The Explorers - stories from the Australian frontier

While traveling over and through Australia by plane, train and bus, I chose to carry along a copy of Tim Flannery's "The Explorers: Stories of Discovery and Adventure from the Australian Frontier". It was the perfect companion to staring out the window at the often barren and alien landscape that passed by. Flannery, the director of the South Australia Museum, has compiled 67 fascinating excerpts from the pages of explorer's journals, each one offering the experience of being a fly on the wall during remarkable moments in the history of European attempts to circumnavigate, traverse, and settle the harsh environments of Australia. It is perhaps the best look into these explorer's experiences, penned by their own hands and under some of the most extreme conditions imaginable.

Their words contain all the adventure and insight of the famous mission of discovery embarked upon by Louis and Clarke in North America. The most telling difference however, is that unlike their American counterparts, the explorers of Australia have a tendency to get killed. They die off in tragic accidents, in skirmishes with Aboriginals, but most often from their inability to extract the bare necessities of food and water from the strange and inhospitable land they encounter. Many of the stories in Flannery's anthology are wrenched from the accounts of sole survivors or found among the remains of failed expeditions. Together they paint a picture of a harsh and unforgiving continent, capable of destroying even the most thoroughly prepared team of explorers.

There is the story Charles Sturt, who's journal reveals his obsession with finding a mythological lake in the center of Australia. We learn of the daily misery of dragging a boat through a landscape so hot and dry that it bursts the party's thermometer. nearly his entire party falls to an extreme case of scurvy. Perhaps the most astonishing demise is that of John Ainsworth Horrocks, who is killed by his own camel, which apparently turned on him for having been dragged into such inhospitable a terrain. The most famous expedition however, is that of Burke and Wills who set out to be the first to cross the center of Australia from South to North. Despite being well funded, the team is soon divided and reduced to near starvation. It's leader made the fateful decision of attempting to mimic the modes of subsistence he observed among the aboriginals he had encountered. Unbeknownst to him however, the ngardu seeds he sees them eat must first undergo a complex process, without which they contain thiaminase which depletes the body of Vitamin B1. The mistake costs him his life.

This and other stories in the collection hint at a far more difficult story to tell - that of how the thriving indigenous communities that these adventurous explorers run into managed to survive for entire lifetimes in these landscapes that make such short work of even the most well provisioned expeditions. Indeed the various ways of life that aboriginal Australians developed in order to live in Australia's harshest environments is staggering. Gaining nutrients from unlikely plants, tiny grass seeds, stems of small flowers, sap and even the bark of certain trees, digging up hidden roots and even eating grubs and other insects - their diets reflect an extraordinary adaptation to the land. Some of these foods involve such complex processes to remove poisons and extract nutrients that one wonders how they were ever recognizes as foods at all. Burrawang seeds for example, are extremely poisonous, but because they are one of the only sources of starch in some areas of Australia, indigenous people pounded and soaked the seeds in water for a week, changed the water daily, then turned the pulp into a cake which is roasted over hot embers. Any mistake in this method could cost you your life.

Some of these recipes came to mind when I was visiting an exhibit in a Sydney Museum which stated that aboriginals "lacked agriculture". I suppose another way to look at it is that they were doing remarkably well without it.

For a really unique look at the Australian environment and a detailed explanation of what it can offer to sustain human life, check out the book "Bush Food" by Jennifer Isaacs.

Writing on the Wall

I made it to the trendy city of Melbourne, in southern Australia, just in time to catch up with an old friend of mine who was having a gallery opening on that night. I hadn't seen my friend Sudeep in close to ten years. His exhibit was packed and it was good to find him doing so well. His photography was mainly of urban scenes and graffiti from around Melbourne. The gallery was full of artsy types who were talking about the values of graffiti as a public art form. One of Sudeep's shots was of a construction wall that ran along a street where someone had spray-painted "White Australia has a Black History". It was in the colors of the aboriginal flag. I was telling sudeep about how I was interested in studying the history of indigenous people's struggles in Australia, and he suggested I come along with him for a tour of some of the murals painted around Melbourne and its suburbs which he thought might interest me.

