← back to the index
IN-014 Overland expedition · Western Australia 1896

The Calvert Expedition — A side trip into the dunes that two men never returned from

thirstpartial-loss1800s
Lost
2 of 8 men
Into
The Great Sandy Desert
Ended
Joanna Spring, Nov 1896
Status
Partial loss

Summary

The Calvert Scientific Exploring Expedition set out from Mullewa, Western Australia, on 13 June 1896 to fill in the last blank spaces on the colony's map, crossing the Great Sandy Desert toward the Fitzroy River in the Kimberley. It was a camel survey of eight men under the surveyor Lawrence Allen Wells, financed by the London mining promoter Albert Frederick Calvert and conducted under the South Australian Branch of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia. Two of the eight died in the desert: Charles Frederick Wells, the leader's cousin and second-in-command, and George Lindsay Jones, the young mineralogist and photographer.

The deaths followed a decision to divide the party in waterless country. By October 1896 the expedition was deep in the dunes, its camels sickening on poisonous plants and water nearly impossible to find. From a camp near a soak the party called Separation Well, Charles Wells and Jones rode off on a "flying trip" to the north-west to extend the survey, intending to rejoin the main column at the next watering point. The two parties never met again. The main body reached the Fitzroy on the Derby track in early November; Wells and Jones, unable to find water and with their camels failing, turned back to follow the main party's tracks and died of heat and thirst on or about 21 November 1896.

Their fate was not known for half a year. Lawrence Wells mounted repeated searches, and the Western Australian government sent the surveyor William Rudall, who relied on an Aboriginal tracker named Cherry and quartered some 60,000 square kilometres of desert without finding them. The mummified bodies were found at last on 27 May 1897, about 26 kilometres south-west of Joanna Spring, by a recovery party that included two Aboriginal trackers and the Afghan cameleer Dervish Bejah. Jones's diary, recovered with the remains, recorded the dwindling water, the loss of the camels, and the men's last failed search for a soak. The geographical results were real; so was the cost, and a colonial inquiry later cleared Lawrence Wells of blame for the separation that killed two of his men.

Timeline

13 Jun 1896
Departure from Mullewa
Eight men under Lawrence Allen Wells leave with about 20 camels, financed by Albert Calvert and backed by the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia.
27 Jul 1896
Lake Carnegie reached
The party arrives at the edge of previously explored country and prepares to push north-east into the unmapped Great Sandy Desert.
Aug 1896
Water and camels fail
Advancing into the dunes, the expedition struggles to find water; several camels sicken after eating poisonous desert plants.
Sep 1896
Separation Well
Near a soak that gives the camp its name, Wells weighs splitting the party to widen the survey before the run to the Fitzroy.
Oct 1896
The flying trip
Charles Wells and George Jones ride off to the north-west to extend the mapping, expecting to rejoin the main column at the next water.
4–9 Nov 1896
Main party reaches the Fitzroy
Lawrence Wells's column strikes the Derby–Fitzroy Crossing track and water; the two parties have not met.
~21 Nov 1896
Wells and Jones die
Following the main party's tracks back through the dunes, the two men die of extreme heat and thirst, their camels gone.
Dec 1896
Government search
The WA government sends surveyor William Rudall, who leaves Roebourne with two men and an Aboriginal tracker named Cherry.
Dec 1896 – May 1897
Repeated searches fail
Lawrence Wells leads successive parties, with Nat Buchanan, George Keartland and Sub-Inspector Ord; Rudall quarters some 60,000 km² in vain.
27 May 1897
Bodies found
A recovery party — Lawrence Wells, Sub-Inspector Ord, Trooper Nicholson, two Aboriginal trackers and Dervish Bejah — finds the remains 26 km south-west of Joanna Spring.
18 Jul 1897
State funeral
The bodies are returned to Adelaide, where Charles Wells and George Jones are buried after a public funeral.
1898–99
Inquiry clears Wells
A parliamentary select committee examines the leadership of the expedition and exonerates Lawrence Wells of blame for the deaths.

