The secret of Leichhardt’s lost journals may have been buried west of Brisbane, Queensland, in 1894. I told a version of this story live on Ipswich’s West Bremer Radio.
Ludwig Leichhardt was a German explorer who passed through the Ipswich district in south Queensland and then disappeared in 1848 in an attempt to cross the continent. His disappearance one of the enduring mysteries in Australian history.
The explorer’s fate is unknown. One rumour was that three of the party of four were killed by Aboriginals, and the fourth stayed and lived with them. His lost journals have been the subject of countless searches. But now I believe that the last chance of solving the Leichhardt mystery was actually buried in Ipswich 132 years ago.
James Harnell alias “Narren Jim” was an old settler on Cooper’s Creek around Eulo on outback Queensland. During the drought of 1868 he went searching for new country.
He got onto Cooper’s Creek near Burke and Wills’ camp of just seven years earlier, and followed it up about forty-five miles when he came to one of its western tributaries, which he followed for about twenty-five miles. There he saw a leaning tree on the right bank, marked LL and DIG. He was certain this was from the lost Leichhardt expedition of twenty years earlier but had nothing to dig with, so he took notice of its position, intending to return.
Narren Jim continued his journey about ninety miles west and came to a good-sized lake where some Aboriginals were camped. Among them was a light-skinned girl who appeared to be from eighteen to twenty years of age, which made her birth just after Leichhardt’s time.
He was told how three white men had been killed there a long time ago while fishing. They pointed to Narren Jim’s watch and chain, his gun, and his pint pot, and said some of the white people had the same things which were buried with them. He asked about the light-skinned girl but they wouldn’t give any information about her.
Narren Jim planned to return to the marked tree to dig to find what was buried there. But before the expedition could be organised, he was arrested on a charge of cattle-stealing and convicted in the Roma criminal court. He was sentenced to penal servitude on St. Helena Island, where he served five years and seven months. He was released from St. Helena on the 25th of March 1874, and no one saw or heard of him since.
A former cellmate on St. Helena retold Narren Jim’s story about how he was convinced that the three white men killed while fishing were from Leichhardt’s party, and that Leichhardt’s lost journals were buried under the marked tree. The man was certain that if Narren Jim was alive, that he’d be out there now.
This was 1876, and Narren Jim’s wife Margaret hadn’t heard from him either, so she took the extraordinary step of advertising. She wanted him declared dead so she could remarry. She did remarry, bigamously so it turned out.
Narren Jim had vanished and become as much a mystery as Leichhardt himself. But in 1888 after having disappeared for more than a decade, he resurfaced right Ipswich. He was living as a grazier at Oxley Creek near Redbank. Narren Jim appeared at the Goodna police court under his real name of James Harnell charged with stealing a Shetland pony from the head teacher of Goodna state school.
The following year in 1889, Jim appeared in the Ipswich district court charged with stealing a heifer from a Brisbane alderman.
In 1890 he was in the Ipswich circuit court for stealing a red steer, with spots under the belly, from the Ipswich farmer who in the 1850s was the first cricketer in the Moreton Bay colony to score 100 runs.
In 1891, Jim again appeared in the Goodna court but this time because a seventeen-year-old boy stole his stock whip.
Then on Tuesday the 11th of September 1894, James Harnell better known as “Narren Jim” passed away. And so the chance to solve the enduring mystery of Leichhardt’s lost diaries died with him in Ipswich.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION OF THIS STORY TOLD ON WEST BREMER RADIO.
Photo credits:
Narren Jim story – Copilot image.
Ludwig Leichhardt – National Library of Australia.
Fishing Coopers Creek at Burke and Wills Dig Tree – Harold Peacock 2015.
Narren Jim missing advertisement – Western Star and Roma Advertiser, 5th August 1876, page 4.
Ludwig Leichhardt papers and letters, 1846-1848 – State Library of New South Wales.
History Out There 