Although undoubtedly a fine bushman and an able prospector, William Carr-Boyd was better remembered as one of the great campfire entertainers of his generation. A man of engaging personality and unfailing optimism, he had a fine voice, a wide repertoire of songs and an amazing fund of anecdotes. He was one of the most enigmatic characters to haunt Western Australian Newspapers. Even his birth – at sea in 1852, while his parents were on their way from England to Tasmania – smacked of eccentricity. Such births had a ‘cachet’ which catapulted the victim into a special category. And, William Carr-Boyd played on his specialness to the full. He described many of his activities to the Sunday Times which seemed more and more fantastic and improbable. I think;
he never let the truth get in the way of a good story
Certainly, he had extensively explored Western Australia. The Carr-Boyd Ranges north of Halls Creek in the Kimberley were named after him, but where his money came from is somewhat cloudy. He claimed there were diamonds in the Lake Argyle district long before the Durack’s established the Argyle Downs Station. He is credited as having discovered part of the Kimberley Ranges, though how anyone could ‘discover’ part of a mountain range is not explained. The Aboriginal people of the area might also question whether the mountains were ever lost in the first place!
The Carr-Boyd Ranges, Kimberley – Photo David Bettini
But it was his quirky humour which will be long remembered after his feats of endurance, and his white pith helmet, which became his badge of rank, are long forgotten. One of the many high points in his career was his trip to the United States of America in 1917, not his first visit – when, without the benefit of publicity agents, he made the news pages of the ‘New York World’ with a report of one of several lectures given in that city. Whether the ‘World’ believed his stories is debatable.
William Henry James Carr-Boyd (seated) and William Boyd (not sure of relationship) standing. Taken in Victoria in 1880 – Photo Ancestry.com
The report began with Carr-Boyd telling his rapt audience how he and his fellow explorers had had to eat their animals to survive and he continued in this vein as follows: “Yes” said Carr-Boyd ‘Cats, dogs, horses, camels every last one of them.’ The New York audiences seemed to see nothing incongruous about cats accompanying explorers on an expedition. “Oh do tell us” spoke a pretty young girl, “the cats and dogs, did they suffer much Mr Carr-Boyd?”
The explorer pulled down his fierce looking moustaches and said gravely and steadfastly to his questioner, “They did not indeed suffer, but died each in turn a sudden and dramatic death.” He then paused for effect and then proceeded emphatically, “and if you my dear young lady had lived as I had lived – three weeks on a stewed saddle flap – the explanation might not have been necessary. These heroic animals died almost without a murmur, certainly without complaint, to provide provender for our famished camp.’ Another listener cried out, “but surely you never ate your own dog Mr Carr-Boyd?” He replied ; ‘I assure you madame, that a Bull Terrier, apart from a slight doggy flavour, made a dish to feed a king. The flesh was equal to any human that I have tasted. At this statement
the party fell back with positive horror written on their faces
but Carr-Boyd continued with no show of emotion and in an even voice. His audience crept away in horrified and scandalised silence, while Carr-Boyd winked solemnly, and sank into an easy chair with his favorited cigarette.
Camp at Bitter Rocks, Warburton Range. Prospecting expedition from Laverton to Mt Charles by W. Carr-Boyd, G.A. Drinkwater and F.M. Bankier, 4 June-20 November 1904 – Photo SLWA
He was once invited to an evening at the London’s Savage Club where guests were expected to provide some original entertainment. Carr-Boyd played on a gum leaf for the members, his favourite melody being ‘Home, Sweet Home’, and told them how he was once forced to eat parts of a living camel when short of food in the wilderness, the parts in question would have later healed up. He then amazingly told how when perishing for water he removed his clothing and saved his life by letting his skin blister then moistening his tongue with the burst blister water!
Carr-Boyd is one of the best beloved —and most maligned men in Australia. He wrote prolifically for the Queensland papers under the pen name of ‘Potjostler’, and was known to his close friend by the nickname of ‘Pot’. He was more than six feet in height, raw-boned, with large hands and feet. His powerful and once active frame has been broken by exposure, fatigue and hunger. A belted tweed suit clothes his great, gaunt figure, and an old brown sun helmet is set on his head and throws a shadow over his face. His is a fierce, soldierly face that will stick in your memory— keen brown eyes, heavy eyebrows, a big hawk-nose, and a sweep of white, drooping moustache against skin that has been permanently tanned to a coppery hue by tropical and semi-tropical suns. Yet for all the fierce cast of the face, the general effect is quietly humorous and good-natured. And this is the man who, by exploring and opening up the so-called deserts of Western Australia, made the whole Commonwealth indebted to him. and who, by his whimsical, romantic stories of his experiences, has entertained many.
He states that since, the age of ten years of age he has made eighteen expeditions into the bush country of Western Australia – country which before his coming was given over to silence, snakes, and kangaroos. He has proved by the explorations that the Great Victorian Desert for an age supposed to be a waste, is a farmers paradise when properly developed. He has done the same for the Great Sturt, the Eyre, the Gibson, and the Gregory Deserts. And because of his efforts these places are today covered in part with grassing herds and flocks.
