Report Concerning Henry Bryan's Death The following account of the expedition which led to Henry’s unfortunate death was copied by Eardley Bryan on 10th-11th August 1990. The source was the Reverend Stanley Howard, who had it photocopied from the Public Library, Museum, and Art Gallery of South Australia Archives Department in Adelaide several years before.
Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society of Australia, (South Australia Branch)
SUPPLEMENT TO THE PRESDIENT’S ADDRESS.
COL GAWLER’S EXPEDITION TO MOUNT BRYAN, 1839.
Following an excellent practice which has grown up in the Royal Geographical Society of Australia (South Australia Branch) for the retiring President to give in his Annual Address an account of some important geographical event, I have decided to include in mine the full text of Colonel Gawler’s Dispatch to the Colonization Commissioners for South Australia on a journey undertaken by him in December 1839 (though it hardly comes under the heading of major exploration), together with some comments on the circumstances in which the exploration was made and the people taking part in it.
This Dispatch has not previously appeared in the “Proceedings” of our Society and seems to me well worthy of a place therin. It has been made possible through the courtesy of the Archives Department of the Public Library of South Australia, where are deposited the originals of documents reproduced in this article, and I would like to record my appreciation of the very great assistance given me in its compliation by the Archivist (Mr. G. H. Pitt) and his staff, whilst Mr. H. R. Purnell, the Public Librarian has also been most helpful.
In 1839 very little was known of the north-eastern area of South Australia beyond the Great Bend (later known as the North West Bend) of the Murray, where Morgan is now situated. Rich country suitable for settlement was, however, reported to exist to the north and north-east, and, having occasion to inspect the survey work then in progress round Lake Alexandrina and the lower reaches of the Murray, Colonel Gawler decided to take the oppportunity of proceeding up the River to the Great Bend, and then, leading a land party on a few day’s expedition to satisfy himself as to the capabilities of the country in question in case it should be required for settlement at a later date.
There is little need for me to say that, following early troubles which arose between Governor Hindmarsh and the Resident Colonization Commissioner, James Hurtle Fisher, the two offices were amalgamated and filled by Colonel Gawler when he succeeded Hindmarsh in May 1838.
Full details of the happenings leading up to this appointment are given in histories of the early days of the State and excellently summarized by Dr A. Grenfell Price in Chapter V of the “Centenary History of South Australia”, published in 1936 under the auspices of this society. Suffice it to say Governor Gawler did an immense service to South Australia by his active policy of extensive land survey, and it was in keeping with that policy that he undertook the expedition the subject of this Address.
It is a matter of interest that when it was decided to make the expedition instructions for the preparations to be made were given by Captain Sturt (in his capacity as Assisntant Commissioner) to the Surveyor-General under the date of 2nd November 1839. These instructions are reproduced in full from the original in the Archives:-
“Sir,
“I am commanded by the Resident Commissioner to inform you that His Excellency purposes a journey into the interior in the course of the present month. It is his intention to leave Adelaide about the 19th, and to proceed to Currency Creek, whence he intends crossing Lake Alexandrina to the Murray River and running up that stream to the great N. W. Angle.“I am therefore, to request that you will give the neccessary orders to Mr Pullen to have the boats under his charge in readiness for His Ecxellency’s use, and to make such arrangements as he may consider advisable. It may be necessary for me to add that several ladies will be of the party, that Mr Pullen may better understand that nature of the preparations he will have to make.
“The heavier stores will be sent by sea to Encounter Bay and transported thence by Mr Hall’s team to Currency Creek.
“I have the honour, &c..
“(Signed) CHARLES STURT,
“Assist. Commr.”It will be noticed in these instructions that attention is drawn to the fact6 that several ladies being in the party. In the light of subsequent events, strong criticism of this fact was levelled by a section of the press of that day, but there is record that Colonel Gawler decided on taking them as evidence of the security of travel in the colony, though subsequently he must have questioned the wisdom of his decision, as the ladies had to put up with considerable hardship and on several occasions uneasiness was caused through the troublesome curiosity of the natives.
