Into the Unknown

By Joy Dunicliff

This new book describes the life of Mary and William Howitt’s eldest surviving son, Alfred, who travelled to Australia with his brother, Charlton, and their father William in 1851. They travelled to Australia to join the gold rush where Alfred remained while Charlton returned to England with his father. Alfred retrieved the bodies of Burke and Wills, following the failed expedition into the red centre from the north coast of Australia. Alfred was a self-taught geologist, a botanist, a very early anthropologist, an official member of an Aborigine tribe, and received an honorary degree from Cambridge University. Charlton, later in his short life, ended up in New Zealand after agreeing to help a family friend sort out some business problems, only to be drawn into an expedition which proved fatal.
The young men had benefited from their parents’ interesting life and their support for emigration as there were no jobs for people in England especially for non-conformists who were banned from any professional work. The cost of education and the cost of living were very expensive particularly then in the middle of a recession!
The parents of Alfred Howitt were known for their literary work and for their translations. William tranlated from German, and Mary translated from Danish and Swedish.
Mary Howitt’s life was quite simply extraordinary: she was the daughter of a strict Quaker family in Uttoxeter, who at the end her life became a Roman Catholic, being welcomed into the faith by the Pope himself at the Vatican; she was a children’s author who was the first to translate the works of Hans Christian Andersen into English; she was a feminist and anti-slavery campaigner with influential friends such as Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens; she and her husband also associated with the Pre-Raphaelite artistic brotherhood.
I was fascinated with Mary from the time I first heard about her from my mother-in-law. It has been an honour to bring her family’s story into the light and was a source of great interest for my husband and me, inspiring us to carry out wider research into local history.
It is interesting that one family from the small Staffordshire market town of Uttoxeter in England should have had such a major impact on the development of Australia and New Zealand, so far away.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vivlia Limited
• Release date: Jan 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9781909833128

Joy Dunicliff

I hated history, or anything to do with it, until I came to my adopted home, the historic market town of Uttoxeter in Staffordshire. Here I found local and social history, and the subject changed my life. One thing led to another, and I am now regarded as a local historian. Much of my research has focused around the life and work of the town’s revered writer and poet, Mary Howitt. She wrote about the town in which she was living during the Napoleonic Wars and explained how her father was responsible for making changes to the town. Her life and work in literature, health, and politics, has now largely been forgotten, even locally, but Mary left her mark on the world, as did her children. This is about her two surviving sons, who certainly left their mark on Australia and on New Zealand. The research into their lives has really fascinated me, especially as I was supposed to go to New Zealand under the £10 passage scheme, after the Second World War. I was accepted, the sailing date arranged, but I am still awaiting that ticket. I have, however, more recently enjoyed visiting that part of the world, trying to understand how Charlton and his brother Alfred might have felt exploring a completely new environment. I have previously published “The Traveller on the Hill-top”, “Mary Howitt the Famous Authoress”, Mary Howitt: Another Lost Victorian Writer”, and “Quaker to Catholic” (renamed “Mary Looks Back”). Much research was undertaken prior to the days of the internet, which allowed me to enjoy travelling around, collecting the material, and meeting many interesting people.

Book preview

Part I

Alfred and Australia

Chapter 1 – After the Funeral

The Expedition

‘I don’t really want to be here, I really don’t’, thought the quiet non-assuming young man. He felt he had to be there, he was expected to be there, and here he was, one of the pallbearers for the biggest state occasion Melbourne had ever held. He said to himself, forget it all; if it had not been for me, there would be no bodies to bury. He had felt humiliated, used, and put in a position he hated. It was all over now or was it?

I’ve been here for ten years now, and I end up having to do this. Alfred felt hurt and annoyed as he thought of the events that had led to this occasion.

It had been a tiring day, the scorching heat unbearable as usual, and to make matters worse, he had to dress in his best bib and tucker. But now it was all over. The refreshing evening air was creeping in cooling him somewhat. He removed his tall black hat, which he had worn for the occasion. He tossed it around in his hand as he returned to his Uncle’s house where he lodged when visiting Melbourne. He felt he could leave the town, itself without complaint from officialdom. Still swinging his hat in his hand, he sauntered along the main street of the top end of town, mulling over the activities of the day. Here he was, hot tired, and dusty, and out of a job. Had it all been worth it, he wondered.

