Sunday’s lunch event has evolved, as such things do, into a chance to enjoy some Australian pioneering history in an unusual manner, and it’s not restricted to newcomers.

Asked to provide ‘a bit of music’ with a historical theme for the occasion, Peter Harris is not one to let pass an opportunity to add value. He’s gone into the vaults to unearth some of his own material that hasn’t seen the light of day for three decades.

And that day was a Melbourne Moomba Festival production and the ABC back in the mid-1980’s when he had been commissioned to create a special program expressing aspects of the Burke and Wills expedition through music.

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Thanks to the commission, over the course of a week Mr Harris was given access to boxes of material at the Victorian State Library, the official repository of memorabilia from the expedition that attempted to forge a route from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria back in 1861.

Mr Harris admits he’s hopeless with dates, but this production offers a history lesson from a totally different angle.

Of course there’s a Tenterfield connection. (When is there not?)

Mr Harris said there was a division in the the exploration party before it even left Melbourne and the designated expedition doctor sided with those who pulled out. Dr Hermann Beckler – a general practitioner and pharmacist in Tenterfield at the time – put up his hand and got the job.

Mr Harris calls the confusion over the little letter in a bottle buried under the dig tree at Cooper Creek ‘a great moment of tragedy in Australian history'. Go along to Sunday’s event to hear the full story, but Mr Harris said Burke and his three companions Wills, King and Gray had struck out from Cooper Creek for the final leg of their journey with three months of supplies, hoping to reach the Gulf of Carpentaria.

They left instructions that if they hadn’t returned in that time they would have picked up a steamer in the Gulf and for the remainder of the expedition party to return south. Swampland prevented Burke from actually reaching the Gulf but he encountered tidal rivers so he knew he was close.

He returned to Coopers Creek (after losing his travel companion to scurvy and death and taking out a day to dig a grave in stony soil) just a matter of hours after the remainder of the expedition party had decamped, leaving a letter and some supplies under the dig tree.

Further communication via letters buried under the dig tree were missed and Burke also perished. His experiences with missed opportunities through gravedigging possibly contributed to his final instructions to “don’t dig a hole, read a phrase from the bible and leave me a pistol”.

Tenterfield’s Dr Bekler survived. More than a hundred drawings by botanist and illustrator Ludwig Becker described the trip but he succumbed to scurvy as well, at Menindee. Mr Harris said some of the pictures are as detailed as a tick in the armpit of a gecko, literally. 

The Melbourne Historical Society’s launch of the expedition back then would be akin to planning a trip to Mars now, he said, and was years in the planning. It was the first time camels were brought into Australia, (Becker’s paintings show the camels and horses didn’t get on, and had to travel in separate files), and Mr Harris uncovered lots of interesting suggestions and recommendations for the trip, including one letter offering cocaine as a ‘pick-me-up’ for the journey.

Mr Harris put all his findings into song and his production – aided by the top jazz musicians of the time – was broadcast on ABC Radio with excerpts from the play performed at the Moomba Festival. 

Thirty years later we can again enjoy a history lesson set to music, and mix and mingle with residents new and old. It all happens this Sunday, June 3 with lunch in the School of Arts Banquet Hall from noon.

The cost is $20 per person. Reserve your place with Phyllis Burton on 0413 484 558 for catering purposes.