Fol­low­ing Gregory’s Line into the Interior

The explor­er appre­hends the hori­zon line toward which he intre­pid­ly treks. Emerg­ing out of the vast land­scape there are many lines that can be drawn around things, rivers nev­er before appre­hend­ed by Euro­pean eyes, moun­tain ranges and sandy plains, unfa­mil­iar flo­ra and fau­na. All seem­ing to await dis­cov­ery and doc­u­men­ta­tion. Some­times the lines are clear, some­times obscure and shim­mer­ing with dis­tance. The explor­er trail blazes his and his company’s own course, leav­ing in his wake a ter­ri­to­ri­al­is­ing line that can be tak­en up again by read­ing the mea­sured doc­u­men­ta­tion of lon­gi­tude and lat­i­tude that he has not­ed in his pro­sa­ic report. This essay looks to retrace the line left behind by the explor­er Mr F. T. Gre­go­ry in 1861 on his two for­ays into the Aus­tralian inte­ri­or, pro­ceed­ing from a shel­tered bay on the north-west­ern coast. Fund­ed by the Gov­er­nor of West­ern Aus­tralia, and by mem­bers of the Roy­al Geo­graph­i­cal Soci­ety, F. T. Gre­go­ry went in search of arable land to colonise, but failed when it came to the greater prize, the ver­i­fi­ca­tion of the myth of a won­drous inland sea. What is at stake here is the vio­lence embed­ded in lines of coloni­sa­tion that in mak­ing their mark there­by erase oth­er lines, specif­i­cal­ly, the song­lines of oth­er forms of inhab­i­ta­tion of Coun­try enact­ed for mil­len­nia by indige­nous Aus­tralians. Lines of claim­ing the land as dis­tinct from lines of liv­ing with the land are brought into sharp relief when con­sid­er­ing the cur­rent con­tro­ver­sies erupt­ing in the iron ore rich ter­ri­to­ries F. T. Gre­go­ry once ​“dis­cov­ered”. Today, the inter­ests of the min­ing giant Rio Tin­to have been pitched against the orig­i­nal cus­to­di­ans of the land, the Puu­tu Kun­ti Kur­ra­ma and Piniku­ra peo­ples, a con­tro­ver­sy that can be dra­ma­tized in ref­er­ence to the line and its con­flict­ing, entan­gled stories.

A First Foray

Hav­ing anchored the bar­que Dol­phin in Nick­ol Bay on the 10^th of May 1861, Mr F. T. Gre­go­ry explor­er and his par­ty ven­ture a first for­ay inland.1 Their aim is to doc­u­ment coun­try between the coast and Lyons Riv­er, which the explor­er had pre­vi­ous­ly claimed and named on an ear­li­er mis­sion in 1858. In total they will trav­el 780 geo­graph­i­cal miles fol­low­ing a line that they com­pose as they go in search of arable land and fresh­wa­ter rivers.

On the 29^th of May 1861 they strike a riverbed. The explor­er names it the Fortesque, after the Under Sec­re­tary of State for the colonies ​“under whose aus­pices the expe­di­tion took its ori­gin.” They fol­low the new­ly chris­tened Fortes­cue in an East South East direc­tion from the 30^th of May to the 11^th of June, cov­er­ing 180 miles. They trav­el across hilly coun­try com­posed of meta­mor­phic sand­stone and find water in pools and grass ample for their hors­es. Then they hit stony ground, less amenable to hors­es’ hooves, the hors­es strug­gle and they lose horse­shoes. From stony ground they arrive at loamy earth, lux­u­ri­ant­ly grassed, which cul­mi­nates in sud­den hills. The hills will be named by the explor­er after one of the sup­port­ers of his adven­ture, and even to this day they go by the name with which he appoint­ed them, the ​“Ham­mer­s­ley” Range.2 At first the expe­di­tionary par­ty is unable to find a pass through the range, and so they con­tin­ue to fol­low the riv­er. The fish caught in the riv­er weigh sev­er­al pounds each, the spring water is plen­ti­ful, there are broad leafed melaleu­ca or cajeput, and palms with wide spread­ing leaves eight to ten feet long. There are oth­er trop­i­cal plants too. It is quite the idyl­lic oasis.

