This is a tale in which near tragedy, herculean determination and farce are constant companions.
The expedition was described by Georg von Neumayer in his Results of the Magnetic Survey of the Colony of Victoria, published in 1863 and recalled by Elyne Mitchell in her book Discoverers of the Snowy Mountains, published in 1985. The expedition was the sixth of ten journeys von Newmayer made to collect data for the magnetic survey.
It was an expedition onto the main range of the snowy mountains in the Spring of 1862, initially involving Georg Balthasar von Neumayer, the then well known meteorologist, Eugen von Guérard, the famous landscape painter, John Twynam, an inexperienced traveller, apparently ‘gifted’ to them in Albury by his brother the district surveyor Edward Twynam, and Neumayer’s companion/assistant, Edward Brinkmann.
Lets ditch the honorifics and just call them Georg, Eugen, John and Edward. There was also a horse called Tommy, a dog named Hector and another two unnamed equine companions. They also had a wagon.
It should be emphasised from the outset that both meteorologist and artist had already made many trips to the alpine regions and had experienced the threatening uncertainties of high country weather. But this was 1862 and the main range was still largely an untracked wilderness.
The party left Melbourne in October, travelled via Wangaratta and Albury (where Twynam joined them), arriving at Tom Groggin station in the upper Murray valley in November. A local called Weston, the caretaker at Groggin, volunteered to be their guide. They decided to leave the wagon and the unnamed horses and walked with the horse Tommy up via Leather Barrel Creek along the precipitous Indi/Monaro cattle track to Dead Horse Gap.
They apparently camped above the Gap because Georg describes ‘a splendid view of the Manroo Plains and Thredbo River.’ The next morning they visited the South Ramshead peak, which is referred to as ‘Pinnacle Hill.’
At this point they tethered Tommy, left some food for him and headed for Kosciuszko. “Passing over some snowfields of considerable extent, arrived at the summit.” Here Eugen continued his sketches.
A very strong northerly wind was blowing and Georg told Edward to put his maps under the protection of a rock while he hurried through his meteorological observations, so that they would have time to visit Mt Townsend, which he called “Snowy Peak”.
They dropped down into the Wilkinson valley between the two peaks and stopped for a meal. It was 19 November and Eugen’s 50th birthday, which they celebrated with a drink or two.
Then Edward remembered that he had left the maps up on Kosciuszko.
They hastened to the top of Townsend and Eugen proceeded to sketch the vista before him, when “he called out that it appeared to him a heavy storm was approaching…”
Georg’s barometric readings confirmed this so they were anxious to return back to camp at South Ramshead. When they approached the snowfields on the eastern side of Kosciuszko, Edward was told to ‘run up’ and retrieve the maps, and to take Hector the dog with him.
Within minutes, “a terrific storm set in from the West and the whole top of the mount was enveloped in dense clouds, the rain falling in torrents.”
Anyone who has experienced this type of weather on the Snowies knows, as Elyne Mitchell describes, that it becomes “a moving, tearing, buffeting, bashing mass of grey.” Georg called out to Edward to come back. “This had the effect only of recalling the dog and thus leaving Edward to his own resources.”
They travelled south/southeast, using a compass, but lost Weston in the maelstrom. Miraculously, as dark fell, they reached the sodden camp, although Twynam had also become lost and when they found him he had to be carried into camp.
Okay, they figured that a nice fire would help set things right.
Edward had the matchbox.
In fact, a few wax matches were found and some dry twigs were gathered but with the wind and rain it took several hours before they were able to boil a kettle. Their misery was reduced when, in the early hours, Hector the dog barked announcing the return of Weston, who had seen their fire.
Elyne Mitchell describes the situation: “Below the rocky pinnacle of the South Ramshead, four men and a dog, and poor Tommy the horse – one man still lost in the wind and the rain, and amid crashing thunder and lightning.”
The next morning, Georg and Eugen headed back to Kosciuszko. They found the maps but no Edward. They returned to camp in the forlorn hope he would return there.
The gale returned instead and blew all the next day. With dark approaching and just as they may have thought things couldn’t be worse, Tommy took off.
They sent Weston off towards Groggin seeking the horse. Finally, they had a small stroke of luck, when they found Tommy. Presumably Weston could take care of himself.
Most of the remaining food was left at the camp and they left instructions for the route to Groggin, in case Edward returned. Then ‘… we packed the horse and started, having given three cheers for the missing man.’
They completed the arduous descent to Groggin, with increased difficulty in having to carry the heavy scientific equipment themselves in the climb up and out of Leather Barrel because Tommy was now too weak to manage the task. In fact some of the scientific instruments were still with the lost Edward, so Georg was unable to complete a number of his planned observations.
They saddled the other horses at Groggin and headed for Omeo and then Wodonga to get help from the police.
They arrived in Wodonga on 6 December and were crest fallen to find that there was no word of Edward at the police station. Doom and gloom prevailed but they were in for a surprise.
The following report from von Neumayer is a gem:
“Sat down to dinner and had hardly done so, when the lost man made his appearance in a most deplorable condition, having been without food and clothes for some time … Soon after leaving us on Mt Kosciusko, he endeavoured to return but missed the track to the camp and descended into the valley of the Thredbo River. For two days he wandered on … until he fell in with some diggers in a lonely valley … who assisted him in making his way to Kiandra. From this place he worked his way to Albury, where he arrived on the same morning as we reached Belvoir (Wodonga) …we both had travelled upwards of 300 miles.”
Not only had Edward returned in one piece but so also had the sensitive scientific instruments that had been in his keeping throughout his extraordinary journey.
Those sketches done on this exhausting expedition were transformed into the famous and dramatic panorama that form the centrepiece of Eugen von Guerard’s Australian Landscapes and grace the National Galleries in Canberra and Melbourne.
Unlike von Guerard’s art, the story of the expedition disappeared from the pages of history until it emerged in Elyne Mitchell’s book in 1985 (Alan E J Andrews also covered it in some detail in his 1991 book, Kosciusko, The Mountain in History.)
This amazing journey failed to gain public attention partly because it was not regarded as overly ambitious at the time and perhaps because it was overshadowed by the tragedy of the Burke and Wills expedition the year before. In fact, Wills was a protégé of von Neumayer and he actually travelled with the doomed duo on the first stage of the expedition.
-Paul Pearce
