Monday 25 June - 6pm : John McDouall Stuart

Next meeting - June Mon 25 at 6pm - at Adelaide Masonic Centre -

Guest Speaker from John McDouall Stuart Society ...

John McDouall Stuart (1815-1866)
Explorer and Freemason

Initiated in Lodge of Truth No.933 E.C. North Adelaide on 1 Aug 1859

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"In April 1860, during the second of his heroic attempts to cross Australia from south to north, John McDouall Stuart reached the almost waterless center of the continent... A thousand miles from anywhere, the spot was the very 'climax of desolation,' as Stuart's fellow explorer Ernest Giles once nicely put it, and Stuart and his men went through hell to get there. They were sick and ragged and half starved, and it had taken months, but at least they had the satisfaction of knowing that they had become the first outsiders to penetrate to the brutal heart of the continent.

... So you may imagine Stuart's surprise when, in the middle of this baking nowhere, he and his party encountered three Aboriginal men who greeted them by making a secret sign of the Freemasons. Stuart didn't say in his journal what the sign was, but it was clear from his amazed description that it was unlikely to have been coincidental."

(from Bill Bryson's book 'In a sunburned country' p.240)

Also see entry from McDouall Stuart's journal for Sat 23 June 1860 ...

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The Stuart Highway is the main south-north highway of Australia.

• McDouall Stuart's biography is included in ADB online ...
• "McDouall Stuart a Mason" - article in the Register newspaper, 21 May 1920, page 6i.
• McDouall Stuart Lodge No.219 in Alice Springs is named in his honour.