We spent the following day criss-crossing the city, photographing some of the art that has been put up to highlight issues and commemorate events in Australia's aboriginal history. Some of it was on the sides of buildings, in school playgrounds or at bus stops. It was interesting for me to see references to the things that I had been reading about displayed so prominently in these public spaces.

I took some pictures of my own and considered what an interesting historical source murals and other public art could be to a social studies classroom. Being created by community members and occupying such communal spaces, they have the potential to reveal the concepts and events a community wishes to remain a part of their shared public consciousness.

The Great Barrier Reef

As I made my descent into the city of Cairns, in Queensland, northern Australia, like everyone else on the plane, I craned my neck to get a view of the Great Barrier Reef. It’s a pretty remarkable sight even from this perspective.

The Great Barrier Reef is the largest structure on earth created by living things. It stretches over 1,200 miles, and supposedly, even if I had been looking out the window of the space shuttle it would have been visible from space.

Of course the best way to experience the reef is from underwater, but a trip out on one of the many livaboard boats that operate here does not come cheap. After a few days walking the docks and asking around, I managed get a standby fare when someone cancelled aboard the ship Taka. I only had a couple of hours to pack before the ship set out for a five-day trip to the outer sections of the coral sea. I had just enough time to throw my things together and rent an underwater housing for my camera.

As the boat pulled out and I started to assemble some of my dive equipment, despite stormy weather and ten foot swells, I was happy as a pig in muck. I learned to SCUBA dive in Burlington VT, in the cold of winter. It was often so cold that we would rent a UHAUL truck, park it on shore with a space heater in the back, and bolt strait into it after each dive. On some days we would have to waddle out along the ice with our tanks and fins, just to reach the slightly less frozen, frigged waters. Visibility ranged from five feet, to five inches in front of our faces, depending on how much silt got kicked up by divers loosing control of their buoyancy and churning up the murky floor. As far as things to see, Lake Champlain, where we did the majority of our dives, boasts such underwater wonders as several discarded dinner plates from the dinning service of the old Plattsburg ferry, a surprising number of shopping carts, and at least one toilet. Despite the lack of life down there, I came to love the experience. Even during our pool training I enjoyed the sensation of being underwater for prolonged periods of time. I remember the excitement of my first dive, when I turned upside-down and saw the light refracting on the surface. I watched as my bubbles floated up towards the light and I realized for the first time that I didn't have to make a dash up there for air. Just the feeling of weightlessness, being able to hover suspended in space, rising and falling slightly with each breath - it is one of those truly amazing experiences. Then of course there is the underwater world to explore.

The first time you descend into the alien world of a coral reef, teeming with life and bursting with color, some people find it reminiscent of the closest environment on land, a tropical rainforest. Flowing coral fans and the jagged branches of staghorn conjure up a vibrant jungle canopy. Instead of flowers, soft corals and anemones with their bright tentacles sway with every surge. Urchins, starfish, sea cucumbers, tiny crabs and tinier shrimp, crawl and pick over everything.Then of course there is the kaleidoscope of fish, they seem to take the place of tropical birds, and dart in and out of every crevice, or swarm together in massive schools. In fact coral reefs outdo rain forests in terms of biodiversity, and hold the world's record for densest and most complex concentration of life on earth.

On board Taka, we did twelve dives, diving around the clock. Even at night the reef is crawling with life. We did several night dives where only the beam of our torches penetrated a pitch black sea to reveal a whole different range of creatures. The highlight for me was when doing an early morning dive, right at dawn I found where a hawksbill turtle had slept, wedging its body under an overhang of coral outcrop. It slowly emerged and I followed it up as it glided to the surface for its first breath of the new day.

