Bonus: The Dogs Who Mapped Australia

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[00:00:07] This is BewilderBeasts, an infotainment show dedicated to inspiring curiosity for all ages

[00:00:14] by investigating the ways animals intersect at humanity.

[00:00:17] I am not a historian, an ethologist, a researcher, a scientist, a zoologist, a trained audio engineer,

[00:00:24] or an expert in... well... anything.

[00:00:26] Y'all, I'm lucky if I can remember to put my clean laundry in the dryer before it gets funky.

[00:00:31] And while I make every effort to present things as accurately as I can with a fun flair, I'm

[00:00:36] going to mess up.

[00:00:37] And that's okay.

[00:00:38] I hope I've given you a nice place to jump off from on your own adventures into curiosity,

[00:00:42] or at the very least, I've given you the key to win your next round of trivia.

[00:00:56] Hello, and welcome to BewilderBeasts.

[00:01:10] I'm your host, Melsimiki McGrath, recording 10,543 miles from Melbourne, Australia.

[00:01:18] And today, join me on a revisit of one of my favorite stories I did during my car talk

[00:01:22] days.

[00:01:23] At the time, the brothers with the questionable decisions took their dogs on an epic outback

[00:01:28] adventure in the early 1900s.

[00:01:31] Let's go!

[00:01:35] Okay, so the story I'm about to tell you is a long-form version of a piece I did

[00:01:50] with my friend and sister from another mista.

[00:01:54] Writing partner, all the things Dr. Sip Sipperstein.

[00:01:57] You may have heard her voice if you've ever listened to our short-lived series, Totally

[00:02:01] Possum, an animal podcast that would have David Attenborough clutching his pearls.

[00:02:06] We swear it's all the stories that we cannot do in any other professional parts of

[00:02:14] our lives.

[00:02:15] But it's for the animal folk that we come across.

[00:02:21] The things that we talk about behind closed doors that people just don't maybe expect

[00:02:26] professional animal people to talk about, like fish orgies that are so loud they deafen

[00:02:33] other marine life.

[00:02:34] Things like that.

[00:02:36] So we used to write together for a pet blog for car talk.

[00:02:42] Yes, that car talk.

[00:02:44] And it was a ton of fun.

[00:02:46] And we did this story on two dogs in an old-timey photograph that we kept coming across.

[00:02:52] And the story of these two dogs had to be the feature of the car talk piece, obviously.

[00:02:58] That's what we were hired to do.

[00:03:00] Actually hired is a stretch.

[00:03:04] We were volunteered.

[00:03:07] So when I was looking at things I wish I knew a little bit more about for the summer episode

[00:03:13] so we were doing over here on Patreon, I went back to those photos on that car talk blog

[00:03:17] about Clive and Francis Bertels or Burtless.

[00:03:20] I'm not entirely sure how to pronounce it.

[00:03:23] There's a couple of jokes that work really well if his name is Burtless instead of

[00:03:27] Bertels.

[00:03:28] So I may be interchanging them.

[00:03:32] But it all started for us, for me, with the dogs.

[00:03:36] And the dogs take a proverbial backseat to this entire bizarre, intense inspirational story

[00:03:43] that I wouldn't have known any of if it wasn't for the shirtless Bertless and his

[00:03:50] bespectacled bulldog, Dinkum.

[00:03:52] The dog's name was Dinkum.

[00:03:54] Y'all, this story is nuts.

[00:03:55] And for that I will tell the story the way I know how.

[00:03:59] So buckle in y'all, it's gonna be a bumpy ride without seatbelts, without safety regulations

[00:04:04] or roof.

[00:04:05] Alright, let's do this.

[00:04:16] Clive Bertels, owner of Bulldog Mixed Wouser, along with his famous adventurer brother in

[00:04:21] the time when adventuring was both a profession and probably an alibi, with his dog Dinkum

[00:04:28] did something unheard of in 1912.

[00:04:30] They drove a car across the Australian outback.

[00:04:34] Big whoop you might say.