A manuscript in the Archives gives the following particulars of the members of the party and the provision to be made for them:-
PARTIES FOR THE BOATS
1. Mrs Sturt 6. Isaac
2. Miss Gawler 7. William
3. Servant-maid 8. 1 Coxwain
4. Governor 12. 4 Sailors - 1st Boat
5. Captain Sturt 14. 4 Sailors - 2nd BoatRIDING PARTIES
Mr Gell 2 Policemen
--- Bryan Total of the Party 20
Another boat with seats astern.
12 days’ provisions from Currency Creek to Great Bend.The servant-maid mentioned was Eliza Arbuckle, who under her married mane, Mrs Davies, many years later published in America her autobiography under the tile of “The Story of an Earnest Life”. This I had the pleasure of consulting in thu Public Library, and it contains an account of the expedition from.its outset, highly drawn but of considerable interest as showing a woman’s reactions to the strange surroundings of a new country with its accompaniment of what were to her terrifying savages.
480 lb. of meat, pickles, 6 loaves of bread and biscuit, vinegar 2 galls., 25 lb. sugar, 12 lb. tea, 2 bushels (?) salt, ½ lb. pepper, 4lb. butter, flour and oatmeal, oats, rice, spirits, 5 dozen wine, 3 best tents, 1 servant’s tent, 1 sailor’s tent. 1½ tons in all.Hooks and lines, tether ropes, plates, dishes, knives and forks, spoons, teaspoons, drinking cups, cups and saucers, water jugs, wash handbasins, teapots, candlesticks, tables, camp stools, corkscrews, tablecloths, candles, saucepans, tea kettle, frying pan, tarpaulins.
Though not mentioned by name in the list, Lieutenant W. J. S. Pullen, R.N., who held the appointment of Commander of Colonial Marines and Marine Surveyor, insisted on accompanying the expedition in charge of the boats, despite the fact that he was still suffering the effects of a painful accident.
Whilst the lives of Governor Gawler and Captain Sturt are an open book to all readers of South Australian history, it may not be amiss to refer to some other members of the expedition who are less well known.
Though dwarfed in Australian annals by the historic figures of Sturt and Gawler, Pullen played an important and adventurous part not only in South Australian, but in English History. After eight years in the British Navy he was persuaded by Colonel Light to join his party of surveyors and sailed with him in the “Rapid” in 1836. Upon Light’s resignation in 1836 Pullen also left the Service and joined Captain Hart in. bringing a mob of cattle overland from Portland Bay to Adelaide. In May 1839 he received the appointment mentioned earlier in this address, and his duties were mainly confined to the lower Murray and Lakes, according to Gawler, discovering Lake Albert and the Channel connecting it with Lake Alexandrina. In 1840 he. successfully navigated the Murray Mouth in a whaleboat, a little later taking the cutter “Waterwitch” through, thus proving the existence of a navigable but shifting channel between the Murray and the sea. Port Pullen, the reach of the Murray to the south-east of Goolwa, is named after him. In the same year he led the maritime section of the expedition sent to the Coorong to punish the natives who had murdered the survivors of the wrecked “Maria.” Those interested in his work in South Australia should consult Volume XVIII of the “Proceedings” of this Society. On the replacement of Gawler by Grey as Governor of the Province, Pullen seized the opportunity of a captain being required for the “Lord Glenelg” to return to England, and subsequently rejoined the British Navy. In the early ‘fifties we hear of him searching for Sir John Franklin along the the northern coast of America, enduring intense cold and hardships, shortness of food and medical comforts, but indomitable. In 1836 he was promoted captain and in H.M.S. Cyclops made a Red Sea survey for a cable route between Suez and Bombay. We hear of him again in a bombardment of Jeddah, following the murder of the British Consul, and again on coastal survey of Ceylon and Bermuda, returning to England on coastguard service and rising to the rank of Vice-Admiral. He retired on 1st February 1879 and died on 22nd January 1867.
His portrait in oils by MacCormac was presented to the Adelaide City Council in 1883.
The Mr. Gell shown in the list of members of the Expedition was Arthur D. Gell, Assistant Private Secretary to the Governor, of whom I can find little record save a note in the Archives that he was supposed to have met his end in 1849, the ship in which he was proceeding to New Zealand to take up an appointment having been wrecked on the voyage.