The Government of Victoria, had for political reason, wanted to find a route from the south to the north of Australia. They wanted a port in the north. Why do governments get themselves in so many muddles? He had been a young man when he left England, at a time when he was not interested in the politics, not that he was now. Was England the same? He did not know nor really care. He was a man who wanted to enjoy his life, wherever he was. He wanted adventure and he was having that to the full. Oh how wonderful it was to be a free man, making your own choices. When things went wrong, it was your fault, but he wondered, was he just lucky or clever, as he was always successful as far as he could ascertain.

Oh how Australia had changed. Would he like to go back to the rough and ready life he had encountered when he first came out to Australia? He recalled the mud, and congestion of Melbourne, a place where everyone just had to be rushing around. The roadways hampered by the stumps of the trees that had been felled to build the houses, the deep ruts in the mud, which led to carts slithering about, pulling the poor horse or donkey in all directions.

In summer the ruts turned hard, giving a very bumpy ride, and in dry periods, the dust in the troughs, blew up, clouding vision, and getting into ones eyes, then you could not see the tall tree stumps. Some of these stumps got behind the cartwheels, pulling them off after getting embroiled with the horses’ shaft. The trees were shallow rooted, so they tended to lean or fall over, leaving them at all sorts of angles. Everyone was in such a hurry; there was no time to clear up the higgledy-piggledy trees blocking the thoroughfare. A cart without a wheel was just another road accident, a blockage.

There was no real planning, people were in too much of a hurry to get permission to purchase or get a licence for land on which to dig for gold. There were hoards of people arriving daily from all sorts of countries, so language was also a problem. Sailors from any country, jumped ship, just to seek gold for themselves. When a vessel was due to sail home, there was little or no crew! More crew had to be enlisted from amongst this unknown crowd. The motto was ‘everyone for themselves’.

Some people took a piece of land, possibly purchasing their plot first, and of course there was the gold office where the diggers brought their gold. Others were usurpers, taking over other people’s diggings. After taking the gold to the gold office, where the gold could be kept in a safe, it was quite usual for them to take their money, then drink or womanizer it away; it was only a few who saved it, keeping it in the safest place the gold office. Most people had no thought of tidying up Melbourne; they just left it as they found it. It was said to be the worst of all the gold rushes, even bigger and more chaotic than the Californian gold rush.

He was still the young wild young man, willing to put his hand to anything, hopefully to give him enough money to survive. Despite all the mess, and to Alfred, the misuse of their legal gains, did not really interest him.

In the last decade, the state of the town had improved. Population had doubled. Now it had a wide thoroughfare, a proper highway, which ran reasonably straight, but unfortunately, still got rather muddy in the wet season. Things were still improving, and the future for the new country was changing rapidly.

He was thinking how he still preferred to be on horseback, rounding up cattle, being thrown over a cow’s head sometimes into a thorn bush, not something he really wished for, but it had happened on more than one occasion. He had written to his mother in England about it, as he had thought it funny, but her reply was far from that; she started to worry about him, and that he did not like.

At least he had had a regular job for a while, but after today he realized with shock, he was now unemployed, and he would have to find some other work. He would not go back to rounding up cattle, because he had plans, big plans, and he had to save up money before he could put them into action

The State of Victoria wanted to gain a northern port and it also wanted to get hold of more land, as at this period there were only two states for the whole country. Other areas were up for grabs, but Australia would eventually, in stages, be divided up into further states. He had heard of all the preparations, and seen all the advertising for people to volunteer to explore such a route. He had heard how there had been disputes, over who should go etc. Some of the men on the Victorian Expedition Committee had ulterior motives as to which people, they wanted to take on, and what roles each individual should play in this expedition. Some of the committee wanted their choice of applicant for personal gain, others for friends. Alfred felt the whole thing was dirty.

Oh help, will they want me to do their bidding again? Will those on the committee in their ecstasy, remember I now have no job? I had better find another job quickly, but what type of job should I look for, he thought.

He had held the post of Warden of Gippsland, a job he had for sometime and had been told he did it well, and then the bombshell – dismissal. The Victorian Government had found they were short of money, and this was one way they thought, they could make savings. It was to transpire however, that after a couple of months, the Government decided they had made a mistake, and reinstated him.