The last blanks on the map

By the 1890s the interior of Western Australia held the largest unexplored region left on the inhabited globe, and filling it had become a point of colonial ambition. The Calvert expedition was named for its financier, Albert Frederick Calvert, a London mining engineer and prolific author who put up the money to extend the work of the 1891 Elder Expedition into the Great Sandy Desert. Organised through the South Australian Branch of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia, the party of eight was built around camels — the only practical transport for waterless country — and around the experience of its leader, Lawrence Allen Wells, a competent surveyor who had served on the Elder expedition. Among the secondary aims were collecting natural-history specimens, looking for any trace of Ludwig Leichhardt's party lost in 1848, and scouting a stock route between the Northern Territory and the Western Australian goldfields.

The composition of the party mattered to what followed. Charles Wells, the leader's older cousin, was second-in-command. George Jones, only eighteen, served as mineralogist and photographer. George Keartland was the naturalist and James Trainor the cook, and the camels were in the hands of two Afghan cameleers, Dervish Bejah and Said Ameer, whose desert craft would prove central to the search. The expedition left Mullewa on 13 June 1896 and made steady progress north-east, reaching Lake Carnegie on 27 July at the limit of mapped country. Beyond it lay the dunes — parallel ridges of red sand running for hundreds of kilometres, with water hidden in soaks that an outsider could pass within metres of and never see.

Separation in waterless country

Through August and into the spring heat the expedition's margins shrank. Water was scarce and unreliable, the camels began to sicken on poisonous plants, and the column's range between watering points narrowed to the edge of what the animals could carry. It was in these conditions, near the soak the party named Separation Well, that Lawrence Wells decided to divide his force. Charles Wells and George Jones would make a fast loop to the north-west to extend the survey across ground the main column would not reach, then cut back to rejoin the others at the next certain water on the way to the Fitzroy. The reasoning was the surveyor's: cover more country while the party was already in the field. The risk was the desert's: two men, alone, in unmapped dunes, depending on finding water that the main party had not yet confirmed.

The two parties separated and did not meet again. The main column, after hard travel, reached the Derby–Fitzroy Crossing track and reliable water in the first week of November 1896. Charles Wells and Jones did not appear. They had failed to find water on their loop, their camels had given out, and they had turned to follow the main party's tracks back through the sand — the same desperate logic that traps so many in arid country, retracing a line laid down by men who themselves had barely survived it. Jones kept his diary as long as he could hold a pencil, and it tells the rest plainly: the terrible heat, the loss of the camels one by one, the search for a soak that was never found. The two men died of heat and thirst on or about 21 November 1896, within a day or so of each other, somewhere south-west of Joanna Spring.

Six months of searching

When Lawrence Wells reached safety and his cousin's party did not, the search began, and it was long, costly and very nearly fatal to the searchers as well. Wells mounted one party after another back into the dunes — accompanied at different times by the drover Nat Buchanan, by the naturalist Keartland, and by the police officer Sub-Inspector Ord — beating across country where a body could lie unseen a hundred metres from a passing rider. The Western Australian government sent its own man, the surveyor William Rudall, who left Roebourne in December 1896 with two companions and an Aboriginal tracker named Cherry. Rudall's party quartered roughly 60,000 square kilometres of desert, found Wells's Separation Well and the meat tins cached there, and by May 1897 was on the point of abandoning its camels and gear to the heat — yet never crossed the bodies. The desert that killed two men hid them from every search for half a year.