When not diving I sat in the ships lounge reading “Coral Reefs: Cities Under the Sea” by Richard C. Murphy. It’s a bit of a strange book - part marine science, part science fiction. The author draws insight from the relationship between different organisms within the reef and the way they collectively create an efficient system. In the “coral city” that the author describes there is no waste. The by-product of each organism is the resource for the next. Taking the reef's example, he considers how our own cities might better manage things like energy, resource management and waste removal. He also gives an interesting explanation of what the reef itself is.

What we call the reef is really a symbiosis of two organisms, one a plant and the other an animal. The animal is called a polyp, and the plant is an algae called zooxanthellae. The polyps actually evolved from a common ancestor of modern jelly fish. Its physical structure is basically that of a jelly fish that has rejected the strategy of floating with currents and capturing prey in the open ocean, and has anchored itself upside-down waiting for prey to come to it instead. These polyps have managed to form a unique relationship with algae cells, which is mutually beneficial to both species. The zooxanthelae use sunlight to produce food which they share with the colony of polyps. In return the polyps form a structure which provides the algae with shelter and access to more sunlight. Many polyps are also capable of preying on other drifting animals called plankton. The by-product of this type of feeding is shared with the algae giving it the nutrients it needs to grow.

The giant reefs systems we see today are a result of countless generations of these coral colonies piling up layer upon layer of calcium carbonate over millions of years. The hard part of the reef is really the shared skeletons of large colonies of polyps. The living part of coral is only on the surface. Many reef species specialize in feeding off this thin layer, like this parrot fish which uses its beak like teeth to break pieces of the reef off and extracts the algae cells inside. Although this destroys small portions of the reef, it is actually a necessary process in reef growth, as new coral colonies can only get their start on these bare patches.

Individual coral colonies can grow in size and number through cell division, and each polyp in a colony is an exact clone of other members. However, new coral colonies only form once a year, on a single night, usually two to seven days after the full moon of mid-summer, when a simultaneous mass spawning fills the reef with a sea of coral larva.



When you look at a large patch of coral you can see the separate species living on top of one another and guess where the founding polyp landed to form each individual colony.

For our final dive we motored into a section of reef closer to Cairns, and civilization. We usually had a dive briefing before each dive, where the layout of the reef was described as well as the types of life we could expect to see. On this last one, the ship’s dive master said it was just a “free dive” and that we should just explore it on our own.

After four days of basking in the explosion of life and color surrounding the outer sections of pristine reef, we descended into a coral graveyard. There are few sights in this world as depressing as a devastated section of coral reef. The bombed-out look of this sick section of coral was a complete shock. Some coral was bare and a ghastly bone white. Other sections were covered with a kind of brownish scum. Without the constant filtration that a healthy reef performs, the water had turned thick and murky, adding to the gloom. A few fish clung on, hiding in the shadows of the rubble of broken coral. It was quiet and lonely down there and difficult to have a full tank’s worth of air to consider what we were seeing.

When I surfaced and pulled myself up on deck it was quiet. After each dive over the last few days, the gear deck, where we took off our equipment and refilled our tanks, had been the scene of a festive and lively swap of accounts of the various creatures divers had spotted. It’s a time when the diver's excitement bursts out everywhere. After having been restricted to communicating through limited hand-signals, now they can finally tell their dive buddy how amazing that big shark was or find out if anyone else saw that tiny seahorse. After this dive however, it was as solemn as a funeral. When a couple of divers made some complaining remarks about the quality of the dive, the dive master made some appropriate comments about the importance of people getting to see this part of the reef too.

Nuclear Proliferation/Fun With Maps

My interest in the story of the Rainbow Warrior led me to compile some maps that will be useful for me to include in a unit on the proliferation of nuclear weapons:

This one shows how many and where nuclear tests have been conducted around the world.

This one shows which countries possess nuclear weapons and how many they are believed to have.


This one shows where nuclear power plants are currently producing energy within the United States.



This one shows the position of monitering facilites set up to detect nuclear tests world wide.