Alfred had been pleased he had not been around when all this was happening, especially as he had witnessed the party assembling, and he had told his friends, that he was very glad not to be leading this unruly party. They didn’t even know that horses and camels didn’t like one another! Actually the animals disliked the noises of the opposite species, as a result, these animals were always running away from one another. Someone would then had to chase after them, coax them, hoping to isolate them from one another. Fun to watch maybe, but not such fun if you were the person in charge of such beasts.

Those in the know was the Sepo. He was the man who trained and cared for camels, so he had been employed to look after the expedition camels. He tried to explain to his superiors what would happen, but they knew better than the Sepo! Alfred also told his friends this expedition would be a disaster, and that should anything go wrong, it would be to him, the exploration committee would turn to sort things out, and so it had transpired.

Thee expedition leader was Captain Burke, a former policeman, with a rather dubious past, no one really knew what his past was, except that he was born in Galloway, in Ireland. The Melbourne dignitaries did not know whether he was a Roman Catholic or Church of England, so what sort of funeral service would be in keeping for this man. A man who did not understand the camels, nor how to pack the provisions onto their humps.

The sepoys who had come to Australia with the camels from India with the intention of looking after them on the trek, was over ridden by Captain Burke, the flamboyant and charismatic leader of the failed expedition, who thought he knew better. The aim of the party was to cross the continent, from south to north, and as quickly as possible.

Burke did not understand anything about the costly scientific equipment, which had been provided for the young scientist to use. A young man, John Wills had certain experimental tasks to undertake. The tests and measurements Wills was supposed to make were not understood by Burke, nor did Burke understand the need for such scientific tests, or how carefully such instruments needed to be handled. Poor Wills, was not allowed to carry out his scientific work if his leader felt he should be doing one of the other jobs everyone else had been told to do. If Burke demanded he did something, he had to do as Burke said. At times Burke decided the equipment was too bulky or too heavy, so he threw it away with out consultation with John Wills. If Burke had not jettisoned some of these instruments on the journey, or if he would only have listened to other members of the party, they could have survived the arduous journey.

It was fun to watch, but sad at the same time. Often poor Wills had done as Burke had requested. Before they had left, John’s father had taken Burke aside, requesting he look after his talented only son, and confided in Burke, that his son was so loyal, that he would obey his leader come what may, but he would also be the man to whom Burke should turn to should the leader need help or advice. If he had adhered to Mr.Wills senior’s advice, the expedition could well have survived.

For Wills to compile his scientific information, he had worked through the night, often having little or no sleep. He was an honourable, reliable young man, in a very difficult situation. In the end, he had given his own life, to stay with his leader, until he died, so that he could carry out Burke’s last requests, including burying him, when there was still a possibility Wills could have saved himself.

There certain aspects of the whole affair that was repugnant to Alfred. Initially it had been adulation for Burke and Wills, had now the adulation had turned to him, along with the lion symbol that is used for greatness. All Alfred had done, was to collect the two men’s bones, and brought back to Melbourne in a black shrouded case. This sealed case he had handed to Dr. Macadam, along with its keys.

It was the Royal Society of Victoria who decided that Captain Burke’s bones should lie in state, to be viewed though a glass slide let into the coffin lid, and so it remained for twenty-one days. How macabre can one get he thought. There was an unexpected problem though. The body of John Wills had been also been found, so the Expeditionary Committee felt that his remains should also be be buried in Melbourne. Alfred had retrieved both those bodies for their Melbourne burials. Thank goodness it is now all over, Alfred sighed with relief.

Alfred quickened his step, as he continued to his uncle’s house, thinking about the problem of getting another job, before the scientific committee ordered him to do something else for them. Maybe he would be asked to open this route to the north coast. " It will not work the way they want it done, I know that, as I have already crossed much of the route on my own explorations and duties, which I carried out as warden. I must earn some money; I also need to save. I wonder how much I should save before I offer my hand in marriage? I will discuss all this with my uncle, who has always offered me good advice when I have needed it in the past.

He entered his uncle’s house, making his way along the veranda, where the wind could blow, and cool one down, but not tonight, it was still calm, and hot.