They final­ly dis­cov­er a pass through the Hamer­s­ley Range head­ing south­wards. They again find them­selves in exten­sive fer­tile plains to the west­ward, until even­tu­al­ly they arrive at an ​“indif­fer­ent stony coun­try.” The hors­es strug­gle, there is lit­tle water and only some grass.

Baf­fled by sev­er­al days of stony ground a depot camp is final­ly set­tled, and a ​“fly­ing par­ty”, a break-away group trav­el­ling at a greater speed, pro­ceeds toward the Lyons Riv­er. This is a riv­er pre­vi­ous­ly dis­cov­ered and named. They head in a South South West direc­tion con­tin­u­ing across the stony coun­try and at some 30 miles arrive at a large riv­er head­ing in an East South East direc­tion the banks of which fea­ture clumps of cane. This will make for good pas­ture­land in the future, Mr F. T. Gre­go­ry com­ments. Dur­ing the dry sea­son it may only be 100 feet wide, but dur­ing the wet sea­son it will expand to 400 to 600 feet and achieve a depth of 40 to 60 feet. He names this fine riv­er the Ash­bur­ton, after the noble lord pre­sid­ing over the Roy­al Geo­graph­i­cal Soci­ety, ​“whose friend­ly coun­te­nance and assis­tance I am much indebt­ed in car­ry­ing out my present undertaking.”

From the new­ly chris­tened Ash­bur­ton riv­er, they head south­wards and the coun­try becomes rugged and moun­tain­ous. He has seen some of these sum­mits on his pre­vi­ous expe­di­tion to the Lyons Riv­er in 1858, which, as he express­es it, he has ​“appro­pri­ate­ly” named the Capri­corn Range. So here he revis­its a part of the coun­try he has gazed upon pre­vi­ous­ly from anoth­er point of view, there­by cross-ref­er­enc­ing his pre­vi­ous ​“dis­cov­er­ies.”

By the 25^th of June they final­ly come over a ridge and set eyes on the Lyons Riv­er. Sat­is­fac­tion is secured and Mr F. T. Gre­go­ry stern­ly cel­e­brates the view he has achieved of a val­ley spread­ing out before them, with ​“Mount Augus­tus rear­ing its sum­mit over all sur­round­ing objects…”, and there is Mount Samuel and Mount Phillips, and oth­er sum­mits, and the Bar­lee Range is vis­i­ble in the west. The cap­tur­ing of the expan­sive view is ren­dered qui­et­ly victorious.

Now they must fol­low their own tracks, retrace their line back to the depot camp, and from there return to Nick­ol Bay. On the return jour­ney Mr F. T. Gre­go­ry is able to ascend sev­er­al promi­nent peaks and there­by tri­an­gu­late his course, secure his line of trav­el with more sure­ty. He also comes across a most mag­nif­i­cent and sol­id moun­tain, some 3800–4000 feet tall, that he decides to name Mount Bruce, ​“after the gal­lant com­man­dant of the troops.”

Aus­tralia Felix, hap­py or for­tu­nate Aus­tralia, but for whom? 

9 Days of Rest

For a long while fol­low­ing first con­tact there per­sist­ed a myth of a great inland sea. If only explor­ers could ven­ture across the seem­ing­ly bar­ren lands under a bru­tal for­eign sun to get there. This would be the prize for any intre­pid explor­er backed by the Crown. To arrive at the inland sea, to know and there­by to claim the ter­ri­to­ries of the inte­ri­or in order to deter­mine that arable land might be sup­port­ed by a great inte­ri­or fresh­wa­ter lake. To get there, and to return. Burke and Wills failed to find it. The Pruss­ian explor­er Leich­hardt, famous­ly fic­tion­alised as the char­ac­ter Voss in the nov­el­ist Patrick White’s tale, didn’t make it either. Phan­tas­magor­i­cal visions, dreamy with heat, arid for those not know­ing how and where to look. There is a scene in White’s Voss where, had one of the search par­ties ven­tured just a few hun­dred metres fur­ther they would have dis­cov­ered the long-gone body of the exhaust­ed explor­er behind a pile of rocks.3 No doubt those with ancient knowl­edge of the land, with access to the sto­ries, knew full well where he was to be found. 