Henry Inman was the first Superintendent of the South Australian Police Force, appointed by Governor Hindmarsh in 1837, and afterwards became a stockowner, being severely wounded by natives when in charge of an overland party near Lake Bonney.
For this and other outrages severe punishment was meted out by an expedition under Major O’Halloran. Inman eventually returned to England, entered the Church and had a charge in the town of Derby.
The tragic figure of the party was destined to be Henry Bryan, a young Englishman staying at Government House, who, at his request, was allowed to become a member of the Expedition. Bryan was the younger of two sons of the Rev. Guy Bryan, Rector of Woodham-Walter, Essex, and at this time was aged eighteen years. In her book Mrs. Davies describes him with all the fervour of young womanhood as “with black hair waving over a broad white intellectual brow, nose slightly Roman, mouth well formed and fascinating when wreathed in a smile, beautiful white teeth; eyes large, lustrous, speaking, sparkling, seeming to look into you while looking at you; a square chin - a tall, well-formed athletic figure, handsome and noble”. Allowing for feminine exaggeration, Bryan must have been a fine figure of a young man, eager and gallant. Gawler in a letter dated 20th December 1839 to his brother-in-law, Henry Cox, asked him to break the news of Bryan’s death to his parents, and, referring to Bryan, wrote: - “I never had so deep a regard for any young man that I have known for the same length of time. His character, looking at it with the severity of a Christian eye, was more faultless than that of any other individual with whom I have been closely acquainted.
Of the.other members members of the party I will say nothing, but in the Archives there is a delightfully simple little diary kept by Miss Julia Gawler on the expedition, which deals mainly with the journey from Adelaide via Willunga and Mount Compass to Currency Creek and thence by Lake and River to the great Bend. Incidentally she must have been of calmer temperament than Eliza Arbuckle, for she makes very little reference to the hair-breadth escapes and wild adventures depicted by the latter.
The expedition left Adelaide about noon on 22nd November 1839, apparently perfectly organized and .equipped, and its departure must have been quite an imposing sight with the Governor’s carriage in the lead, some of the party on horseback, and Eliza Arbuckle in a dog-cart. Presumably spare horses had been sent on in advance, for Miss Gawler mentions in her diary that when the Onkaparinga proved too deep for the Governor’s carriage to cross and the gentlemen of the party had made a bridge to enable the the ladies to pass, they found their horses tethered awaiting them on the other side. The day’s march was certainly a good one, for they arrived at Willunga about 7 p.m. On the following day, 23rd November, they reached Currency Creek after an eight hour’s journey through rain and hail which at times the horses could not face, whilst Eliza Arbuckle in her dog-cart often thought her last hour had come owing to precipitous ascents and descents over Mount Terrible combined with slippery mud in the swamps. In any event, it must have been a most uncomfortable journey through the Black Swamp country surrounding Mount Compass.
The next day being Sunday, Colonel Gawler and Captain Sturt conducted divine service, though the ladies were too exhausted to attend. Monday, 25th November, was too rough and wet for embarkation, but on 26th a start was made, the expedition was divided into road and boat parties. Julia Gawler records that on 27th November natives and a kangaroo were seen, whilst the lake was very rough and she was seasick. On 29th an early start was made,and the boat party landed on the “Great Western Headland”.f or breakfast. Many natives came into the camp, and Colonel Gawler distributed fish-hooks and biscuits amongst them. At 9 a.m. the party pushed on again, arriving at Mr. Morphett’s station (Woods Point) about.6 p.m., where the land party rejoined the expedition.
The 29th November was an uneventful, day, the journey being continued in beautiful weather with a fair wind to help the boats. Miss Gawler records that she saw snakes and a very large fish swimming in the River, and many birds. The following day some of the members of the boat party changed places with the land party, including the Governor and Miss Gawler, and at the end of the day’s march had difficulty in locating the boats, but eventually rejoined them, finding many natives in the camp, whom Miss Gawler refers to as “very harmless and quiet”.
Next day, 1st December, being Sunday, the party followed its usual custom of resting and celebrating divine service.