He went to his room, found his casual clothes, and then he went outside to wash himself in a tub in the yard. He felt better for that, retracing his steps to his room, where he put on his comfortable clothes, then feeling much more relaxed he continued along the veranda, until he found the family sitting at on the same veranda eating cakes and drinking cool drinks.

Chapter 2 – Friendship and Joe’s arrival

Following the preparations, but many days before the big day of the funeral, Alfred had gone to greet other people from further a field, many of whom had arrived on trains using the new railway in Adelaide. Victoria was a go ahead state, as it had been the first area of Australia to have a railway of any sort. It was based on the English gauge, and the engines and wagons had been imported from Britain. When other states introduced their trains, they all used different gauges for their rails, consequently the trains from other areas, were unable to be used on all the routes.

At the station, Alfred suddenly saw his lifelong friend who he had not been expecting. Hi, Joe, Joe, over here, Joe I’m here shouted an exasperated Alfred, but it is doubtful whether Joe even heard him, due of the noise of all the other people arriving at the same time. They were a noisy crowd, excited at the idea of the event they were going to be involved with, meeting up, like him, with the people they had not seen for some time.

It took them all quite a while to pick out the person or persons they wanted to meet, before leaving the station. People were shouting out names in the hope the person they wanted would hear their name even if they could not be seen. There were men with top hats, tall ones, short ones all according to fashion, except that fashion did not change very rapidly in outlying British Colonies.

The suits were posh, even if a bit suburban, but this was Australia and it takes ages to catch up with fashion. Women’s fashion was easier as magazines with dress patterns were shown on the pages, although one often had to adapt the pattern to be used from the illustration in the magazines.

Fabric could now be imported and there was a wide choice including from other parts of Asia. Britons would be envious if they could have seen some of them. Bright coloured and wide brimmed hats, had been replaced by black hats of all shapes and sizes.

Eventually a tall slim man, looking very self-confident but tired, strode toward Alfred. Joseph Todhunter was considered a sufficiently important, to have his name published in the local paper, informing everyone of his arrival on the ship, which had just docked. At last Joe and Alfred had met one another, and unexpectedly too.

How wonderful to see you again, Alfred said, you too replied Joe. Until a couple of years ago, they had not met for eleven years. Joe had turned up in Melbourne, a stop over on his way from Ceylon, just to meet his sister and aunt, who were waiting to change ships, on their way home from New Zealand to England.

What was your journey like? enquired Alfred. Long and tedious, but not too bad really said the experienced traveller.

Joe you are wearing the identical gloves we both wore in London, but they are not suitable out here with my lifestyle, and they both burst out laughing.

Joe was in his comfort zone, he was a seasoned traveller, used to travelling around the globe on business, so he took such things in his stride.

I am so pleased to have you around while I have to get through all this publicity. You know how I hate it. How long will you be staying, because we have so much to talk about, and much I would like to show you.

Joe didn’t have a lot to say. Sorry you have not got the letters you should have done¸ but I have been so preoccupied, letters to you could wait, others had to be done then and now, communications in relation to work and family. I’ll explain later. When I saw you before, it was not the right environment for me to see and discuss what I hope to see and hear from you this time.

Well I would have been up country, so they would have been very late being received. was Alfred’s reply.

Joe’s sister Annie was going to marry a man they all knew from London, Alex Montgomery, who was currently working in New Zealand. Annie felt as she was going to live in New Zealand, she should marry out there, although nothing had been agreed was said to at this stage. Joe felt he might have to call in there before he returned to England. He did not elaborate.

Come on, we will go and see Uncle Godfrey, when we get to Melbourne. He is putting me up once again. I often wonder what I would have done all these years, without him to fall back on when times were hard for me. I expect he will lend you a horse for the length of your stay too.

When Alfred had brought the bodies of Burke and Wills back to Melbourne, he had to undertake the journey for a second time. On the first journey he had found Wills, dead, but sitting dutifully, at the burial place of Burke. This was something Burke had requested of Wills, should he die. It demonstrated the loyalty Mr. Wills senior had told Burke he could rely on when in trouble.

Alfred had buried Wills near by, but on his return to Melbourne, he was told they wanted the bodies for a State funeral.

