Ludwig Leichhardt

The Northern Territory News reports that a 'boffin' is to travel through the the north west deserts of Australia in a bid to find the final resting place of explorer Ludwig Leichhardt, who disappeared around 165 years ago. Central to the search for evidence is the fact that Leichhardt was know to carve the letter L into trees to mark his campsites. Dr Darrell Lewis, a National Museum of Australia research fellow, said "All the explorers marked trees everywhere ... It was really to help future people to relate to the maps." An illustration of this historical graffiti can be seen in an 1858 Sydney Morning Herald article.

Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Leichhardt, who was German, began geological investigations in Australia in 1841. In 1848 he set out with the object of crossing the continent from east to west, but the last heard of him was from McPherson's Station, on the Cogoon River, Darling Downs, on April 3 1848. Five relief expeditions were sent out between 1851 and 1865, but no trace of the expedition was ever found. Various theories have been put forward about the disappearance including that the group was massacred by Aborigines, washed away in a flooded creek or perished of thirst and starvation in the desert. The following report about one of search parties appeared in the Manchester Guardian on January 14 1862:

Read Leichhardt's Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia, here.

The Burke and Wills expedition

The Melbourne Age recently reported that an expedition is to retrace the steps of explorers Burke and Will,150 years after the ill-fated pair made the first traverse of Australia from south to north.

In 1860, Robert O'Hara Burke and William Wills were part of the Victorian Exploring Expedition, a large, and well-equipped party, that aimed to complete the journey from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria, and return safely after making scientific observations. Instead, it was a shambolic affair that saw the death of eight of its members including Burke, the leader, and Wills its navigator.

Incompetence, impatience and mismanagement are just some of the words that have been used to describe why the expedition was such a disaster. Ignorance is another. Rather than use the knowledge and help offered by Aborigines, the expedition, as Jonathan King writes in the Age, shot at "the blacks" and Wills described the tribes as "mean-spirited and contemptible in every respect."

The 2010 expedition, which sets out in August,has an environmental objective with plans to carry out an audit of such matters as drought-induced soil erosion and feral animals. A century and a half after the orginal trek, the leaders will be seeking the advice and help of Aboriginal people and tribal elders are planning to welcome the entourage.

Despite it being a much celebrated catalogue of disasters, the Royal Society of Victoria, which is organising the commemoration, hopes to remind people of the expedition's achievements in exploration and scientific discovery, and the opening up of a path which many others would soon follow.

The Guardian reported the fate of the expedition on January 14 1862 (reprinted from the Sydney Morning Herald).

More information about Burke and Wills here.

Geoffrey Moorhouse and The Fearful Void

Geoffrey Moorhouse, the author and former Guardian features writer, has died, at the age of 77. He joined the paper in 1958 and, after having produced hundreds of stories on everything from the Matterhorn to the Mormons, left in the early 1970s to concentrate on writing books.

Moorhouse was to publish over 30 titles but one his bestsellers was The Fearful Void, the tale of his epic camel-back journey across the Sahara.

The 41-year old began the 3,600 mile trek in October 1972, the main reason being to examine the roots of his fear and to explore the extremes of human experience. He explained: ''It was because I was afraid that I had decided to attempt a crossing of the great Sahara desert, from west to east, by myself and by camel. No one had ever made such a journey before...'

Despite being tormented by lice, chronic dysentery and finding the food, when there was any, revolting, Moorhouse’s biggest problems stemmed from the local labour he hired to help him on his quest. Amongst other things, they stole food, disappeared into passing tents for affairs d'amour, spilled precious water through carelessness, and broke his sextant.

The journey ended in failure with Moorhouse ill and exhausted, giving up 1,500 miles from his final destination. However, the resulting book did provide a moving record of his struggle with fear and loneliness. There’s a fine Elspeth Huxley essay about it in Those Who Dared, while an interview about the journey can seen below (The Guardian, February 27 1974.)

It must be remembered though that the expedition wouldn’t have happened without the help – however unreliable Moorhouse considered them – of indigenous people (see Hidden Histories posting). In 1987 the British desert explorer Michael Asher and his Italian wife Mariantonietta Peru became the first people to complete the journey by camel across the Sahara Desert, east to west.

Jane Bown portrait of Wilfred Thesiger

Last night saw the opening of Exposures: A retrospective of Jane Bown's portraits - an exhibition of 100 pictures by the Observer’s legendary photographer, at London’s Kings Place. Drawing on work from her six-decade career, there are familiar images such as that of a glowering Samuel Beckett or Bjork peeping out from behind her hands, but there are many more that have never been seen before.

Exposures, the book, includes Jane Bown’s recollections of the day the pictures were taken plus there's a Channel 4 film about the exhibition.

One striking portrait, not in the exhibition but which appears in Those Who Dared, is that of the explorer, Wilfred Thesiger. It was taken in 1990, when he was 80 years old.

In the winter of 1946, Thesiger, a British ex-soldier and colonial administrator, became the first westerner to explore in detail the Rub al Khali, or fearsome empty quarter of Arabia, the world’s largest sand desert. Travelling with only a small group of Bedouin and camels and wearing traditional Arab dress, he went there ‘to find peace in the hardship of desert travel ... the harder the way the more worthwhile the journey.’

Thesiger was the self-styled last explorer in the tradition of the past. That is, one of the great traveller-adventurer-writers who from Victorian times to the mid-20th century explored wild and lost areas of the world, often alone, enduring great hardship but delivering powerful works of literature on their return. No travel piece about desert exploration seems complete without making some reference to this towering figure.

Undoubtedly he was one of Britain's greatest explorers and very a fine writer too, but I think Rory Stewart’s comment that “rather than being the last Victorian he was closer to being the first hippy on the overland trail”, gets closer to the truth (from the introduction to the 2007 edition of Arabian Sands.)