Famous explorer (19)

Burke and Wills, because their trail would lead me closer to you...

Martin Frobisher..........cause while trying to discover the Northwest passage he found a unicorn horn and brought it back and sold it to the Queen of England for a lot of money How cool is that.

Unfortunately it wasn't a unicorn horn but the horn of a Narwhal Whale.

















and all those with dirty minds........hush!!!!!. Yes I mean you lookin

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Since 1995 I have been retracing a lot of the paths established by an Australian explorer. Len Beadell did his work in the 1950s opening up Central Australia by establishing roads initially for the Woomera Rocket Range and later for the British Atomic Bombs.

Where possible, he noted earlier explorer's paths, and they were not Australians doing it. Tietkin, Sturt, Stuart, Giles and many more had gone through the areas he eventually opened up that so few of us will ever see. I have travelled a few times in just a single vehicle with a mate. When you can drive 200-250kms (120-140 miles) in a day and then not see anyone else for 4 days in these modern times, it does make you think about the 10 or 25 miles (16-40kms) they did in a day.

I do recall my teacher in primary school in the late 50s telling us about someone at that time coming across some Aborigines who had never seen a white man before. Reading Beadell's books many years later, I realised that it was him that my teacher was refering to.

And probably the first person to call himself an "Australian" to do exploration within Australia was Cecil Madigan. Mawson was the first person to call himself an Australian explorer & Madigan was with him on his Antartica exploration. Madigan was the first white man to cross the Simpson Desert (named after his sponsor) he used camels as being better than the horses used by Burke & Wills in thier efforts through a desert. And also did a lot of scientific geoligical work on Lake Eyre.

Shackleton did this in attempt to reach the South Pole before the Yanks did it (the Brits had been beaten to the North Pole by Perry). The North Pole had been attempted many times (everyone wanted to visit Santa) and there was a lot of information about the failed attempts for it to finally succeed.

The South Pole was so much different. If you read the book "Mawson" which came out a few years ago, you will realise that Shackleton, like many others, had no idea of what they were heading into and were not remotely prepared for what eventuated. Much like early "Australian" explorers. Mawson travelled with Shackleton and learnt some very valuable lessons.

There was a guy who I met who did a trip around Australia in the 70s. He and his mate pulled up in a town and went into the pub for some refreshments after "running out of supplies" (beer) going along the WA coast.

When asked where they had come from, they told them that they had just followed some tracks along the coast and ended up in town. And they were told that no way they could do that, there is no road along there. Turned out that each station had done a bit that had eventually connected all the tracks out along the coast and they had been lucky enough to find all the connections. It is now an iconic trek called The Gib River Road.

Hmm did he make it home? yes Scott did not.