[00:04:35] And today, that might be fair to say, but this was 1912 before anything, honestly,

[00:04:44] before roads and before Francis Bertels, at least according to the photographic evidence

[00:04:50] of the day, discovered shirts.

[00:04:52] That man single-handedly likely created the shirtless man a day calendar.

[00:04:57] Honestly every photo of him I could find was Sam's shirt.

[00:05:01] If you google Francis Bertels, even in his Wikipedia page, you get a photo of him looking like

[00:05:07] a weathered old timey shirtless traveler from National Geographic.

[00:05:11] A stunning photo!

[00:05:13] Or you get pictures of cars that he drove.

[00:05:17] So you know those inflation calculators where you put in $1.15 and $18.79 equals how many

[00:05:25] billions of dollars in 2023?

[00:05:28] Well I feel like time crossing a continent by wheels is the inverse of that.

[00:05:34] A 1912 cross-country trip with Wouser and Dinkum took over five months.

[00:05:41] But today you could do it in a day, 12 to 13 hours and that is the same distance

[00:05:46] or at least the same amount of time going definitely the speed limit and not 10 to 20

[00:05:52] miles an hour faster on modern paved highway roads from mid-coast Maine to Cleveland, Ohio

[00:05:58] to go to college.

[00:06:00] Hypothetically speaking, it's a long day but it's a doable day.

[00:06:06] When you're 18.

[00:06:07] It's not something I could do today.

[00:06:11] But one other thing to consider which I never did prior to 2020, remember all

[00:06:16] those wild fires?

[00:06:18] Not wild flowers, those are different.

[00:06:20] Those were all killed in the wildfires.

[00:06:22] The wildfires in 2020 in Australia.

[00:06:25] Baby koalas needed to be saved, trees and rare plants needed canine conservation teams

[00:06:30] to go sniff out surviving plants and creatures.

[00:06:33] Yeah we tend to think of Australia as a large island.

[00:06:38] Y'all, one news outlet I think it was USA Today, I could check it, I'm not gonna.

[00:06:45] Look a map of Australia and all of those fires burning at the time and they overlay it over

[00:06:52] the United States and it was basically the same size.

[00:06:57] Australia is freaking huge and we just don't tend to see it as big as it is because maps

[00:07:03] have some weaknesses especially as you get further from the equator things look smaller.

[00:07:09] So if you picture Australia right as the same size as the United States.

[00:07:14] The Outback, the famous Outback would basically be the entire Midwest to West Coast except for

[00:07:21] San Francisco South just of like California right?

[00:07:25] The Eastern seaboard would not count and the deep south would be un-outbacked.

[00:07:31] That's it, Minnesota, Outback, Wyoming, Outback, Tennessee all the Outback which will probably

[00:07:37] be the subject of the next books that they banned because it has the word out in

[00:07:40] it.

[00:07:41] Henry Dorothy, you're not in Kansas anymore.

[00:07:44] Girl, you're in the Outback.

[00:07:46] So now you know how large a cross-country trek would be in Australia like how large of an

[00:07:54] endeavor that would be made even longer without road snacks rest stops or Starbucks and it's

[00:07:59] made even more torturous because they didn't have roads, non-zip no roads another thing

[00:08:05] to consider regarding the car of Ford Flanders Touring Car that had a whopping 20 horsepower.

[00:08:14] Today the average car is around 200 horsepower.

[00:08:18] That baby, that baby Flanders Touring Car, that beast of a model got you up to a maximum

[00:08:24] speed of 40 miles an hour and I'm guessing that may have been almost all downhill with

[00:08:31] a convenient breeze from behind.

[00:08:34] And though these cars back then they did have some cool bonus features that we do not have

[00:08:39] today, including for example you could just pop off some tires, add a tread and you have

[00:08:46] a tractor.

[00:08:49] You could also take off one tire like a Lego car and then put on a thresher.

[00:08:55] Y'all a thresher is a tool farmers use to literally separate the wheat from the chaff.

[00:09:01] It is a giant machine that beats wheat shafts into submission essentially making all the

[00:09:06] seeds just fall out.