It was the intention that each evening the land party should rejoin the boats, but on 2nd December, when the Governor, Inman, and Bryan were amongst the riders, the boats could not get as far as had been arranged, and, though some members of the land party were seen on a hill and a signal fire was lit to attract their attention, they did not reach the camp, nor did a party sent out to fire shots and light fires meet with more success. Miss Gawler writes that they were very frightened that night, especially as the Governor was not amongst the figures seen on the hill. However, a relief party found the missing men next morning about twelve miles from camp, and Miss Gawler laconically remarks. “Papa very bad headache, had nothing to eat but native apples. Did not travel any more that day.”
The following five days passed without any special incident, Except that natives who came into camp on 5th December reported that four white men had been killed with waddies and spears a little way up the River, but of this no further mention is to be found in the subsequent records of the expedition.
On 9th December some members of Captain Finniss’s party, travelling overland with sheep, were met, and very fortunately, as it subsequently proved, two sheep were bought for the expedition.
On the 10th the Great Bend was reached, Miss Gawler recording that “The Blacks had set the country on fire to frighten us.
On the 11th Colonel Gawler, Captain Sturt, Inman, Bryan, and Craig set out on their ill-fated expedition to “The Promised Land” with the result graphically described in the despatch dated 4th January 1840 from Governor Gawler to the Colonization Commissioners for South Australia, which is given in full below:-
“DESPATCH FROM GOVERNOR GAWLER TO THE COLONIZATION COMMISSIONERS
FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA, JANUARY 4, 1840.
“Sir,
“Some trying circumstances accompanied by probable loss of life having occurred during a journey .to the Breat Bend of the Murray, from which I have just returned. I feel it right to state them for the information of the Commissioners..
“Observations have combined tp make it probable that to the northward of the Great Bend of the Murray at a distance of not more than 150 miles, there is a remarkable tract of Country hitherto unknown to Europeans. Although it is.not a part of my duty to make Geographical discoveries beyond the limits of the Districts really required for occupation, yet, being there in the. way of duty I thought it well to take the opportunity of riding for a few days to the northward to solve the question if it could be done with reasonable exertion. Captain Sturt, and Mr. Inman were to accompany me with two more riding men leading pack horses laden with provisions and water. On the evening before we started, Mr. Henry Bryan, a young Gentleman of 18 years of age living in my family, begged earnestly to be allowed to be a substitute for one of the servants in leading one of the packhorses. I was pleased with his enterprising spirit, acceeded to his request, and the next morning on coming in sight of a very high mountain before unknown to us, I called It after him, Mount Bryan. The day was oppressive, we were travelling on an immense unshelterud plain - we halted for the night about 30 miles from our starting point.
“The next day, the plain appearing without limitation to the Northward, and the weather continuing very hot, I was coming to the conclusion of retracing our steps when, on passing a very slight undulation a magnificent range of mountains came.in view.
“To the eye and seen through the telescope it was clothed with wood and not more than 20 miles distant. Such a country could not but contain water, and through the greater part of a wearisome day, we pressed towards it, until in ascending a small hillock which placed us above the effects of refraction, the.illusion was removed, the range took its proper place still 30 miles distant from us, grotesque indeed in its outline, but so barren that the probability of finding water was too small to be pursued.
“While contemplating the scene about us, smokes were observed to arise on Mount Bryan. Smokes indicate Natives, and Natives indicate the neighbourhood of water. Our casks had leaked, the bung had escaped from one of them, and the consequence was that our stock of water was just exhausted. the horses had had none on that day, and were quite overdone. This chance of water on Mount Bryan induced me, after consultaton with the gentlemen of the party, to go there: it was 15 miles from us and placed us at a distance of 65 miles from our Camp. We arrived at its lower ridges long after dark. On the following morning, leaving Captain Sturt and Mr. H. Bryan in charge of our provisions and packhorses, I and Mr. Inman set out in search of the Natives and water, but after toiling over the spurs and through the gullies during the morning of another hot day we could not find either. We found an extinguished Native fire and a ruined Native hut, but that was all, and we returned to the party to say that no alternative remained but to press through the night for our station on the Murray. I am persuaded that there were Natives and water in the mountain, and had I been alone, I should have risked all chances to discover them, but 1 did not feel it right to throw [sic] the lives of the party on such a probability.
