The wrong Mt Exmouth

This is the story of how you can get things wrong. Jeff McGill alerted me to my error, and I believe in setting the record straight, so I suggested to him that I could add the original talk to this blog, with his notes.

His response was:

No problem, peter, as long as we cite john whitehead....he's the expert. I was struggling to understand the inconsistencies until I read his work. He is now acting as a brains trust on my own book on the warrumbungles which is about 95 per cent finished, and now in the process of being double-checked :)

So, with thanks from both of us to John Whitehead, here’s his correction:

Dear Peter,

I just wanted to send you a little bit of info to ease your mind on one particular topic – your climb to the top of Mount Exmouth.

I'm a former newspaper editor and keen writer of history...and am doing a book at present on my family, who were pioneers in the Warrumbungle Mountains from 1841, holding several farms in the range.

My great-great grandmother was Rachel Jane Kennedy/McGill/Inglis who became quite a folk hero of the region as a midwife, squatter-fighter and horsewoman. She, and my family, always knew Mount Exmouth as 'Mount Wambelong'.

Peter, I read about your experience climbing Mount Exmouth, "to see what Oxley saw". You said it took you many hours, and your knees groaned in the steepest sections, and on the way down, you said: ‘It took three hours of slow and careful treading to get back to the car. I swore occasionally at Mr Oxley, who said that he got up there in two brisk hours…’. 

There was no need to be so hard on yourself, Peter. Oxley was on a completely different mountain. He actually climbed Mount Bullaway, to the north.

The mountain range was of course first seen by European explorers in 1818 when Oxley approached from the west. Three peaks stood out on the skyline, so he cited their compass bearings and named them: Mount Exmouth [Mount Bullaway], Mount Harrison [Mount Wambelong/Exmouth] and Vernon’s Peake [Tonduron Spire].

On his way through, Oxley camped at ‘Kangaroo Hill’ (today's Mount Tenandra) and then spent a few nights at ‘Loadstone Hill’, easily-identified as present-day Black Mountain, because of the wild effect its magnetic rocks had on his compass.

From this campsite, Oxley looked due east to the large peak that he called ‘Mount Exmouth’ – today’s Mount Bullaway.

He wrote in his journal: ‘We set off early this morning to ascend Mount Exmouth, distant four or five miles: at its base we crossed a pretty stream of water, having its source in the Mount; it took us nearly two hours of hard labour to ascend its rugged summits…’.

Mount Bullaway is 8 kilometres from Black Mountain, fitting perfectly the ‘four or five miles’ described by Oxley, and the ‘pretty stream’ flowing out of the mountain was Caleriwi Creek, also called Frasers Creek. And, today it still takes about two hours to climb Mount Bullaway.

The modern peak that is incorrectly-named Mount Exmouth – Oxley’s ‘Mount Harrison’ – was in a different direction and much further away. For Oxley to walk more than 12 kilometres across a marshy plain (a full day’s work given the marshy flooding that it was experiencing at the time), and then climbing to the top of the mountain (a 5-7 hour round-trek, according to the National Parks & Wildlife Service), only to then battle it back across the flooded plain to return to Loadstone Hill by 4pm, as Oxley noted in his journal, seems impossible.

When the explorer left Loadstone Hill, he described his route to the north-east, ‘over low strong ridges, the sides and summits of some of which were very thick brush of cypress trees…We [camped] in an extensive low valley north of Mount Exmouth and running under its base, bounded on the north-east by low forest hills.’

That describes present-day Goorianawa valley. If Oxley’s ‘Mount Exmouth’ was truly the Mount Exmouth of today, the only ‘valley’ would be the one underneath Siding Spring Observatory – and it does not have ‘low forest hills’ to the north-east, but rugged mountain ridges.

When you throw in the explorer’s own maps and bearings, it is clear Mount Bullaway was the peak climbed. John Oxley never set foot within the present-day boundary of Warrumbungle National Park.

Oxley’s route was, in the 1960s, comprehensively plotted by local researchers such as John Whitehead – a keen historian who was a shire engineer of Coonabarabran Council  and a national park trustee. His conclusions and maps are explained in detail in his painstaking 2008 book, The Warrumbungles: Dead Volcanoes, National Parks, Telescopes and Scrub.

Oxley’s original mountain names from 1818 were forgotten by the white settlers of the 1830s-1850s who used Aboriginal words instead, and knew the tallest peak in the range as ‘Mount Wambelong’. That name was also cited on parish maps and in newspaper articles.

The confusion began in the 1930s when environmentalist Miles Dunphy – who was spearheading the campaign to create a Warrumbungle National Park – drew up a tourist map for the use of early visitors. It was a beautiful piece of work, but Dunphy took it upon himself to rename Mount Wambelong as ‘Mount Exmouth’, based on his mistaken belief that it was that peak that had been climbed by Oxley.

Dunphy’s map – the only of its type in existence – was printed and reprinted, and government staffers and others cited from it for decades, entrenching the error.

By the early 1970s, local researchers had mounted such a strong case that Dunphy was mistaken, that the peak was officially renamed Mount Wambelong. This, however, left some influential noses out of joint.

‘Having Oxley pass through Warrumbungle National Park was seen by many to enhance its status as a tourist and historical attraction,’ John Whitehead explained, whereas Mount Bullaway – Oxley’s real Mount Exmouth – was narrowly outside the park boundary. Others, he believed, were simply reluctant to contradict Dunphy, the great founding father of the park.

In March 1979, the NSW Geographical Names Board reversed its decision and reinstated the Mount Exmouth name, a concession being that a trig station on its summit was to be known as ‘Wambelong Trig’. The reason given by Board was that the peak was already too commonly known by the local community and park visitors as Mount Exmouth. This was an unlikely claim, but was accepted by officialdom.

The problem is, history is now being unwittingly misrepresented. It is not hard to find scores of examples of media outlets and websites incorrectly claiming that it was today’s incorrectly-named Mount Exmouth that was climbed by John Oxley.

I’d just didn't want you to feel bad about your inability to match Oxley's fitness, Peter.... time yourself up Mount Bullaway instead :) 

Cheers, Jeff McGill