Mr Stuart’s Track, by John Bailey. Published by Pan Macmillan in 2006. ISBN: 1 40503 730 3. RRP $32.95, website
Most Australians carry a basic understanding of the challenging exploration of Australia by European settlers—characters like Burke and Wills live on in our minds for decades after we learn about them in our history lessons. John Bailey’s new book, Mr Stuart’s Track, both shatters and affirms the myths of our history and brings the harsh realities of the exploration of Australia to life. As an Australian, I had known that stories like this one existed somewhere—to read such a story in its detail and scope is delightful.
The subject of Bailey’s book is John McDouall Stuart, a Scottish man with few career options who sailed to Adelaide in 1838 in search of a new life as a surveyor. He would eventually go on to cross the continent and in doing so reveal more of central Australia to the Europeans, than any other explorer.
Stuart is not a conventional hero. He was a self-destructive alcoholic and a lonesome man who knew nothing of social nicety or rhetorical political speech. Like many settlers in the new land, Stuart did not conform to the traditional values of English society, and when finished wandering the continent, he was quickly forgotten by those in power and left to an anonymous demise. The complexity of this imperfect character provides a perfect biographical subject of Australian history.
In the Australian bush Stuart found redemption and forged a new purpose for his life. His story is uniquely Australian. He was a ‘working man’ and a ‘battler’ who shamed richer gentleman explorers through his ability to achieve what they could not, with fewer resources. He did not seek acclaim, riches or political appointment but set out to explore the continent because of an undeniable personal obsession. In his courage, independence, strength and self-sacrifice, Stuart is a mythic Australian hero.
The book underlines the danger of the harsh Australian landscape; it breathes haunting images of the physical and emotional torture of exploring the centre of Australia. The men battle excruciating pain while walking 40, 50, sometimes 60km each day; once, fuelled by desperate thirst, a horse is killed in order to drink its blood. Stuart describes his own declining health and we read of a mouth so swollen with blisters there was no room for the tongue, stale breath that smelt like a