By all accounts Mr F. T. Gre­go­ry was a prag­mat­ic explor­er, as was his old­er broth­er, August Gre­go­ry, who had been charged with lead­ing one of the search par­ties look­ing for Leich­hardt and his group in 1858. Mr F. T. Gre­go­ry makes two for­ays into the inte­ri­or off the north west coast of Aus­tralia, near present day Kar­ratha, with back­ing from the Crown and sup­port from the Roy­al Geo­graph­ic Soci­ety. His account is prag­mat­ic, punc­tu­at­ed with geo­graph­i­cal mea­sure­ments of lon­gi­tude and lat­i­tude so that those who fol­low after can retrace his trail­blaz­ing line and redis­cov­er the land­scape resources he has ​“dis­cov­ered.” Yes, there is priv­i­lege expressed here, and the explor­er is unable to imag­ine that present for mil­len­nia before him there has exist­ed a deep knowl­edge of Coun­try and how to work with it. He sees the orig­i­nal cus­to­di­ans as mere resource for future mobil­i­sa­tion as labour, unwaged, paid for with dam­aged bis­cuit. His his­tor­i­cal moment allows him no oth­er point of view.

Though prag­mat­ic, Mr F. T. Gre­go­ry nev­er­the­less hints at a greater prize. He con­cludes his account, writ­ten on the 18^th Novem­ber 1861, and pub­lished in the broad­sheet Empire, with an apol­o­gy that his adven­ture has fall­en short of the expec­ta­tions of his spon­sors and fel­low geo­g­ra­phers. He writes of his ​“san­guine hopes with regard to geo­log­i­cal dis­cov­ery” specif­i­cal­ly knowl­edge per­tain­ing to the ​“object they had in view.” What object exact­ly? There are oblique hints con­cern­ing the secrets held close by the inte­ri­or, the thwart­ed project of ​“pen­e­trat­ing far enough to decide the ques­tion of the drainage of Cen­tral Aus­tralia.” Even the phan­tas­magor­i­cal inland sea is ren­dered pro­sa­ic under Mr F. T. Gregory’s writ­ing hand. The inland sea that ear­ly explor­ers sought out, explor­ers such as Charles Sturt, after which the bril­liant black and red Sturt Pea has been named, involved expe­di­tions doomed to arrive too late. Had there exist­ed intre­pid, colonis­ing explor­ers dur­ing the Cre­ta­ceous peri­od some 144 to 65 mil­lion years ago, then they may have had some luck. Lake Eyre comes clos­est to the promise of an inland sea, but is most­ly dry for years on end.4

A Second Foray

Mr F. T. Gre­go­ry will spend his time between the two inland for­ays mak­ing a run­ning sur­vey of Nick­ol Bay where they are anchored in the bar­que Dol­phin. He will rest by under­tak­ing fur­ther cur­so­ry explo­ration. When the group arrived back from their first for­ay into the inte­ri­or they were sur­prised to dis­cov­er a ​“par­ty of natives mend­ing their nets.” The natives, so called, had helped those men left mind­ing the bar­que to col­lect a load of wood, and get the ship’s tanks filled with water. For this labour they were offered ​“a few pounds of dam­aged bis­cuit dai­ly.” The rela­tion­ship is clear­ly one of con­de­scen­sion, the fact that the indige­nous peo­ples are duped with dam­aged bis­cuit needs to be not­ed here. Again, the prag­mat­ic explor­er sees how what he per­ceives as local resources might be put to use. These bod­ies will become so many lines added up toward a mea­sure of amenable labour ded­i­cat­ed to an antic­i­pat­ed future, he thinks to himself.