It was Carr-Boyd also who first discovered gold in the Kimberley. He was also among the first fifty men to arrive at Coolgardie in Western Australia after Bayley and Ford had pegged their reward claim in that centre. He has been through North-West Queensland and the Northern Territory of South Australia. He has explored the Cambridge Gulf and Kimberley districts, and portions of the Victoria River. He states he floated the first Australian gold mine. He has travelled 1300 miles over country through which no white man ever before passed, between Kalgoorlie and Wareena (SA). He has been left for dead a number of times, has suffered hunger and heat, has been captured by natives, who pierced the cartilage of his nose and forced him to wear an emu bone in the hole. And for all these feats and for the romance which attaches to them
this Australian Buffalo Bill
has become one of the best loved men in his own country. He has but one failing— a whimsical sense of humour. And, because of this humour, which often gets the upper hand of his judgment, he has been maligned, derided, scoffed at and lampooned. And small wonder, in a fine deep voice, with very becoming eloquent gestures, he will spin a yarn wildly fantastic, not so much to thrill his audience as to indulge his fancy for the bizarre and to shock. ‘I have been accused, he says, of being everything from a cannibal to a Tasmanian Devil. I am neither, my parents were poor, Irish.’
‘You need never talk to me of hardships.’ he would say. ‘When I was in the Cambridge Gulf region I had to bait my hooks with pieces of my own leg. My calf to-day is corrugated like a piece of iron roofing. And I have been near death a thousand times, but never nearer than when I had a party of English Jackaroos under my wing near Mount Burgess (WA) where I told them they were in the tropics. They asked ‘Suppose that you should be bitten by a snake and die? How should we find our way back to Coolgardie?’ ”Easy’ said I, ‘On my chest I have tattooed a map of the region, and if I die, skin me and use the pelt as a map.’ ‘Now if you’ll believe me, I caught, one of those wretches trying to poison me in order to get the locality of the rich gold mine I had marked out near my armpit’. Carr-Boyd did not smile when he told me this, and I was, and still am, in doubt whether he meant it to be taken seriously.
He amused himself during the ensuing silence by passing a match stick through the hole in his nose. ‘I got this.’ said he. ‘from the natives during one of my expeditions in the so-called deserts of Western Australia. I had been suffering from thirst fever, and when I had found water I attempted to travel by day before my strength had fully returned. I was knocked over by the sun, and the next thing I remember is waking up in a pool of water, with a veritable Venus blowing the cold liquid over me with her mouth. When I recovered it was necessary that I join the tribe or else, so I had my nose pierced, and wore an emu bone through the hole by way of an ornament. But I got even with them, I watched my chance and bolted.’
Family History:
William Henry James CARR-BOYD was born at sea on the 27th February 1852, the second son of Irish parents, Dr William James Henry Carr-Boyd Esq and Charlotte Marianne nee McAvoy. He had five sisters and three brothers all born in Australia except for Anne, David and Louisa who were born in Ireland. The family first settled in Tasmania where his father became the Classics master at the Hobart High School before opening a private school in Campbeltown TAS. In 1863 the family moved to Queensland where his father became Crown Commissioner of Lands for Queensland and later a journalist and inspector of schools.
On the 26th September 1882 at the age of 30yrs, William married Emily Harriett ‘Minnie’ Nicholas in Victoria. She had been married previously to Charles Deakin and she married under this surname. Also, in the marriage records William is recorded as William James Henry Carr BOYD. I’m sure this often happened with hyphenated surnames.
Emily appears to have stayed in Victoria and didn’t accompany her husband on any of his adventures both in Australia and overseas. The couple were to have four children all born in Victoria.
Reginald William Carr-Boyd born 1883
Wanda Koota Carr-Boyd born 1885
Bertha Winnie Carr-Boyd born 1887
Violet Mascotte Carr-Boyd born 1888
Just prior to his death William said that he wished to make one more long trek into the bush, he longed for the smell of camels and campfire smoke again and to die with his boots on. However this wasn’t to be, and he died in a private hospital in Melbourne. He is buried in Springvale Botanical Cemetery, Greater Dandenong City, Victoria. He was survived by his wife but all of his children pre deceased him.
Western Mail 28 May 1925, page 22
CARR-BOYD – EXPLORER’S DEATH
by James Thomson
News reached Perth last week of the death in a Melbourne private hospital of Carr-Boyd, aged 73yrs, known throughout Australia for more than half a century as an intrepid explorer and goldfields prospector. He was the eldest son of Dr William Carr-Boyd and whimsically declared that he owned no country as his birthplace—having been born at sea while his parents were voyaging to Tasmania in 1852.
References:
Sunday Times Perth 10 Mar 1996
Wingham Chronicle and Manning River Observer 9 October 1943, page 4
Moya Sharp
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What a great yarn about a great yarn-spinner and undoubtable a very capable bushman and remarkable character.
Thanks.
Mick