[00:09:08] Yeah, you just pop off a tire of a little touring car in the 1900s, have some old-timey

[00:09:14] music playing on the audio phone and bada bing bada boom off the thrusher.

[00:09:20] For when you need wheat right now.

[00:09:23] They didn't even have transformers then and they kind of invented transformers.

[00:09:30] After five months on zero roads in the early 1900s they came back with OG tires.

[00:09:37] They don't make them like they used to.

[00:09:41] These cars picture an old-timey car.

[00:09:43] It's just that.

[00:09:45] Just off-roading in the same way commercials today say you could do with a land rover.

[00:09:50] But instead of with old-timey wheels lack of old-timey roads and definitely no old-timey

[00:09:55] seatbelts or roofs or most of a door.

[00:10:02] One example of how rough this was to travel by car is going down the outback they had

[00:10:09] to cross a ravine and so to get this car down the ravine they had to jackass style

[00:10:15] tie giant logs to the back of their car in the hopes that it would catch on things

[00:10:21] on their way down and that catching of logs on things like rocks would help keep them from

[00:10:27] a prolonged and certain death.

[00:10:30] So while the burtles lightly likely shirtless hurdled down the ravine no seatbelts no windows

[00:10:37] no roof they just said bottoms up and went for it.

[00:10:41] And speaking of no windows roof seatbelts functional doors etc let's talk about the

[00:10:45] little protection that these two men born in the right era for them for sure had

[00:10:51] been wearing.

[00:10:52] In most photos I could find Francis the older brother and adventurer having a little leather

[00:10:57] hat that looked more like a swim cap or what my grandma would put on to keep her hair from

[00:11:01] getting wet after she spent hours getting her curls set, a beard, a swanky watch,

[00:11:07] a neckerchief to presumably protect his skin from the sun in the outback and as

[00:11:13] noted earlier no shirt.

[00:11:15] The guy however seemed to spare zero expense on making sure his dog, Dinkum, was fully protected.

[00:11:22] He had goggles on his bulldog becks to protect him from the elements most concerning at

[00:11:26] the time was dust and dirt and rocks kicking into the car because again no roof no sides

[00:11:32] no bueno.

[00:11:33] Though to be perfectly honest protecting dogs eyes is something I wish more people

[00:11:38] would do.

[00:11:39] Just at the very least please please please please please putting on my professional dog training

[00:11:44] thing here.

[00:11:45] As much as your dogs love sticking their heads out the windows when you're driving 16 miles

[00:11:49] an hour down the any roads please keep your windows up enough so only maybe their little

[00:11:55] nose can get out and they can get some wind but even that it's better to keep the whole

[00:11:59] dog in the whole car after working at an animal hospital for years and my bestie

[00:12:05] is a vet who has had to try to save unsavable eyeballs from tiny rocks kicking up on

[00:12:10] roads directly into their beloved dog's face.

[00:12:14] It really isn't a good idea to let Rover rove with his head completely out the window.

[00:12:20] I have seen some things which is honestly more than we can say for some of the dogs

[00:12:26] vision after a preventable accident but Dinkum lived his life as the OG dog is co-pilot

[00:12:33] dog.

[00:12:34] He had his little goggles for protection, he had his coat on which is more than

[00:12:37] we can say for his owner and one of my favorite things to come across was the lexicon of these

[00:12:42] dogs names.

[00:12:44] The words wouser and dinkum.

[00:12:46] Dinkum I was concerned.

[00:12:47] I was worried that might be a very non bewilderbeast friendly word to lexicon eyes but it is

[00:13:00] actually downright charming compared to the other one.

[00:13:04] Dinkum in Aussie slang means genuine or authentic which is not what we found for the name wouser.

[00:13:13] That word went on a journey y'all a journey.

[00:13:17] Wouser originally meant unsavory things as the derogatory word prostitute which is a word

[00:13:22] used to demean sex workers.

[00:13:25] It later evolved question mark to mean obtrusively puritanical or prude which I guess is one

[00:13:34] way the opposite of what they thought it meant 20 years before.