Bet­ter pre­pared for what they are like­ly to encounter, Mr F. T. Gre­go­ry and par­ty pro­vi­sion them­selves with nine­ty days worth of sup­plies, and spare shoes for the horses.

They return along tracks of their own mak­ing. They fol­low that pre­or­dained line until they get to the Sher­lock riv­er and from there ven­ture into unknown ter­ri­to­ry. Again Mr F. T. Gre­go­ry is baf­fled by the stony land they encounter after cov­er­ing plains with ​“a few patch­es of good food.” They set up a depot camp.

They set up a depot camp on the 5^th of August. With a small­er num­ber of the par­ty, car­ry­ing a light­ened load, they go in search of a pass through the inhos­pitable stony range. A few false leads and even­tu­al­ly they dis­cov­er a way through, and beyond that an impres­sive stream bed, com­ing from the South South East. There is an abun­dance of water and water­fowl, which means they can bring for­ward the main par­ty that had been left behind at the depot camp. A line drawn, and redrawn, advance, retreat, fleet foot­ed par­ties sent into the wilder­ness for the pur­pos­es of recon­nais­sance. It is a remark­able riv­er, more than half a mile from bank to bank. The riv­er is named the Yule, he names it so.

Head­ing east­wards, a hilly region, many springs. It was named the Strel­ley, the explor­er names it so. Leav­ing the Strel­ley behind and con­tin­u­ing to head east, they come upon a ​“roman­tic glen, hemmed in by cliffs 150 feet high, under which were pools of water con­tain­ing fish resem­bling her­rings, from which it received the name of Glen Her­ring.” It is an idyl­lic spot. Head­ing east­wards it joins a ​“fine riv­er”, wide, run­ning through grassy plains. This would be the place to ven­ture fur­ther into the inte­ri­or, if only they had been able and bet­ter pre­pared. The explor­er calls it the De Grey in hon­our of the noble lord pre­sid­ing over the Roy­al Geo­graph­i­cal Soci­ety. There is a great amount of valu­able arable land, just wait­ing there for Euro­pean coloni­sa­tion. Head­ing east­wards they encounter yet anoth­er riv­er. Here the explor­er begins to wax lyri­cal, hav­ing restrained him­self for the most part so far. Here he speaks of ​“the rich umbra­geous foliage of which afford­ed us a most agree­able shade dur­ing the many days after­wards fol­low­ing the pic­turesque wind­ings of this fer­til­is­ing stream…” He con­fers on this pic­turesque place the name Oakover.

They con­tin­ue to fol­low the Oakover, until it turns too much toward the South West for their purposes.

It is the 2^nd of Sep­tem­ber and they arrive at vast stretch­es of red sand blown into ridges. Then, by the 6^th of Sep­tem­ber they have entered a waste­land of sands. They pen­e­trate it for over 30 miles, and suf­fer a want of water, and the hors­es become dehy­drat­ed. They must leave behind some of their equip­ment, and two hors­es, which will not be recov­ered. They find that they can head no fur­ther east­wards toward the inte­ri­or, though the explor­er feels sure that all signs indi­cate that they would have even­tu­al­ly come across a body of water. The great inland sea? Anoth­er fine riv­er? What they observe, despite the sand blow­ing in their faces, despite the sure death of some of their hors­es, is what they believe to be a gen­er­al decline of the lay of the land. This sign sure­ly indi­cates that had they been able to head fur­ther east­wards they would have come across the hypoth­e­sized body of water ​“the dis­cov­ery of which would solve one of the most impor­tant ques­tions that now remains unan­swered in con­nec­tion with the phys­i­cal geog­ra­phy of this con­ti­nent.” Here Mr F. T. Gre­go­ry final­ly admits that this had been one of the great incen­tives of the cur­rent exploration.

