Product Description

In 1860, Australia remained the truly dark continent. Although there were European settlements in its south, much of the north remained unknown and dangerous. But things were changing. On 20th August, 1860, The Victorian Exploring Expedition left Melbourne to make the journey into the Gulf of Carpentaria in the northern coast. The expedition was headed by an Irish policeman called Robert O' Hara Burke - a charmer, gambler, and a man infamous for taking long baths in his back garden. Burke and his team of eighteen men made a confident start. After leaving most of the group behind in Cooper Creek (in central Australia), three of the party, including Burke, reached the Carpentaria. They were the first ever to do so. But the journey back was riddled with mishap and bad luck. By the time the three had returned to Cooper Creek, exhausted and starving, they discovered that the rest of the party had retreated, leaving behind only a carved message on a coolibah tree. "The Dig Tree" is the tale of this tragic expedition. Sarah Murgatroyd brings the story vividly alive - the political events in the background, the colourful characters, the spectacular and, often, unforgiving landscape, and the awful desperation of the final days. It is an intelligent, evocative and above all, utterly gripping book.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #48881 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
For Australians, the Burke and Wills Expedition of 1860-61 provides the great epic in the story of the European exploration of their continent. Like many epics of 19th-century European exploration across the world, it has taken on some of the elements of myth. The heroic struggle to achieve the aim of crossing the continent from north to south. The even more heroic deaths on the impossible return journey. The one survivor of the expedition staggering out of the wilderness months later, alive only because of the generosity of the aborigines. All of these elements possess a mythic quality in the imaginations of many Australians.

Sarah Murgatroyd's book looks beneath the myths to find the truth about the ill-fated expedition. Some of the truths are not very flattering, particularly to the expedition's leader, Robert O'Hara Burke. Burke was "a man who had never travelled beyond the settled districts of Australia, who had no experience of exploration and who was notorious for getting lost on his way home from the pub." Unsurprisingly, he made a series of disastrous decisions that, effectively, doomed all but one of the men who accompanied him on the last leg of the journey to death in the desert. By his blinkered refusal to accept the help offered by the aborigines of the region he turned his back on the one remote hope of survival. Yet The Dig Tree is not a simple de-bunking of a heroic myth. Murgatroyd, in a compelling, page-turning narrative, reconstructs the expedition in such a way that the genuine heroism of men striving against impossible odds and against their own limitations emerges. Her descriptions of the last days of Burke and Wills, as they realise that they cannot survive, are very moving. Her clear-sighted view of the follies and farce of much of the expedition, in the end, does more justice to those involved than any amount of mythologising.--Nick Rennison

The Historical Novels Review, Augsut 2002
"Sarah Murgatroyd tells an exciting story"

Sunday Times
'Murgatroyd demonstrates a profound understanding of topography and climate in this gripping tale'

Customer Reviews

If you only ever read one book about Australia
I have, of late been reading and re-reading books on Australia for a project I am currently undertaking. These include Knightley's tour de force 'Australia - Biography of a Nation', Pilger's culpa nostra 'A Secret Country',Bryson's light-hearted travelogue 'Down Under' and many others. The Dig Tree, written by a young English woman suffering as she suffered the advanced stages of cancer, a painful irony as she described the last moments of so many others, is quite the most delightful work of non-fiction I have read in many a year. Sadly, we will hear nothing more from this meticulous and humorous writer as she died on 26 March 2002 just as this, her first book, was published. But never mind the sentimentality, this is a must-read if you want to make any serious attempt at understanding the emerging Australian nation and the importance of exploration as well as inter-colonial rivalries and corruption. Murgatroyd is a master of atmosphere and one can almost feel the heat and the dust, the flies and the despair. On top of all this she has such a deliciously dry sense of humour that at times her little jokes just about sneak up on you. Get your hands on a copy and enjoy a grandstand seat on one of the most tragi-comic episodes in human endeavour.