The Wreck of the Rainbow Warrior

On the night of July 10, 1985, the Rainbow Warrior, a 40 meter long, former fishing trawler, had been docked in Auckland harbour for three days while preparations for its next voyage were being made. The Ship belonged to the international organization Greenpeace, and its mission was simple -- sail straight into the blast zone of the French nuclear test site at Moruroa Atoll, disrupt the test, avoid being boarded by the French navy for as long as possible, and raise public awareness of the dangers of atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons.

The world’s oceans at this time, with their vast expanses and murky depths, had very little legal protection, and even less actual oversight. The Pacific Ocean in particular, its immensity a cloak for the unscrupulous, had become a dumping ground and testing site for the powerful nations of the world. The organization Greenpeace evolved out of the desire of private citizens to protect these waters and their inhabitants, wherever governments had failed to do so. Greenpeace describes itself as “an independent, campaigning organization which uses non-violent, creative confrontation to expose global environmental problems, and to force solutions for a green and peaceful future.”

The first such “creative confrontation” that the Rainbow Warrior was assigned to, was the disruption of whale hunting, which its crew achieved quite successfully -- largely by deploying small inflatable crafts and getting directly in the line of fire between the whaling vessel’s harpoons and the whales themselves. Between 1978 and 1985, it had engaged in non-violent direct action against the ocean dumping of toxic and radioactive waste, seal hunting, and most recently nuclear testing in the Pacific. At this time the United States and France had made the testing of nuclear weapons in the South Pacific a regular occurrence despite international condemnation.

At 11:49pm, while the Rainbow warrior lay quietly birthed in Auckland harbor, there was what was described as “an electric blue flash” in the water beside the ship, which was instantly followed by a massive explosion. On board the Rainbow Warrior that night was Dutch freelance photographer Fernando Pereira, who was there to document the ship’s mission. After the first explosion, Fernando made his way down the stairs to his cabin with the aim of retrieving his cameras. It was a fatal decision. A second explosive had been attached to the hull. The goal of the first explosion was to sink the ship. This second larger explosion was to ensure that should the ship be raised it would be irreparable. By 4 am divers had recovered Fernando's body. He had drowned, trapped in his cabin, the straps of his camera bag tangled around one leg.

As it emerged that the bombing was a deliberate act of sabotage, there was little doubt in Greenpeace activist's minds who was responsible. Two days after the bombing the French Embassy in Wellington issued a statement echoing the flat denials emanating from Paris. "In no way is France involved," it declared. However, when two French agents posing as a traveling couple were apprehended by a local neighborhood watch, police soon assembled the neccessary evidence to solidify beyond a doubt French responsibility. The two captured French secret service agents eventually pleaded guilty to manslaughter and willful damage in Auckland’s High Court. The bombing and the ensuing French scandal sparked an outrage internationally. In the wake of the bombing, a flotilla of privately owned New Zealand yachts sailed to Muroroa to protest against the French test. As a result, French nuclear tests in the Pacific were suspended.

In 1987 the French Government agreed to pay New Zealand compensation of NZ$13 million and formally apologised for the bombing. The French Government also paid 2.3 Million French Francs compensation to the family of Fernando Pereira, the killed photographer. An indirect consequence was to help transform New Zealand's "nuclear free" policy from an unpopular minority position to something of a national icon. New Zealand remains to this day an entirely 'nuclear free' nation, even forfeiting lucrative alliances with the United States for its refusal to allow American ships that carry or are powered by nuclear material to enter its waters.

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There are so many things that I like about this story. What event could better provide students with a faith in the influence that a small group of dedicated and concerned citizens can have for positive change in the world? Just the idea of a private organization outfitting a schooner the size of a battleship for the sole purpose of sailing it straight into the blast zone of a nuclear test site in a heroic attempt to save the environment, not to mention us, involves messages that are not often paralleled in our history curriculum. Then there is the outcome, which is a potent demonstration of the power of direct action when waged in a just cause. Even as the Rainbow Warrior sank, it created an outcry which raised public awareness to its cause in a way far more powerful than if the French had left it alone. The influence of this event on New Zealand’s notional psyche is well embedded to this day. The sinking of the rainbow warrior and the further efforts of organizations like Greenpeace were also instrumental in pushing forth the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which was eventually signed by 177 nations, and bans all nuclear explosions in all environments, for military or civilian purposes.