In great dis­ap­point­ment, hav­ing weighed up like­ly loss­es, Mr F. T. Gre­go­ry explains, ​“I even­tu­al­ly decid­ed upon falling back and attempt­ing to fill up as much as pos­si­ble of the blank that remained between this and Nick­ol Bay,” fill it up with lines, plot it accord­ing to car­to­graph­ic ref­er­ence points. He feels com­pelled to fill up the emp­ty spaces as quick­ly and neat­ly as pos­si­ble, leave no space for oth­ers’ hors­es to prance in. He will no doubt lose sleep over the fact that there per­sist some places less amenable to the draw­ing up of lines. The sand itself car­ries the lines away. 

I’ve always won­dered why the expres­sion ​“draw­ing a line in the sand” is sup­posed to be so defin­i­tive, when the sand inevitably promis­es to erase the line, much as a face drawn in advance of the incom­ing tide is sub­se­quent­ly washed away.

Lon­gi­tude and Lat­i­tude are lines that we draw for the pur­pos­es of ori­en­ta­tion. In his long med­i­ta­tion on the line Tim­o­thy Ingold offers a dis­tinc­tion between guide­lines and plot­lines, the for­mer emerg­ing with weav­ing, the lat­ter with land mea­sure­ment. Geo-gra­phy, draw­ing abstract lines to map with. Earth writ­ing, Ingold says. Mate­r­i­al and abstract, both. And yet, for car­tog­ra­phy, Ingold nev­er­the­less holds to his guide­lines: ​“It is rather the same with a car­to­graph­ic map” he explains. ​“Here the ruled lines of lat­i­tude and lon­gi­tude are guide­lines that enable the nav­i­ga­tor to plot a course from one loca­tion to anoth­er.”5 For a while nav­i­ga­tors had deter­mined how to mea­sure one, but not the oth­er, which result­ed in a great many voy­agers lost at sea. The line unrav­els, and always threat­ens to do so.

In his account of the Dutch 17^th Cen­tu­ry lens grinder and philoso­pher Baruch Spin­oza, Gilles Deleuze describes lon­gi­tude and lat­i­tude as the best means of describ­ing a body: ​“A body can be any­thing; it can be an ani­mal, a body of sounds, a mind or an idea; it can be a lin­guis­tic cor­pus, a social body, a col­lec­tiv­i­ty.”6 A body, the body of an explor­er, a body of water, a body of dam­aged bis­cuits, the body of a horse left behind in the desert, these should not be defined as forms, organs, func­tions, sub­stances. Instead the body is defined accord­ing to its move­ments and rests, and accord­ing to the affects that inflate and deflate it as it moves from one place to the next, suf­fer­ing and then enjoy­ing one encounter after the next. ​“We call lon­gi­tude of a body the set of rela­tions of speed and slow­ness, of motion and rest, between par­ti­cles that com­pose it from this point of view, that is, between unformed ele­ments. We call lat­i­tude the set of affects that occu­py a body at each moment, that is, the inten­sive states of an anony­mous force (force for exist­ing, capac­i­ty for being affect­ed).”7 This, explains Deleuze, is how we con­struct a map of the body. Though a prob­lem per­sists here. Who is com­pos­ing the map and what or who can be seen and can’t be seen? There are pow­er rela­tions run­ning up and down, back and forth along these lines of lon­gi­tude and lat­i­tude. Some bod­ies will end up doing bet­ter than oth­er bodies. 

There is a sense in which Mr F. T. Gre­go­ry can nei­ther see nor hear the cus­to­di­ans who offer help to his sailors. Though when com­ing across a band of bold ​“natives” he will not hes­i­tate to judge them for their ​“invet­er­ate habits of thiev­ing.” He reads revenge into their acts of burn­ing the grass­es in the vicin­i­ty of his camp. Per­haps they were mere­ly going about their own activ­i­ties of land man­age­ment, which the explor­er is unable to see. The explor­er notices the ​“natives” chew­ing tobac­co, though they do not smoke it, this obser­va­tion, on the oth­er hand is impor­tant to the explor­er as it sug­gests that the land lends itself to tobac­co plan­ta­tions. The plan­ta­tionocene, as Don­na Har­away remarks, is what hap­pens when we scale up an expe­di­tion such as Mr F. T. Gregory’s, and press the fast for­ward but­ton, and see where we get.8 The plan­ta­tion is land mea­sured and man­aged, marked with lines in the earth, lines on the skin, lines on the body of Coun­try that speak to deep inequities. The ruler is a ruler, that is to say, a sov­er­eign who rules ter­ri­to­r­i­al lines, and the ruler is an indis­pens­able ​“part of the toolk­it for the nav­i­ga­tor or sur­vey­or,” Ingold reminds us.9

