The Hume and Hovell Expedition of 1824

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So today's subject is one that any of our Australian listeners will know well, I have no doubt. It's quite a well known story there, and in some ways this story reads a little bit like a sitcom, although it also involves some very serious physical hardship, some of which sounds just awful to me. It is about the expedition that really established some of the earliest knowledge that European colonists had about the interior of the Australian continent. And just a heads up, we're going to talk about things like land grants in this episode, specifically land grants given to Europeans who moved to Australia, and we won't go into it every time for context, but obviously that land wasn't really Britton's to give. And this is a situation where colonialism kind of blots out the indigenous peoples of an area and nation in terms of the historical record. And also there is often a lot of violence, disease in genocide involved in that The other thing I read recently. My understanding is that in Aboriginal culture you can on own land the land owns you, so there's like an extra added layer of just kind of ignorance and insult to it um. There are also a lot of instances where the two men involved in this story are said to have discovered places. Hello, the people who lived there already knew they were there. Uh So, of course, once again that means from the European point of view, it became known, But discovery isn't really the right word. And the two men at the center of this story are William Hilton Hovel and Hamilton's Hume. So we're gonna start by talking about their lives before they became expedition collaborators. We'll start with William Hilton Hovell, who was born April six and Yarmouth, Norfolk, England. Even as a very young boy, he was working at sea. His father was part owner and captain of a trading vessel that ran from England to the Mediterranean, and that ship was captured by the French in when William was only eight. William's father was held as a prisoner of war for more than two years because they didn't have any income from his father, William had to start working when he was only ten. This would have obviously been a hard life, but according to one obituary on Hovel, he was quote made of the right kind of stuff for life at sea, and that is sort of reflected in his first command, which was at the very young age of twenty two in eight o eight. Prior to that, he was mate on a ship called Zenobia, which made a trading voyage to Peru, and then his commander commission was aboard the Juno, which was a trading ship that was bound for Rio de Janeiro. After that he was given command of another ship, the Titia, which also made the journey to Brazil, and then he led a trading mission to Kittiez, Spain, on a ship called the John and Thomas. On May tenth, eighteen ten, Hovell married Esther Arndell, and in the autumn of the following year he applied for a land grant in New South Wales, Australia. Estor's father had already lived in Australia for decades by that time. Hovell was granted his land parcel, and he his wife and their two children sailed to Australia aboard the Earl Spencer. They arrived on October nine, eight thirteen. William Hovell and his family lived in Cumberland County, which was founded in sevent and named for Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland, who was the brother of King George the Third in the eighteen teens. When Hovell arrived, that was the main area that English immigrants had moved to. Much of the rest of Australia was pretty much unknown to Europeans. It's a little unclear happened when the Trial arrived in New Zealand, but it definitely did not go well. According to Hovell's cruise accounts, mau reforces attacked the crew of the Trial and Hovel and his men fought their way back to the ship and then headed straight back to Sydney. After this, Hovel commanded several more trade missions, but ultimately turned in a life at sea for a life on a farm in eighteen nineteen, and he stayed there for several years. So now we will pause Hovel's story and we'll talk about the life of his partner in this tail. Hamilton's Hume was born on June His parents were Andrew h Hume and Elizabeth Kennedy Hume. Andrew was the Commissary General of New South Wales and had moved to Australia the same year that Hamilton's was born. He had arrived with Elizabeth on a frigate called the Rue. Hamilton was born in Paramtta, which at the time was a town in New South Wales. Today it's more a suburb of Sydney. Hamilton's was educated at home by his mother for the most part. In eighteen twelve, when Hamilton's was fifteen, the family moved roughly sixty kilometers south to the town of Appen, where Andrew Hume had been given a sizeable land grant. This meant that they were in an area that had not really been developed by European inhabitants, and for Hume, being out in the country sparked his interest in exploration. When he reached the age of eighteen, Hume was given his own land grant in Appen, and he was described in an account of his life as unquote accomplished bushman by the age of seventeen, and he often took his young brothers with him on exploring trips around the bush One such expedition was a trip through the area surrounding the town of Barrima in the southern Highlands of New South Wales. This is not to be confused with Barrima, which exists in the Northern Territory of Australia today. That's quite a long way away from where Hume was exploring. Hume took notes on the land as he traveled, and when he returned to Happen he shared the information that there was good potential for some farming in this area surrounding Barrema. Yeah, a lot of these explorations were like can people move there again European people, Could we have farms and agriculture? Could we support ourselves? So that's a lot of the focus of these these explorations and expeditions. Because of Hume's reputation, he was selected by Governor Lachlan mcquarie in eighteen seventeen to accompany a surveyor named me In and traveled the southern country of New South Wales. Those two men are credited with discovering