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The Rainbow Warrior was eventually raised and patched, although not operational any more, thanks to the second murderous blast. On 14th December 1987, she was towed north and sunk again, this time as an artificial reef in a sheltered position near Motutapere Island. Resting on the sand at 25 metres and encrusted with sea life, the Rainbow Warrior is now home to hundreds of fish, a beautiful site for visiting divers, and a reminder of the beauty that an unpolluted sea is capable of displaying.

If you think Greenpeace is cool, check out this offshoot that is taking some drastic measures to disrupt the Japanese whaling industry.

Article on Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

Geography of the Pacific

A recent Roper Public Affairs poll painted a dismal picture of the geographic knowledge of the most recent graduates of the American education system. Nine out of ten could not find Afghanistan on a map of the Middle East, and six in ten could not find Iraq. It's not just the outside world apparently, fewer than half could identify the state of New York. I like to think part of this is due to an emphasis on teaching social studies for the purpose of creating an understanding of the concepts behind events, rather than merely the memorization facts. But the fact remains - we suck at geography. Here's a very basic look at the geography of the pacific.

The Pacific islands are generally divided into three distinct geographic groups: Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia.

Melanesia stretches from Indonesia in the west, through the islands of New Guinea, the Solomons, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, to Fiji in the east. Melanesia is derived from the French ‘Melanesie’ meaning ‘black islands’ and is in reference to the darker skins of the inhabitants of these islands. The term was first applied to the region by a French scientific voyage in the 1830's.

Micronesia means ‘small islands’, and lies in the central western Pacific. Its most significant groups are the Palau, Carolines, Marshalls, Marianas and Gilbert islands.

Polynesia meaning ‘many islands’, stretches from Samoa and Tonga in the west, across to Easter Island on the far eastern side of the Pacific, and south to New Zealand. It includes, the Hawaiian Islands, Tahiti, the Marquesas, and the Cook Islands.

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Although these groupings are ethnic as well as geographic entities, it is important to note that the division is a Western idea. There is more cultural exchange between these groups, as well as diversity within them, than this simple division might imply.

Human Migration: into the pacific

When European explorers first ventured into the Pacific Ocean they were surprised to find that even some of the most remote islands were already occupied by thriving societies. The existence of these Pacific people provided them with a mystery which has in some ways persisted to this day. How had a people who lacked any physical navigational instruments or even metals, preceded them into the Pacific by thousands of years? Thinkers of the time suggested that they must be the remnants of some simple people, blown of course by chance or dragged there by currents. If you look at the space allotted to Pacific people in history curriculum around the world today, I'm afraid you would probably find a similar story, if you found them at all. I set out to find a little more about the people of the Pacific, specifically a part of the answer to the question of how they got there. What I found out was that far from a chance occurrence, the peopling of the Pacific was a result of a giant technological leap, one that represented a massive change in the pattern of human migration. Our story of human migration begins less than 100,000 years ago, when homo sapiens, the ancestors of all modern humankind, evolved in Africa and began to move into Central Asia. Some headed West into Europe and others traveled around the perimeter of India and into Southeast Asia, eventually making their way into the archipelagos of Malaysia, Indonesia, New Guinea, and even Australia. All of this progress was made in small stretches over thousands of generations. It was also done on foot or in simple rafts that could only make very short journeys.

These early humans were able to make it all the way to Australia because in the last ice age water trapped in the polar ice caps lowered sea levels. The Indonesian islands were actually joined to Eurasia. New Guinea, Australia and Tasmania were also all joined in one land mass, which was far more accessible from Southeast Asia. Today we find evidence that people reached Australia as early as 40,000 years ago, but there progress was checked there. No other large land masses would be reached by humans for another 20,000 years.