A line of flight is one down which escape is sought. It is a drib­bling line let­ting things leak out. It goes here and there and refus­es to be straight­ened out. ​“In West­ern soci­eties,” Ingold explains ​“straight lines are ubiq­ui­tous. We see them every­where, even when they do not real­ly exist. Indeed the straight line has emerged as a vir­tu­al icon of moder­ni­ty, an index of the tri­umph of ratio­nal, pur­pose­ful design over the vicis­si­tudes of the nat­ur­al world.”10 Nature and cul­ture, human and ani­mal, the line drawn again and again in attempts toward clas­si­fi­ca­tion. Things will not be so eas­i­ly tamed. The explorer’s lines, though he rep­re­sents the colonis­ing ambi­tions of moder­ni­ty, are not straight lines, they are pur­pose­ful and con­fi­dent, even per­func­to­ry, and yet they are also wan­der­ing lines. Read­ing between the lines of Mr F. T. Gregory’s sto­ry, read­ing between the lines of the land­scape sto­ries left behind in diaries and accounts of oth­er intre­pid explor­ers, as the Abo­rig­i­nal Aus­tralian writer Bruce Pas­coe rec­om­mends, becomes some­thing of an oblig­a­tion.11

In the sum­ma­ry of his account to the West­ern Aus­tralian Gov­er­nor, Mr F. T. Gre­go­ry notes: ​“Of min­er­als I was unable to dis­cov­er any traces except iron.” He was not to know that, hav­ing enjoyed the dra­ma of the Hamer­s­ley Range, which he took it upon him­self to name, that 160 years hence there would be a mas­sive min­ing effort tak­ing place in the vicin­i­ty. The land­scape is now pock­marked. On the week­end of the 23–24^th May 2020 sacred sites of indige­nous her­itage with signs of con­tin­u­ous use extend­ing back over 46,000 years where oblit­er­at­ed by dyna­mite that had been wedged into the red earth. The apolo­gies that fol­lowed were care­ful­ly word­ed to avoid cul­pa­bil­i­ty, but the min­ing giant gross­ly mis­cal­cu­lat­ed the pub­lic mood, and the CEO was even­tu­al­ly fired. The min­ing giant that man­ages vast tracts of this land today is called Rio Tin­to. It is a mas­sive infra­struc­tur­al enter­prise, over­see­ing 16 mines across the region, and four inde­pen­dent port ter­mi­nals. Auto­mat­ed, com­put­er mon­i­tored, heavy-haul dri­ver­less trains car­ry away over 100 mil­lion tons of ore every year, most of it head­ed toward a resource hun­gry Chi­na. The loss to the Puu­tu Kin­ti Kur­ra­ma and Piniku­ra peo­ples is irrev­o­ca­ble, still, they speak of find­ing the courage to heal the wounds left behind.12 A body is a human body, a body of land, a body of lore, each vul­ner­a­ble to being wounded.

I am acute­ly aware—though I am not sure what the answer to this prob­lem is—that by attempt­ing to set out a sto­ry­line here, I am at risk of remov­ing the sto­ries from their right­ful cus­to­di­ans. It mat­ters what sto­ries tell sto­ries, for sure, and it mat­ters who claims the telling of the sto­ry, and toward what ends. Sto­ry­lines are always vari­able, and con­stant­ly being altered, they are com­posed and recom­posed by indi­vid­u­als and col­lec­tiv­i­ties.13 The line com­mences its own jour­neys, and it becomes a ques­tion of lis­ten­ing more close­ly to what it reports on its return.