[00:13:38] Anyway, later it became to be an adorable 50s expression for the comic book hero got the

[00:13:44] bad guy.

[00:13:45] Wouser, G-Wiz, Golly G.

[00:13:48] And I stopped there at the 50s because I truly fear only one thing and that is urban dictionary

[00:13:53] definitions.

[00:13:55] And unfortunately that's all I could find on these two road tripping rovers which

[00:14:00] is a shame but it was the 1900s and it wasn't like they had insta things where they could

[00:14:05] just record every moment of their journey.

[00:14:08] Francis and Clive had to film and had to be careful with their shots because in the

[00:14:14] infamous words of Eminem you only get one shot.

[00:14:18] And yet he still made shirtless choices.

[00:14:22] But here's where we get a bit more into the person that we have the most information

[00:14:26] on and that's Francis Bertels.

[00:14:28] Such side note, he also married a Francis.

[00:14:33] So two Francis Bertels in the same house.

[00:14:36] No wonder why these two lovebirds divorced two years later.

[00:14:40] No one knew who the male was addressed to.

[00:14:45] A few years later he did go the other direction and married Naya, who was the only lady in

[00:14:50] his sidecar for the rest of his days which his days were really full y'all.

[00:14:55] Check all of this.

[00:14:57] He has lived a whole life.

[00:15:00] Francis wasn't just some adventurer who tried to cross Australia once and then became a footnote

[00:15:05] in a car talk blog piece in 2015.

[00:15:08] Prior to the epic brother road trip he had already crossed Australia by bicycle seven

[00:15:15] times and he went around its perimeter twice.

[00:15:20] Check this.

[00:15:21] And after Christmas Day in 1906, Aussie summer because that's how the southern hemisphere

[00:15:28] works, he mounted up regulator style on a push bike in Perth and became the first person

[00:15:34] to bicycle the country from west to east across the Nullabar Plains.

[00:15:39] What is the Nullarbor Plains?

[00:15:41] Well, this is a word that likely translates to knull, no, arbor, trees.

[00:15:49] The Nullarbor Plains is an arid 1,100 kilometer or 684 miles long, half as long as the first

[00:15:58] run of the Iditarod which weird comparison giving its vastly different conditions but I would

[00:16:03] say equally as bad.

[00:16:05] But Nullarbor is an improvement maybe in language.

[00:16:10] The indigenous people of the time prior to 1906 called it Un Deere meaning without water.

[00:16:20] So yeah, super not a big draw for destination vacations.

[00:16:25] It's basically a desert and he did this without roads or any tracks laid down for cyclists

[00:16:32] and as soon as he completed his journey he cashed in whatever fame and mula he got

[00:16:37] which was not very much and he got upgraded.

[00:16:40] He upgraded his push bike and decided, hmm let's ride the eastern half of Australia.

[00:16:46] He ended up writing a book, took lots of photos and poof 1909.

[00:16:51] Lonely, lonely lands was published launching him and his bicycles into fame.

[00:16:59] He ended up breaking his own records for crossing and circumnavigating Australia.

[00:17:04] That land that has pyromaniac predatory birds out like fires for funsies to get a flambé dinner,

[00:17:11] spiders the size of tennis rackets that will for sure murder you and one guy yelling about

[00:17:16] how this isn't a knife, that's a knife and I assume his brother was watching his

[00:17:21] dog dinkum through all of this because I saw it zero photos of a dog in a sidecar

[00:17:25] for a bicycle.

[00:17:26] Or better yet, a bicycle made for two but a mutt on the back with goggles and

[00:17:31] a little bell.

[00:17:34] In 1921 the Australian government, the same government by the way that went to war and

[00:17:41] lost against their national bird the flightless emu called in a favor.

[00:17:46] They needed to plan a railway line so they volunteered Francis to check out the land

[00:17:52] for them.

[00:17:53] Hey Francis we skirt so can you just like bike across until us were put on the railroad

[00:18:02] tracks.

[00:18:04] According to which car.org a source where I got a lot of today's information and do

[00:18:09] quote heavily from for the rest of this piece so do check out that piece.