“We set off on Friday an hour before sunset. There was a clear plain of 65 miles before us, but our horses had been two days and a half, and we, one day without water. My plan was to press forward alone to reach the Camp and send back water to the party, but Captain Sturt and Mr. Inman urged me to take Mr. Bryan with me for the event of failure or accident.
“He accompanied me most cheerfully, he had rested all day and did not appear to suffer from the subsequent exertion: he brought me the pulpy but bitter fruit of the mesembreanthemum and the little berries of the exocarpi, and ate freely of them himself: he made many observations about our course, appearing to recollect its striking features well, and calculated our distances with much precision.
“On Saturday morning about eight o’clock my horse would not go out of a walk and Mr. Bryan proposed to me to press on with his horse which did in a manner trot, leaving him to ride quietly in at a walk on mine. We were not more than 12 miles from the Camp. the route was a perfect plain without impediments of any kind but scattered pine tree bushes which prevented a long view.
“It was of the utmost importance that I should go in as quickly as possible. Captain Sturt, Mr. Imnam, and our attendant could not have been by that time above halfway across the plain, and their safety appeared to depend upon having a supply of water sent out to them. Mr. Bryan was active, cheerful, too intelligent for a doubt to rest upon his ability to follow a compass track for 12 or 14 miles, especially in a country with which he was generally acquainted and had traversed two days before. I therefore took his offer, gave him a compass, telling him that I considered the true course to be South East, but that I recommended S.S.E. as it was better to strike the river below the bend than above it, and, after remaining with him for a quarter of an hour to eat some berries of the exocarpi with some bread went on. I saw him follow me and thought he might keep my horse’s tracks which were very plain in the sand. An hour afterwards1 one of those fearful hot winds which sometime visit our climate came on, very oppressive for as long as they last in Adelaide, but in a pine desert insupportable. With the most powerful sense upon my mind of the importance of proceeding 1 could not do so, but, from utter inability to sit upon the horse under its influence after the proceeding causes of exertion, I lay down at the foot of a tree and could only reach the Camp at daylight the next morning, the horse failing as well as I. To my very great joy Captain Sturt and Mr. Inman with the attendant had just arrived. they had kept up their strength to travel through the preceeding day by killing a horse and drinking his blood. They had not seen Mr. Bryan and alarmed by his absence I sent out several parties of those who had remained at the Camp in search of him on that day (Sunday) without any effect.
“My apprehension was not so much with regard to his strength as that I thought he might have struck the river too low down and have fallen into the hands of Natives of rather doubtful character.
“He had been resting, as I before observed, on Friday and appeared throughout our journey active and cheerful.
“On Monday Captain Sturt and Mr. Inman with a very intelligent Native, went out and, tracing back my tracks to the point at which we parted, followed his to a place .about six miles further on, at which he also appears to have laid down under the exhausting effect of the heat, and most unfortunately to have parted with his horse. His track after leaving me had been much to the Southward of the extreme course I gave him. His horse, with the tether rope dragging after him, had here gone off directly Westward, while a pencil note from him, left. under his saddle, declared intention of going South South East and his footmarks were traced a few paces in that direction but then ceased to be visible.
“From Monday to Friday the greatest exertions have been made to discover him. Captain Sturt, Mr. Inman and the black followed down his proposed course to the river which, notwithstanding his first deviation to the Southward, it struck about seven miles below the Camp. Boats went down the river and returned, for twenty miles; land parties crossed the bush in all directions, all of them lighting fires, firing shots, or placing notes of direction on trees in prominent places.
“All these exertions were, I most deeply grieve to say, without effect; the horse might have been tracked to any distance, but the footsteps of man were not to be distinguished. The proof that he was not with the horse was that its tether rope was dragging after it, and the saddle, bridle, blankets, &c., all the things that Mr. Bryan must have laid down upon and with, were left under the tree with his pencil note.
“It is to be feared that the same tendency to a Southerly course continued, and this course running parallel to the river would only plunge him into an arid labyrinth of wood.