Why hadn’t they said so before I went out to look for them. This is typical of their muddled thinking, he had thought.

So he had to return, to this very hot, dry and un-hospitable area, to dig up the bodies, which would have decayed rapidly in the heat, especially if originally the ground had been wet. Alfred had successfully carried out his orders, and it was because of his part in retrieving the bodies, that he now found himself in the current position.

During the period of preparation, there were parties, receptions etc. to which he was invited. These were the times he kept saying to himself, have I really got to go, or is there a feasible excuse?

Alfred and Joe had gone to dances and similar things in London. Joe had continued with this style of life in London, and other cities around the world, which he had visited. Alfred enjoyed them when he went, but he felt the whole atmosphere in Australia to be artificial, that he was reluctant to go, especially as it had been over ten years since he attended a big function.

Wealthy and highly respected Australians held their own private dances, and he had only gone when he felt he ought to, at least these were places where he could possibly find a prospective bride. These functions were going to be different, with politicians and ruling members of society, not Alfred’s cup of tea at all.

Howitt family’s tour routes 1851-1854

Chapter 3 – Relaxing

It was 21st January, 1863, the day of the big funeral, and now it was over. Alfred Howitt made his way to visit his uncle, where he expected to find Joe and cousin Teddy, who was about Alfred’s age, and had accompanied Alfred on some of his earlier adventures, where he would hear some more news from Joe and update Joe himself. As Alfred was once again using their home for his accommodation, it would be reasonable to find Joe there, as the town was still too crowded to seek out an individual.

Uncle Godfrey had arrived in Australia in 1840, when he set up the first G.P. practice in Melbourne. He had brought a prefabricated house with him, made of a corrugated metal, in which to house his family, his wife’s brothers and a nephew. This would have been expensive, to transport all the way from England, along with contents. At the time of the Howitt family’s visit, a £1,000 house in London, ended up costing £6,600 out in Melbourne.

The population of Melbourne four years earlier had only been 136 people. It was a town that had increased very rapidly especially when gold was first found around 1850 creating a gold rush. The population by then had already increased to 76,000. Now ten years later, what on earth was it now? Alfred had no idea, except it felt over populated and crowded.

Godfrey was the respected medical man of the town, who also worked at the young hospital. He had become the president and honorary physician at the Melbourne Benevolent Asylum in 1847 and joined the new Port Phillip Medical Association. His accolades did not stop here. Between 1853 and 1855 he was the first vice-president of the Philosophical Society of Victoria and a member of its successor, The Royal Society of Victoria, at the time of the famous, but tragic expedition.

Even when in England he had published books on entomology and had helped in the foundation of the Entomological Society of London; he was also a member of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, the city where he had trained to be a doctor, and in 1839, (the year before his emigration), he published The Nottinghamshire Flora. Another botanist, named a pale blue, native Australian mallow, a monotypic genus, Howitta, in honour of the devotion Godfrey had given to botany. His entomological collection is now in the University of Melbourne, where he also funded a scholarship, which included his other scientific interests geology and zoology.

Godfrey’s family always gave Alfred a welcoming home, especially when things had been tough for Alfred, times when he was homesick in his early years in Australia, periods when he had not money, food or a job. Godfrey, at one time employed him to work on their farm, after Godfrey had obtained more land, which had never been dug. Alfred was expected to turn into a field, and put a fence around it. That had been in the past, may be this is what he would be doing again shortly.

Godfrey had even bought him a farm in Cauldfield, when Godfrey had been expanding his farming business. Alfred had fulfilled his obligations to his uncle, but then there came a period, when there had been a big recession, and the value of the crops he had worked so hard to grow, lost their profit, so he had left the farm.

Alfred had been a restless man when he had first been on his own in the new country. He had arrived with his father and brother, in 1851, but had stayed behind when his family returned to England, but they all knew Uncle Godfrey would be available should Alfred need help or support. His parents felt England was overcrowded, an expensive place to live where there were no jobs; the future was in the colonies.

Joes current job had now finished and he would have to find something else to do, but what. He had told Joe, that he really did not like Melbourne, which was muddy in winter, very hot and dusty in summer; as it was at the current time. It was very noisy too.

The gold diggers brought in their gold, and what a sight those