The next major event in human migration occurred when people crossed a similar land-bridge connecting Asia to the Americas, along the Berring strait. There is some debate over whether this was a result of hunters following game on land or traveling along the coast in small crafts, or both. In either case it didn't represent a shift in technology, and the places on earth that required a true ocean passage, like the Pacific islands, remained devoid of human life.

Around ten thousand years ago, with the end of the ice age, sea levels rose again, isolating the archipelagos of the Philippines, Indonesia and New Guinea. Australia became detached from New Guinea and Tasmania, and these populations remained relatively isolated for thousands of years. Still, the Pacific and its countless islands remained beyond human reach.

Then around 6,000 years ago, for the first time in human history, a people escaped the confines of landmasses that could only be reached by foot or simple craft. They pushed of from the mainland of South East Asia and and made their way eastward into the Pacific and a world where no human had proceeded them. Eventually they reached as far east as Easter Island, likely the coast of south America, and astonishingly as far west as Madagascar.

The accounts of their individual journeys are not recorded in journals or captains logs as they were in later European voyages of discovery, but this does not detract from their achievements in terms of the seamanship that they required. These voyages spanned more than half the globe and took place at a time when Europeans had not ventured beyond the Mediterranian or the coast of their continent.

What made these first voyages possible was the invention of the sail and the "outrigger", an extension which stabilized their dugout canoes. However, as the gaps between islands grew from tens of miles at the edge of the western Pacific to hundreds of miles along the way to Polynesia, and then to thousands of miles in the case of voyages to Hawaii and the Eastern Pacific, these oceanic colonizers developed huge double-hulled vessels, capable of carrying large groups, as well as all the supplies they would require to colonize new lands.

For long voyages such as these Pacific peoples used a large double-hulled canoe made of two large canoes connected by lashed crossbeams. The two hulls gave the craft stability, and the central platform laid over the crossbeams provided the needed working, living, and storage space. Large sails made of matting allowed it to move swiftly through the seas, and long steering paddles enabled Pacific mariners to keep it sailing on course. A medium-size voyaging canoe, 50 to 60 feet long, could accommodate two dozen people for a month long voyage.

As they moved farther and farther away from the familiar flora and fauna of Southeast Asia and New Guinea, they also had to develop a portable agricultural system which would enable them to survive in the nutrient low environments they would encounter. Ethno-botonists today have determined that these early Pacific mariners must have travelend in intentional colonizing parties, bringing Pigs, dogs, rats, and fowls, as well as cultivated plants such as bananas, breadfruit, taro, yam, gourds, and sugar cane, into the Pacific Islands. All of these made ecosystems of the pacific livable, and turned them into the "natural paradise" that Europeans would encounter centuries later.

Recently computer simulations have also suggested that because of prevailing winds and currents, many of the inhabited islands of the pacific could only have been reached as a result of careful and intentional voyages of exploration. When looked at in conjuncture with the highly sophisticated systems of navigation still practiced in some parts of the Pacific, it becomes clear that these trips were deliberate colonizations. Armed only with a knowledge of the movements of the stars, the ability to read the signs from the ocean itself, the flight patterns of birds and other natural signs, the people of the pacific set out to explore and settle the most widespread and far removed regions of the earth.

This is an image of the earth taken from space. From this perspective you can really get the magnatude of the Pacific Ocean and an appreciation for the people who first explored it.

It's worth mentioning that the famous captain Cook, who mapped and explored so much of the pacific ocean for the European world, did so with a native Tahitian navigator on board. He and his officers made efforts to learn the Tahitian language, so that they would be able to communicate with Tupaia, who accompanied them for their voyage through the Pacific, and all the way back to England. From his diary it is clear that Cook was amazed by the polynesians ability to travel between distant points and across empty seas. He described Polynesia as "by far the most extensive nation upon earth."