PIONEERING SPIRIT  

Nothing much fazed Eliza Arbuckle, not even the hardship of being the first woman to travel up the Murray. SEAN DAWES profiles a remarkable and courageous woman.

    It was late December, 1839, and Adelaideans were fearful. An ambitious expedition led by Governor Gawler up the Murray to North-West Bend (now the Morgan site) had not returned. Colonial officials, policemen and surveyors were believed to be menaced by blacks and, more so, great fear was held for three women.

    Gawler included women in the expedition to prove to London investors the safety of the Murray Valley, thereby encouraging development of plantations on the river-flats and a steam-driven fleet to draw trade from NSW.

    Also on the journey would be the South Australian Surveyor General, Captain Charles Sturt, and the Police Superintendent. Of the women, Charlotte Sturt was first chosen. Julia, at 15 the eldest daughter of Gawler, stood in for her mother, while the third was Eliza Arbuckle, ladies’ maid and companion.

    The expedition was assembled during November, 1893. Heavy stores for 30 people were shipped to Encounter Bay and carted to Currency Creek. There, costal surveyors prepared a flotilla of three whaleboats and a ship’s gig to sail Lake Alexandrina and upstream through the lake mouth of the Murray to the North-West Bend.

    To assist the surveyors return, two drays with extra provisions went north-east from Adelaide. Completion was planned so the principals might spend Christmas in Adelaide and, on Proclamation Day, celebrate the colony’s third birthday.

    But it was not to be.

    Gawler’s expedition left on November 22, 1830, as an elegant month-long jaunt. Even so, the relative social position of the women was soon established. The first day Mrs Sturt and Julia drove to Willunga with the Governor in his open carriage, escorted by Captain Sturt and the governor’s suite, all fully equipped.

    Eliza followed in a light dog-cart. It was driven with just one position, but Eliza consoled herself that nearby was a sufficiently handsome escort of two mounted policemen and Henry Bryan, a gentleman aide to Gawler.

    It was hard to put down Miss Arbuckle! She was a proud, canny Scot from Paisley. After her father died, Eliza left home to avoid a marriage devised by her mother to bolster the family finances. She emigrated with a Baptist group to Sydney, where she was employed by the Sturts, traveling with them to Adelaide. At 19, Eliza was still unwed at a time when girls married young.

   Later, sailing over two days from Currency Creek, across Lake Alexandrina to Poomunda on the lake mouth, Eliza sat under an awning with the other women. Charlotte Sturt and Julia were at the stern, both claiming to be the first white women on the Murray – until Eliza remarked she was nearer the prow!

    An essential political aspect of Gawler’s plan was a tractable native community. He sought to explain to the Aborigines his policy of protection from white abuse and eventual assimilation.

    A Ramindjeri interpreter, Encounter Bay Bob, was employed, but Gawler’s grand intention was blighted even before the expedition started. Outside South Australia, the Murray Darling natives and white stock overlanders from Sydney had skirmished for months. A wagon train from Adelaide was burnt beyond the North-West Bend on October 28-29, forcing the whites to retreat. Gawler underestimated this news.

    Further conflicts continued, culminating when more overlanders – Alexander Buchanan – and his team, traveled from Sydney droving sheep for sale at Adelaide’s markets and for stocking the early runs. The travelers were reported to have killed and wounded natives near the North-West Bend on December 7.

   Even so, the first meeting of Gawler with the Milmenrura at Poomunda was amicable. On this occasion, Eliza sailed with Sturt in the gig. Charlotte, Julia and Gawler had arrived earlier and camped, attracting four native families totaling 33 men and youths. As the gig pushed through the reeds a reception line emerged of painted, naked men armed with spears, waddies and towerangs. Urged by Sturt and with two young aides holding her hands, Eliza sprang from the boat, her petticoat flying in disarray. The broken reeds stabbed through her shoes but her pain drowned in the yells of natives beating their shields.

    That night, a corroboree was held around 16 evenly spaced fires. Old men and boys beat a tattoo on tightly rolled kangaroo skins. Pairs of naked warriors, their faces and hands ochered white and red, with long white or red stripes down their limbs and across their ribs, challenged each other in grotesque, ritualized combat. While Eliza watched, appalled at the pandemonium, a young black, curious about Eliza’s means of locomotion – seen but fleetingly as she leapt ashore – wriggled from the corroboree and grabbed her ankles, Eliza tipped backwards, saved from falling by Gawler. Both watched, amazed, as the impudent warrior slithered back to his place. Tommy, as the native became known, joined the expedition as an additional interpreter.

    While the flotilla sailed across Lake Alexandrina and into the Murray, the wagons, horsemen and spare mounts of Gawler’s expedition traveled along the northern shore of the lake, eventually meeting the flotilla sailing north at Wood’s Point, near John Morphett’s station. Here they saw George Hamilton, from Port Phillip, rafting sheep and swimming cattle across the Murray. It was November 29, a week from Adelaide and very much a holiday for the women.

    The next 10 days passed similarly, although danger seemed to lurk everywhere. There were huge centipedes, ants and snakes. At night, the scrub shrieked and moved.

    The land party followed the western bank, pacing the flotilla. The girls went ashore on islands, naming one for Julia, which now supports Swanport bridge, and gathered rocks, fossils, flora and fauna. Mrs Sturt was pregnant with her third son but, like Julia, she rode with the men through the scrub and on the river flats.

    The tension of travel came at evening when finding and clearing a safe spot for the night was utmost in everyone’s thoughts. Once, Gawler and four horsemen rode too far ahead of the flotilla and lumbering carts. Both parties spent an anxious night camped 20Km apart, lighting signal fires that neither saw. Even so, Eliza and Julia often wandered from camp and one evening were suddenly surrounded by warriors. These Aborigines were also intrigued by petticoats and feet. The girls suffered an impertinent examination until they diverted them with a pair of scissors, from Eliza’s sewing kit, and a piece of paper. As an encore, the girls trimmed the warriors’ beards and packaged the snippets, slowly retreating and waving, before running for sanctuary. That night, natives fired the grass and were driven off by gunfire.

    Later, Eliza and Julia found three native women with their babies in a cave. They admired the children, trying to establish contact, but the mothers were too afraid.

    The girls also saw two burial places. One was like a low table upon which the bound and painted corpse sat spear in hand. In the other, the corpse lay on the ground, covered with lapped branches stuck in the earth.

    Thirty kilometers from the North-West Bend on December 9, the expedition met a party of whites; the drays sent previously to aid the return has met the overlander Buchanan. Sturt questioned him about native hostility, and Buchanan replied that there were no problems, having written in his diary that he did not shoot any blacks. The entry had been made to cover his savagery, and his failure to forewarn Gawler of his actions combined with a natural hostile response from local Aborigines was to lead to further death and distress.