It was Lawrence Wells's final recovery party that succeeded, and the credit belongs in large part to skills the colonial record was slow to acknowledge. Setting out from Derby with Sub-Inspector Ord, Trooper Nicholson, two Aboriginal trackers and the Afghan cameleer Dervish Bejah, Wells reached the place on 27 May 1897 and found the sun-dried bodies of his cousin and George Jones about 26 kilometres south-west of Joanna Spring. The trackers' reading of the country and Bejah's mastery of the camels were what carried the party through the same dunes that had nearly killed Rudall. The remains, and Jones's diary, were brought out of the desert and carried back to Adelaide, where the two men were buried after a public funeral on 18 July 1897 — the survey complete, at the price the interior had set.

The Five Factors

01
Splitting a party in waterless terrain
The fatal decision was to divide the column near Separation Well, sending two men on a loop into unmapped dunes to rejoin the others at water that had not been confirmed. The recurring mechanism is the survey commander's temptation to cover more ground by fragmenting his force; in arid country the smaller fragment loses the very margin — shared water, shared animals, shared judgement — that keeps a party alive.
02
A rendezvous with no fallback
The plan depended on Charles Wells and Jones finding the next soak and meeting the main party there, with no second cache, no agreed deadline and no signal if the meeting failed. When the loop party could not find water, it had nothing to fall back on but the main party's own tracks. A rendezvous protected by no redundancy turns an ordinary delay into a death.
03
The narrowing margin ignored
By October the camels were sickening and water was failing, the clearest possible warning that the desert's tolerance had shrunk. Pressing a survey loop precisely when conditions were tightening, rather than consolidating, is escalation against a worsening trend — committing more deeply to a plan at the moment the ground is least able to forgive it.
04
Retreating along a used-up line
Unable to find water ahead, the lost men turned back to retrace the main party's tracks — a route that had already been stripped of its margin by the column that made it. Following another's desperate line in arid country assumes a reserve that is no longer there; the tracks lead only back to where the water has already been taken or has dried.
05
Local knowledge as the decisive resource
The men who finally read the desert correctly were the Aboriginal trackers — Cherry with Rudall, and the two trackers on the recovery party — and the Afghan cameleers who could keep animals alive where Europeans could not. Their skill found the bodies and saved the searchers, yet it sat at the margins of an expedition that depended on it. The pattern across failed exploration is the underuse of the very knowledge most fitted to the country.

Aftermath

The two deaths were the only fatalities of the Calvert expedition, but they shaped how it was remembered. The bodies of Charles Wells and George Jones were returned to Adelaide and buried after a public funeral on 18 July 1897, and the young mineralogist and the leader's cousin became, in colonial South Australia, figures of mourning and memorial; a stained-glass window to the two men was later unveiled in North Adelaide. Albert Calvert, who had been unable to meet the full cost, saw the South Australian and Western Australian governments make up the shortfall. Lawrence Wells faced press criticism for having divided his party, but a parliamentary select committee examined the expedition and cleared him of blame for the separation, accepting that the deaths owed more to the desert's brutality than to any single fault of command.

The expedition's geographical and scientific results survived in the Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, and one searcher's failure became a legacy of its own: William Rudall, hunting the lost men, discovered a desert watercourse that now bears his name as the Rudall River. What the record long underweighted was the contribution of the Aboriginal trackers and the Afghan cameleers without whom the bodies would not have been found and the searchers might themselves have died. The expedition is remembered today as a sober Australian instance of a recurring outback lesson — that the interior punishes a divided party, and that the people who know the country are not its furniture but its experts.

Lessons

  1. Do not divide a party in waterless country for the sake of covering more ground; the smaller fragment loses the shared margin that keeps anyone alive.
  2. Never stake a rendezvous on water you have not confirmed, and build in a fallback — a deadline, a cache, a signal — so a missed meeting is survivable.
  3. Read the warning signs: when water fails and animals sicken, consolidate rather than commit a party deeper into the desert.
  4. Retracing another party's tracks is not a reserve plan; a used route has already been stripped of the water that made it passable.
  5. Treat Aboriginal trackers and experienced cameleers as the primary expertise on arid terrain, not as auxiliaries — their knowledge is what finds the lost and saves the searchers.

References