“No reasonable probability of his safety remained when I left the Murray if he had made for the river we must have heard of him, and not making it before Saturday he could not then have existed. There is just the lingering, almost miraculous, possibility that he might have struck the river below our search, but in that case he knew that the boats were to go down to the Lake, and he would have kept the bank to watch for them, supported by bread which he had with him and wild berries of the exocarpi, fruits of the mesembreanthemum and nuts of the fusanus all of which abound. The Natives in that quarter are most friendly and I am certain would have assisted him; the boats, however, saw no traces of him, and I mourn to say that I, Captain Sturt, Mr. Inman and all who know the country have lost every hope that he will ever appear alive.
“His brother tells me, what I did not know before, that he was subject to dizziness in the head. English pocket compasses are somewhat difficult to use in this hemisphere as they are balanced for a Northerly dip; he was aware of this fact, but dizziness in the head, if he was attacked by it as an effect of heat and debility, might have rendered him incapable of correcting the error, and have thrown him continually into false bearings. In this manner alone can I account for his loss.
“To me the fatal event is a subject of the deepest regret. Mr. Bryan was a young man of the highest promise, and I entertained for him the most sincere regard.
“I have, etc,
“(Signed) GEORGE GAWLER,
“Resident Commissioner.“Col. Torrens,
“Chairman, &c., &c,”
Those interested in Sturt’s account of the journey will find it published in “The Register” of Saturday, 4th January 1840, whilst his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Napier George Sturt, in her “Life of Charles Sturt” (Chapter XII), gives a vivid description of the expedition and subsequent search for Bryan. His complete disappearance is one of the mysteries on the Australian bush, for though his horse eventually found its way back to Adelaide with hoofs grown to enormous length and “turned up like skates” no trace of Bryan’s body was ever found.
Reading the accounts of Sturt and Gawler, one feels that the immediate return to the Murray (counselled by the former when the leakage of the water-barrels was discovered) was the right course to have followed, and yet the party had desperately bad luck in missing water on the way to Mount Bryan, as they must have passed within a few miles of Baldina Creek. The mistake once made, the return journey to the North-West Bend was an epic of human endurance, and one is impressed with the comsummate bush craft and care of Sturt in nursing his exhausted party through to safety. With a less experienced leader, the tragedy might have been greater.
After six days spent in searching for Bryan, supplies began to fail and the boats were dispatched on their return journey down the River, whilst the main party made their way overland to Adelaide, suffering much discomfort from shortage of food and, at times, water.
Rumours had meanwhile reached the capital that disaster had overtaken the whole party, and credence was given to these by the “Southern Australian” in its issue of 26th December 1839, for which it was severly taken to task by its comtempory, “The South Australian Register”, on Saturday, 4th January 1840
Anxiety had meantime been allayed by the safe arrival of the party on 28th December 1839 - too late for celebration of the Anniversary of the Foundation of the Colony on that day. However, to commemorate that event and celebrate the return of His Excellency, a Public Dinner was tendered him on 10th January 1840, in a pavilion adjoining Fordham’s Hotel, John Morphett being the Chairman of the Committee, and the tickets, “not transferable”, two guineas each!
So ended in. rejoicing, tempered with, sadness, an expedition which accomplished very little in the way of actual discovery, but proved the mettle of those taking part in it. Great suffering, great endeavour; this is the history of exploration.
Interesting articles:
Old Bryan Wills. Will of Sir Thomas Bryan
Baron Bryan
"Baronia Anglica Concentrata"
Sir Guy Lord Bryan, K.G. from a book named "Knights Of The Order"
Bryans in "Devon and Cornwall Notes and Queries."
Early Bryan Knights from Knights of Edward I, Vol 1
"History of Dorset" Woodsford
A De Bryan pedigree, from my father's cousin
Extracts from "Pedigrees from the Plea Rolls" (Wrottesley)
Various Bryan entries from Poole, Dorset, Library
More Bryan entries from various books in Poole Library
Baron Bryan from "Burke’s Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited and Extinct Peerages", 1883
Letter sent by Col Gawler to his brother-in-law concerning Henry Bryan's death (Mount Bryan, S. Australia)
Diary of Col Gawler's daughter, Julia, describing the expedition when Henry Bryan died
Family Photo after Funeral of Dr Thomas B L Bryan MD, June 2000
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