[00:18:14] Um quote, the trip ended in disaster north of Tennant Creek as the vehicle hit a

[00:18:20] stump spilling fuel which immediately burst into flames and the car exploded.

[00:18:29] And that wasn't his only had a bad day journey.

[00:18:33] Again, according to which car.org quote leaving London later than originally planned the

[00:18:39] party got away in early February 1927 and raced across Europe climbing the

[00:18:44] snow filled passes of Yugoslavia and Bulgaria then bogged down in the muddy

[00:18:49] fields of western Turkey and all the time amongst a host of other mechanic

[00:18:53] problems the radiator leaked like a sieve requiring daily repairs arrested

[00:18:58] as spies in eastern Turkey.

[00:19:01] They were held for a few days before being allowed to continue onto Beirut where

[00:19:05] they replaced the third diff in the imperial I have no idea what that means

[00:19:10] before pushing on to Damascus in Persia now Iran one of the party was forced

[00:19:15] to leave because of dysentery but by the time Bertels and Ellis got to

[00:19:20] India they were well behind time the car was broken and the monsoon

[00:19:24] season had begun the trip was abandoned and Bertels returned to London end quote

[00:19:31] I think the worst trip I was ever on was when I got stuck in a snowstorm and had

[00:19:40] to sleep in a motel like this is a whole level of awful and this is before

[00:19:48] we had things like medicine for dysentery but it gets worse when he retried

[00:19:58] this run he was really trying to get from London to Australia and break a

[00:20:03] world record when he retried this run with his car the following year this

[00:20:09] happened again which car quote he was bogged on numerous occasions in sand

[00:20:16] near frozen in snow drifts at least twice washed downstream in a snow melt

[00:20:21] flooded river and pursued by bandits but worst of all he was now suffering from

[00:20:27] malaria presumably without a shirt continuing the quote in Calcutta he

[00:20:35] met a Canadian Percy Stollery who is peddling a bike around the world

[00:20:38] teaming up and after rebuilding the sundowner that was his car once more

[00:20:43] the two intrepid adventurers set off for their crossing of the many channels of

[00:20:47] the mighty Ganges River which back then had no bridges across it at all the man

[00:20:55] powered but they chose at one point almost sank leaving both Stollery and

[00:21:00] Bertels soaked and the bean half submerged the bean was the car so the

[00:21:07] car is half submerged these guys are soaked in the Ganges River but that's

[00:21:13] nothing compared to what lay ahead the Naga Hills which straddle the border

[00:21:17] between modern-day India and Burma here there are no roads no vehicle had ever

[00:21:23] dared to try to cross them they dug sweated and dug some more as they built

[00:21:29] a road for most of the way up and over the high mountains while local native

[00:21:34] tribesmen carried extra fuel and oil but downright refused to dig or do

[00:21:39] anything else which honestly fair the quote continues the flooding rains of

[00:21:49] the monsoon arrived inundating rivers wiping away long sections of track and

[00:21:54] washing away bridges then in an exhausted state both men began to suffer

[00:21:58] again from malaria at this point a customs official impounded their car

[00:22:04] until duty was paid but again Bertels and his traveling companion were

[00:22:09] broke a telegram to the Australian Prime Minister released the car and two

[00:22:15] days later Bertels and his companion headed to Brisbane Sydney and Melbourne

[00:22:21] and quote so when I say and these more brilliant authors Ron and Viv Moon

[00:22:29] of which car.org say adventuring was not the barrel grill shoot all day

[00:22:35] and sleep in a motel six but make it look like you're doing hard work

[00:22:38] sleeping inside a carcass of a wildebeest which kind of sort of

[00:22:42] happened and bear girls got a lot of trouble for it thank you to the

[00:22:46] magic of editing that is not what was happening in the early 1900s

[00:22:51] Francis Bertels was the grandfather the inspiration of shows today

[00:22:57] like alive and given the shirt thing naked in a frayed

[00:23:02] and going to end this episode with a quote from an Australian company

[00:23:07] the overlanders which is best as I can tell is a mix between

[00:23:10] outdoorsy US LO bean and our REI but just for cars and bikes

[00:23:16] and making rustic travel easy with things like rooftop tents

[00:23:20] and hammocks and other things you may need for setting up a

[00:23:22] convenient camp on a bike trip through the outback or on your car

[00:23:27] they had this to say about one of the manual that we just heard a whole lot

