Text Classics: The Dig Tree

Wills knew that he was fading fastest. On 26 June, he decided the only honourable thing to do was to sacrifice himself to save his companions. ‘Without some change,’ he wrote, ‘I see little chance for any of us.’

In 1860, an eccentric Irish policeman and a shy English scientist led a cavalcade of men and camels out of Melbourne to cross the continent south to north. Less than a year later seven men were dead.

Sarah Murgatroyd’s classic account of an ill-fated expedition is a tragic tale of courage, love, suffering and madness.