The young man lost in the outback

In the Parish church of St Michael at Woodham Walter in Essex is the following poignant memorial: "Sacred to the memory of Henry Bryan, 5th son of the Rev Guy Bryan (Rector of this Parish) and Selina Elizabeth his wife; accompanying Governor Gawler on his perilous expedition into the unknown regions of South Australia, his generous endeavours to secure the Governor’s personal safety were accomplished under mysterious providence by the painful sacrifice of his own life. December 1839. Aged 18 years." Two of the sons of the Rector, Henry and Guy were accompanying Governor Gawler in November 1839 in the search for suitable agricultural land and the source of the Murray River. Henry had begged to be allowed to go out with the Governor who wrote: “I was much pleased with his enterprising spirit and acceded to his request, the next morning on coming in sight of a very high mountain before unknown to Europeans, I called it after him, Mount Bryan” On 13th December the pair discovered that they had lost all their water. Henry and the Governor started to ride back to the camp to get more, but the Governor’s horse went lame and Henry insisted he take his horse, saying that he would leave a note of his whereabouts. This is the last anyone saw of Henry. A search party found a note with his clothes saying in which direction he was heading. Governor Gawler wrote: “His brother tells me, what I did not know before, that he was subject to dizziness in the head. English pocket compasses are somewhat difficult to use in this hemisphere as they are balanced for a Northerly dip. He was aware of this, but dizziness in the head, if he was attacked by it as an effect of heat and debility, (it was of course high summer in Australia) might have rendered him incapable of correcting the error, and have thrown him continually into false bearings. In this manner alone can I account for his loss.” In 2009 I was talking on Skype to my son who works in Australia with a multi-national engineering company. He was telling me about a new very large wind farm project near Adelaide for which he was being promoted to take control. When asked where it was he replied “Somewhere you have never heard of – Mount Bryan”. You can imagine the shudder that went down my spine.