The Travellers (The Australians Book 8) by Vivian Stuart

Author:Vivian Stuart [Stuart, Vivian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skinnbok
Published: 2022-11-17T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

“We leave on Tuesday, from South Creek, and cross the river at Emu Ford,” Justin said. He saw his mother exchange an anxious glance with Andrew and added reassuringly, “There’s little risk, Mam, with seven of us, including Mr. Blaxland, who has been on two exploratory expeditions already. And old Byrne—the one they call Lucky Byrne— has hunted kangaroos in the foothills for years. He’s volunteered to act as guide.”

“Are you taking horses?” Andrew inquired.

Justin nodded. “Yes, four, to carry our provisions as far as possible. That may not be very far, if we strike a gorge with no way round. But Mr. Blaxland’s idea is to follow the main ridge between the Warragamba and Grose rivers and keep on high ground, as George Caley did. He described it as being similar to walking over the tops of houses in a town. Look.” He took a sketch map from his breast pocket and spread it out on the table. “This is only a rough copy—Mr. Lawson has the final draft. I compiled it from Caley’s and Barrallier’s reports and from a sketch Dr. Bass gave me, years ago.”

He went into careful detail, indicating on the map the routes other expeditions had taken and the estimated distance they had traveled.

Andrew listened with keen interest, occasionally offering a suggestion or asking a question, but his mother, Justin sensed, was holding deliberately aloof from their discussion. His conviction and sentence had come as a severe blow to her, he was unhappily aware, and their present relationship, although still warm, was under something of a cloud. She had wanted him to appeal against the court’s findings—if necessary to the Governor himself—and his refusal to do so had hurt and disappointed her. But ... He stifled a sigh, as he folded the yellowing map Surgeon Bass had given him when, as a boy of seven or eight, he had first tried his ‘prentice hand at shipbuilding.

George Bass, he recalled, had made a most determined attempt to find a way across the great dividing range of the Blue Mountains, equipped with ropes, scaling irons, and climbing hooks of his own design. Accompanied by Henry Hacking and the ship’s boy, Billy Martin, he had penetrated some twenty miles into the unknown but had returned, disconsolate, claiming to have found only an endless succession of peaks and ridges, with ravines and gullies between them. And his verdict had been that the mountain barrier was impassable overland—a verdict with which Francis Barrallier had reluctantly concurred, after the failure of his second attempt to find a crossing, in November 1802.

But the taciturn botanist, George Caley, had refused to admit defeat and, two years later, had reached a formidable gorge—which Colonel Paterson had earlier sighted, naming it Grose Valley—only to be driven back because his companions were exhausted and his provisions were running out. The Yorkshireman’s meticulously detailed notes were, however, the basis on which Gregory Blaxland had made his plans, and Justin, who had studied the notes carefully during

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