I will cross Australia or perish in the attempt
The sense of foreboding for the perilous expedition starts building from the first page and is sustained right until the end of the book, even after the outcome is revealed. This book abounds with interesting trivia. Did you know that 80% of Australia's population lives within 30km of the coast even today? Did you know that after many camels were shipped in to help cross the outback, so many escaped that Australia now has the largest non-disease ridden camel population in the world - so much so that they are to this day shipped back to Saudi for racing? The main protagonists of the adventure are sharply drawn in concise, powerful writing that only requires a single sentence to give you a sense of who these people are. The hero, Burke, is "a tall, flamboyant Irishman with flashing blue eyes and a magnificent beard". Wills on the other hand is described as "an intelligent, dependable, abstemious young man with a talent for surveying and a strong sense of duty". The contrast between the natures of the two men serves as a constant theme in the book as they together pursue their exploration of the outback. The Dig Tree draws on a tremendous amount of research material and is insightful in its presentation of issues as diverse as gold prospecting in Melbourne, the progress of disease caused by nutritional deficiencies and the history of the Aborigines. A thoroughly riveting read, this book feels like an education in Australian history but above all the writing that sustains the narrative is beautiful and haunting: "giant rock undulations run down like waves...there is nothing but dessicated brown earth running towards a string of sharp white salt lakes on the horizon". Sarah Murgatroyd drops wonderful little pieces of information throughout the journey, even a few pages from the end she manages another surprise for the reader with the myth of "yellow Alice". When I read Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines I was desperate to visit Australia. Now I simply cannot wait any longer. Both educational and inspirational, for me the essence of the book is the lust for life the writer inspires into every page.

From sea to sea . . . almost
Australia's desolate interior evokes much legend. Dominating the legends are the traverses of European explorers in the region. Among these legends, that of Burke and Wills retains a lofty status, one Sarah Murgatroyd may have forever toppled. She has given the tradition of explorer heroics a strenuous airing with this book. Few reputations are left unsmirched, but her real assault centres on the incompetence of the expedition's leader, Robert O'Hara Burke.

The author relates how Burke left Melbourne, Victoria, in 1860 with several ambitions, muddled instructions and devoid of capabilities to manage the task. Behind his straggling team were a cabal of businessmen intent on extending Victoria's borders. Beyond that, they also hoped to initiate a telegraph line route to Asia, thence to London. In competition with Adelaide to the west, both cities had sponsored expeditions to traverse the continent from south to north. Others had made the attempt, but the travails of crossing a land intolerant of blundering had thwarted them all. Burke was aware of a major competitor in the figure of Charles McDouall Stuart who had nearly succeeded before turning back. Burke, among other things, saw the enterprise as a race - which he intended to win.

Murgatroyed demonstrates how that aspect, among others, doomed the expedition from the beginning. Burke's undue haste led to launching the trek at the worst time of year. He quarreled with subordinates, sacked members of the team and scorned delays occasioned by scientific studies. His fatal error was in dividing the group, ultimately leaving most of his companions behind to make a dash to the northern sea. It was the fragmenting of the expedition that led to conflicting priorities and delays. In the end, not able to actually observe the sea, three survivors of the dash north returned to the rendezvous point to find the word "Dig" carved in a tree. It wasn't enough to save the two leaders surviving the journey.

In analysing Burke's actions, Murgatroyd contrasts them with others, some having set out to rescue the lost venturers. As she points out, the business leaders of Melbourne enhanced the already general view that the only thing considered more "heroic than a successful explorer was a dead one." Melbourne now had two in Burke and his subordinate William Wills. The legend of their heroism was almost manufactured by those who'd sponsored the expedition. The hagiography surrounding the pair has persisted in strength for over a century.

Murgatroyd dispels that idolatry effectively. She cannot be faulted for viewing the past with modern eyes as some are led to do. As a journalist's account, the book is not footnoted, although she provides a good reading list. Her style is open and forthright, keeping the reader close to the events related. She speculates but little, and her judgements are conveyed in sharp contrast. Various persona are portrayed in scathing terms. Even those driven by events escape but narrowly. Her account will dismay some, but none sink into ennui. Her rendition of a complex story makes excellent reading. Her loss to journalism is grievous. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]