Back in the Day: Forgotten Scot was Australia’s greatest explorer

I will say this – lately I have become fascinated by Scottish explorers and I intend to write about two of our greatest, namely Mungo Park and David Livingstone who will need a four-part series themselves. I am also acutely aware that while I have tried manfully, if you’ll pardon the word, to include the lives and careers of great Scottish women, I have yet to chronicle the achievements of some of our greatest females, such as medical pioneer Elsie Inglis and the remarkable Katharine Stewart-Murray, known as the Red Duchess. Look out for them in the months ahead.

Back to explorers and pioneers, however. In recent weeks I have been chronicling the lives of two great men who were instrumental in helping to create Canada, namely the explorer Alexander Mackenzie and the country’s first prime minister John Alexander Macdonald. I will return to Canada soon to look at the influence of other Scots on this great nation, principally William Lyon Mackenzie.

I recently wrote about Lachlan Macquarrie’s influence on early Australia which prompted a most pleasant e-mail from reader Alan Fenwick who wrote to say: “I came across another Scot who benefitted Australia as I walked on the Fife coast between Christmas and New Year. He is John McDouall Stuart, from Dysart.

“In Australia he is highly regarded for his work as an explorer, leading an expedition from South Australia to the North coast. It was not only the first to return but he did not lose anyone and that is part of his reputation.

“The journey was through the harsh and unforgiving conditions of the centre of Australia. When the Australian Telegraph Line was constructed in the second half of the 19th century it followed the route he took and was designed using his maps, so he was instrumental in connecting Australia to the rest of the world.”

Thank you for that suggestion, Alan, and if anyone else has a subject for me to tackle, please drop me a line to the e-mail address at the top of this column.

READ MORE: A Scottish explorer who made his mark on history

John McDouall Stuart, who was born in Dysart on September 7, 1815, never stood more than 5ft 6ins tall and rarely if ever weighed more than 9st in his life – actually those were almost average stats for a Scottish man in the mid-19th century – but his giant achievements have written his name into Australian history.

He was the fifth son and youngest of nine children of William Stuart, a retired army captain, and his wife Mary, nee McDouall, whose maiden name became Stuart’s middle name. They died while Stuart was in his early teens and he and the rest of family were cared for by relatives with McDouall Stuart being educated at the Scottish Naval and Military Academy in Edinburgh from where he graduated as a civil engineer in 1838.

In 1834 the UK Parliament had passed the South Australian Colonisation Act.

Unlike Botany Bay, aka New South Wales, and Tasmania, then known as Van Diemen’s Land, which had been founded as penal colonies and remained in no small part the preserve of the original convict exiles and their descendants, the objective of the Act was to establish a colony for free settlers who would be tasked with “improving” a huge and highly unknown area of more than 300,000 square miles.

The experiment, for that’s what it really was, failed as South Australia was eventually almost bankrupt and a new constitution replacing Commissioners with a Governor and proper finding was in force by 1842.

Before and after that, however, there was a great age when explorers set out from South Australia to discover what lay in the vast wilderness to the north. The most desired outcome of these explorations was to find the great Inland Sea that many “experts” predicted would lie in the heart of the continent.

By a circuitous and fortunate route, McDouall Stuart became one of those explorers. At the age of 23, apparently with a broken engagement behind him, he emigrated to South Australia arriving on board the barque Indus from Dundee. He formed an immediate friendship with fellow emigrant James Sinclair from Arran and they would be lifelong friends.

Now came Stuart’s first piece of good fortune. Arriving in the two-year-old town of Adelaide on January 21, 1839, Stuart was taken onto the surveying staff whose chief had just resigned.

In came the renowned explorer Captain Charles Sturt as Surveyor General and he recognised the young Scot’s talents. After a spell as a private surveyor and sheep farmer, Stuart was asked by Sturt in 1844 to join an expedition he was making into the interior of Australia.

Sturt’s expedition was a mammoth undertaking that lasted 18 months, with Stuart making maps everywhere they went. Sturt’s second-in-command, James Poole, died of scurvy and Stuart was promoted into his place. At the end of the gruelling trip, Sturt and Stuart both had scurvy and the former had to return to England while Stuart recuperated for a year.

By 1858, Stuart was employed as a shepherd by his friend Sinclair, but despite all the miseries, the Sturt expedition had fired a love of exploration in Stuart, and when landowner William Finke asked him to find grazing land for sheep and check for minerals in the land north of the Flinders Range, Stuart accepted with alacrity. He set out with two companions, one an aborigine, and a few horses, travelling very light and fast, unlike previous explorations.