[00:23:32] about today in today's episode 1912's Francis Bertels quote

[00:23:37] Francis Bertels was one of the great original overlanders

[00:23:41] an inspirational character whose overlanding achievements are the stuff of legend

[00:23:46] Bertels made goggles for his dogs while they're in Dinkum to protect their eyes

[00:23:50] as they accompanied him hurdling along in an open top vehicle

[00:23:54] the goggled dog is the inspiration for our logo paying homage to Bertels

[00:23:59] and his inspirational achievements but we can't all be as hard

[00:24:05] I love this so much

[00:24:07] but we can't all be a hard bastard like Francis Bertels

[00:24:11] and in this century we don't have to

[00:24:16] check out our premium rooftop accommodation options adventure seriously

[00:24:21] and get a good sleep doing it end quote

[00:24:25] and my god if Francis Bertels could have had a good night's sleep

[00:24:31] from this kind of equipment or even

[00:24:34] quantine for malaria like a good genitonic

[00:24:39] I think he may have made it past the age of 58

[00:24:45] by the end of it Francis had circled or crossed Australia

[00:24:49] 88 documented times and he made the England to Australia car route

[00:24:55] possible and his wife was able to accompany Francis on many of these journeys

[00:25:02] and at the time that he got sick and eventually died

[00:25:06] they were arranging to make a caravan journey through Queensland

[00:25:10] after he recovered from illness

[00:25:13] so maybe we should all be a little bit more like Francis

[00:25:16] name our dogs something ridiculous protect our dogs eyes

[00:25:20] be shirtless a little more but wear some sunscreen

[00:25:22] and get outside and live your life to the fullest

[00:25:26] my god what a life

[00:25:40] all right everyone thank you so much for joining me today on the Bue Wilderbees

[00:25:44] Patreon exclusive for July my god this year is just flying by

[00:25:50] thank you so much for supporting this show this one is just for you

[00:25:54] and if there are topics that you're interested in for the rest of the year

[00:25:57] send them in especially if it's an historical animal who changed the world

[00:26:01] animals who helped humans or really just a vague animal tie-in with an interesting

[00:26:06] story behind it send it in why not or any wacky animals in the news

[00:26:10] send it in to be wilderbeespod at gmail.com

[00:26:14] maybe not with the tweeting

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[00:26:31] i am so tired and i gotta go to work

[00:26:33] i am melissmykumacrath with mudstuff media

[00:26:35] now go get curious

[00:26:37] i got today's information from abc.net.au Burke and Wills.net

[00:26:45] they are other adventures they were actually famous for circumnavigating

[00:26:49] I believe Australia with camels so they may come back up in a later episode maybe not

[00:26:55] I don't know mcecars.com witchcar.com and cartalk.com

[00:27:02] I also heavily pulled from wikipedia when it came to like some of his

[00:27:07] death stuff and i was able to pull the sydney mourning herald's announcement of his death

[00:27:15] so the sydney mourning herald on frances burtels death

[00:27:20] links as always are in the description of today's episode which i sometimes forget

[00:27:23] to put in patreon because it's not as intuitive as using bus sprout for the regular stuff so if

[00:27:29] I forget ping me um intro music is tiptoe out the back by dan libowitz interstitial is always by mk2

[00:27:36] an additional music is provided by pixabay and freesound.org that also goes for the wacky sound

[00:27:41] effects that you may or may not be hearing i always record this before i add music and sound

[00:27:46] effects so i'm trying to cover all the bases ahead of time don't forget to like and subscribe

[00:27:50] review share with your curious friends now is the time to do it and thank you so much for

[00:27:57] listening and i will see you guys next month have a great summer bye bye

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