Menindee or attempt a 320 kilometre walk across the desert to a cattle station at Mount Hopeless. Once again Burke made the wrong decision. He decided to head for Mount Hopeless. It is perhaps the most telling comment about the character of Burke he ignored his only chance saving himself, Wills and King. It is almost certain that the local Aborigines could have saved the trio. But Burke saw himself as the conqueror, as a member of a superior civilisation. The idea that he could be saved from death by a group of 'savages' was unthinkable. The base camp in Menindee was thus occupied by part of the group from 19 Oct 1860 to 26 Jan 1861 before they headed back to Melbourne. Only John King made it back alive from Cooper Creek because he had accepted the hospitality of the Aboriginal people there. Dost Mahomet returned and lived in Menindee and worked for Ah Chung the Chinese baker. He died in 1880 and was buried just outside the town. The base camp at Pamamaroo Creek near Menindee was occupied from 19 October 1860 to 26 January 1861. Before setting off north Burke stayed in the hotel in Menindee and not with his men at Pamamaroo Creek depot. The main weir on the River Darling diverts water into Lake Pamamaroo which becomes the water supply of Broken Hill and the source of irrigation water for the fruit and vines around Menindee. Menindee. The first white explorer to come along this stretch of the Darling River was Major Mitchell in 1835. Charles Sturt followed him in his 1844 explorations of central arid Australia. The white pastoralists came later as the River Darling usually has ample water for grazing and stock. Once Captains Cadell (Goolwa) and Randell (Mannum) of SA proved in 1854 that the Murray River was navigable to the junction with the Darling River the NSW government began to issue pastoral leases for runs along the Darling River in 1855. South Australians featured among these leaseholders. SA explorer John McKinley of Gawler took up Menindel run which was later renamed Kinchega; the Cudmores took up the Avoca run near Wentworth; and Captain Francis Cadell of Goolwa took up land where Menindee now stands. Thomas Pain is believed by some to be the first white man to settle in Menindee in 1852 and in 1853 he began a hotel. But who were the customers when land had not officially been leased to pastoralists? Francis Cadell built a store near the Menindee Hotel in 1856 to capture the river boat trade of supplies to the pastoralists on upstream journeys and wool bales on the downstream journeys. More growth occurred in the 1860s when more stations were taken up and after the notoriety of Burke staying in the Menindee Hotel whilst his men stayed in the camp at Pamamaroo Creek. George Urquhart purchased a 1,000 square mile run in December 1862 which had access to the shores of Lake Menindee. It became Kinchega station. In June 1863 Urquhart bought the 800 square miles of the Menindee run which included Lake Pamamaroo and added it to Kinchega. A South Australian pastoralist John Bristow Hughes of Booyoolie station at Gladstone SA bought Kinchega station from George Urquhart in 1870. Within a few years he had grown that run to two million acres from near Broken Hill to Kinchega. Hughes had his own paddle steamer on the Darling River. In January 1859 Lieutenant Perry of the NSW Native Police took Aboriginal officers up the Darling River to the Menindee area to settle unrest with the local Aboriginals and to explore new areas of the region. This is probably why the town was first called Perry. Perry township began around 1861 when the first post office opened. Communications were vital to any new town. Perry was changed to Menindie (Menindee from 1918) when the town was officially surveyed and gazetted in 1863. By 1862 Menindee had a police station and lockup as well as the Post Office and hotel and a few shacks as the first land sales had taken place earlier in September 1862. The town grew very slowly and in a few years Wilcannia higher up the Darling River became the major port along the river rather than Menindee. Today Menindee has around 550 residents and town facilities include the hotel, Post Office/store, an Anglican church with services once a month and a Uniting Church, fire station, school and a caravan park and motel. 36% of the population are of Aboriginal descent. The Indian Pacific from Sydney to Perth travels through the town twice a week and a weekly train from Sydney to Broken Hill also stops in Menindee. Menindee has an annual rainfall of about 250 mms (9 inches). A few kms outside the town the Menindee Aboriginal Mission was established by the NSW government in 1933 with people from as far away as Wilcannia, Pooncarie and Broken Hill sent there. Conditions were terrible and the mission closed in 1949. The main heritage structure in Menindee is Ah Chung’s bakery built around 1880 and still standing in the main street. |
| 撮影日 | 2019-11-03 12:40:02 |
| 撮影者 | denisbin |
| タグ | |
| 撮影地 | |
| カメラ | DSC-HX90V , SONY |
| 露出 | 0.003 sec (1/400) |
| 開放F値 | f/3.5 |