This was to be the first of six major expeditions that made Stuart’s name. He found 40,000 sq m of grazing land, numerous waterholes and rivers that would be vital for future exploration, as well as several mineral resources. After four months and 1600 miles, he returned to Adelaide and great acclaim, including recognition by the Royal Geographical Society in the shape of a gold watch.

The second expedition saw him reach the border of what is now the Northern Territory but lack of horse shoes, which also hampered the third expedition, forded him back. The fourth expedition, though it cost him dear physically, was a triumph.

John McDouall Stuart'S sketch of Australia

In his diary, Stuart wrote on Sunday, April 22, 1860: “Today I find from my observation ... that I am now camped in the Centre of Australia. I have marked a tree and planted the British flag in the centre.

“There is a high mount about two miles to the NNE which I hoped would be in the centre but on it tomorrow I will raise a cone of stones and plant the Flag there and will name it Mount Sturt after my excellent and esteemed commander of the expedition in 1844 and ’45, Captain Sturt, as a mark of gratitude for the great kindness I received from him during that journey.”

A month later and still far from safety, Stuart recorded: “This morning I observe that the muscles of my limbs are changing from yellow-green to black. My mouth is getting worse and it is with difficulty that I can swallow anything.”

Yet he survived and went on to make two further expeditions going ever further northward. Importantly, he never lost a man on any of his six expeditions.

Stuart had solved the issue of the Inland Sea – there was none. For this he was awarded the Patron’s Medal of The Royal Geographical Society to add to his earlier watch – David Livingstone himself was the only other man to receive the “double”.

DURING one of his expeditions Stuart, who was a freemason, recounted a very curious incident on meeting an Aborigine: “I endeavoured to get information as to the next water, but we could not understand each other … Having conferred with his sons, he turned around and surprised me by giving one of the masonic signs. … I looked at him steadily.

“He repeated it … I then returned it, which seemed to please him very much, the old man patting me on the shoulder and stroking down my beard.”

Stuart could not explain the incident.

Nor did he ever explain what happened when, in the course of at least two expeditions, his party shot and killed Aborigines, that he called Blacks in his accounts. His companions said it was done in self-defence, but to this day in Australia there is confusion and controversy over what happened.

By the end of the fifth expedition, Stuart knew he could cross the continent from south to north. But the deaths of explorers Robert O’Hara Burke and William John Wills and five more of their party while attempting the Melbourne to Flinders River route had cooled interest in the exploration.

Yet Stuart was convinced his methods would bring success. There was also a huge prize to be won – South Australia wanted to connect to the telegraph cable coming in to north Australia to give the colony connections to the world at large.

Stuart volunteered to find the route and after finding good water supplies on the way, his part of 10 men and 71 horses finally made it to the “Top End” of Australia on July 24, 1862.

Here’s Stuart’s own account of the moment: “Stopped the horses to clear a way, whilst I advanced a few yards on to the beach, and was gratified and delighted to behold the water of the Indian Ocean in Van Diemen Gulf, before the party with the horses knew anything of its proximity. Thring, who rode in advance of me, called out “The Sea!” which so took them all by surprise, and they were so astonished, that he had to repeat the call before they fully understood what was meant. Then they immediately gave three long and hearty cheers … I dipped my feet, and washed my face and hands in the sea, as I promised the late Governor Sir Richard McDonnell I would do if I reached it.”

Stuart then carved his initial JMDS into a tree by the beach. So unexpected was his achievement that numerous “experts” doubted it. In 1885, however, Stuart’s tree was photographed to end all doubt about his extraordinary feats.

Given the fact that he was a shy person and that he suffered great physical privations, it’s perhaps no surprise that Stuart was known to be a heavy drinker, and his imbibing did indeed mar his reputation in those hypocritical Victorian days.

In 1864, he expressed a wish to go home to Scotland to see his sister, but perhaps he was covering up for the fact that, partially blind and frequently drunk, he was virtually unemployable, and we know that he felt that he had not been given the rewards his achievements deserved.

While living quietly in London, he published his accounts of his journeys but he remained largely unknown to the general populace.

John McDouall Stuart suffered a cerebral haemorrhage and died on June 5, 1866 aged 50. Just seven people attended his funeral. He was buried in the Kensal Green Cemetery.

Nowadays Stuart is recognised as one of the great figures of Australian history. The road that crosses the continent from south to north is named the Stuart Highway, and that Central Sturt Mountain was swiftly re-named Central Mount Stuart, which seems only appropriate.

Until 10 years ago there was a museum commemorating him in Dysart. It should have been a place of pilgrimage for Australians and Scots alike but sadly the visitor figures declined and it has now been turned into a holiday apartment.

I am told that some of the many Australians who still revere him come to Dysart to be able to say they stayed at the home of John McDouall Stuart, their nation’s greatest explorer, and one of Scotland’s, too.