Lake Bathurst and the Goulburn Plains, but as we mentioned at the top of the episode, discovery not really the right word here. They mapped the area for the British colonial governors. Hume went on several similar trips at the behest of Governor McQuary over the next several years with various other travelers. He explored Jervis Bay, the Clyde River and Yes Janes. The start of the expedition we're talking about today began and initially sputtered out, when Sir Thomas Brisbane, who succeeded Macquarie as governor, wanted to send an expedition to the area between Lake George and Bass Strait in the early eighteen twenties, and Hamilton's Hume was recommended as the perfect man for the job. Brisbane took that recommendation and Hume was chosen to lead the project, which was envisioned as starting at Wilson's Promontory on the southern coast of Australia or Cape how at the southeastern tip of the continent, and then move north to Sydney. But regardless of route, that expedition was going to be extremely costly and Brisbane was ultimately unable to secure financing for it. Hume had been really enthused about the idea, though, and after Brisbane's funding fell through he started a plan to create a similar expedition on his own, this one to the body of water we now know as the Spencer Gulf west of Adelaide, Australia. But Hume ran into that same problem money. He just could not afford to finance a trip like that on his own. And then a friend of Humes named Alexander Berry, who was a surgeon and explorer who had been born in Scotland and moved to Australia, had an idea to connect Hume with another explorer who might be able to help, and that is how Hamilton Hume was introduced to William Hovell. Before we dive into the time they spent together, let's pause for a quick sponsor break. While William Hovell had done some exploring overland, his expertise and experience really was at sea, but his ability to navigate was what was really valuable for a trip into unmapped areas. I say unmapped really there were some sketch maps available, but they really didn't know specific details about the terrain. When Huvell and Hugh met that you found shared enthusiasm enough that Huvel offered to not only join the project but to split the cost of mounting the expedition. Hovell sold some of his land to raise the money, and Hume sold a valuable iron plow. This is something that would have been in high demand in Australia where people were starting their farms, and not something they could manufacture there but had to have shipped from overseas. They also received from assistance from the government in the form of a tent and some saddles and supplies for their crew, which was made up in part with convicted men who were assigned to their service. Once all the logistics were in place, the team assembled at Hume's home in Appen. They left there on Saturday October two. The six men who accompanied human Hovel are described in accounts of the day as quote assigned servants, so that meant they were convicted men who had been transported to the British penal colonies in Australia for various petty crimes. The men assigned to Hamilton's Hume were Claude Bossla, Henry Angel and James Fitzpatrick. Hovel's three assigned men were Thomas Boyd, William Ballard and Thomas Smith. Yeah, there are some accounts that suggest that, um I read one that said that at least one of the men had actually been a freeman who had immigrated but then also had some sort of indenture to the government or something. It was a little unclear to me what was going on there, but uh, these were, like we said, men that had been assigned to them. The team had two carts loaded with supplies, as well as several steer and horses. So to get a sense of how much they packed for an anticipated four month journey, here's what Hovell noted in his journal. Quote six hundred forty pounds flower, two hundred pounds pork, one hundred pounds sugar, fourteen pounds t eight pounds tobacco, twelve pounds soap, salt, coffee, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, for myself and three men, together with a musket and ammunition for each man. This is exclusively for ourselves, as Mr Hume has supplied, as I understand, the same quantity. Hume also added a cart, a steer, and two horses to the cause, and Hovel provided a cart, four steer and one horse. They also brought along dogs to help with hunting game, and sketch maps of the area that we mentioned just a moment ago. Those included information that had been shared with colonists by Indigenous Australians. The initial leg of the trip was from Appen to Yas and as they made that segment of the trip, they visited with friends along the way. They often had meals with acquaintances. Hamilton's brother John was with them for that first stretch. It took ten days to travel roughly two hundred kilometers. Hovel and Hume estimated the distance at a hundred twenty three point five miles. The destination of that first stretch was a station Hume had set up at Yes. They got there around one pm on October. In addition to seeing acquaintances and friends, the team also identified problems with their carts, which they were able to have serviced as they were passing through these areas that were populated with colonists rather than brush. Yeah, it was a definitely through populated area in that first chunk. The following day, after they got to the station, Human Hovel went to Lake George's, about twelve miles from the station, to calculate the distance and to just observe the land. They returned to the station that same day at dusk. The team had intended to leave the Ya station on Saturday, October sixte there was inclement weather and, according to the team account quote, a native guide who had promised to help them move south through the area was a no show, so they didn't actually begin until Sunday the seventeen, and they set out without a guide early into the trip. On October nineteenth. After traveling eleven miles that day, they quote found themselves on the banks of the Murrambijee River, but this posed a problem. According to their published account quote, the river, however, is so swollen by the late rains that it appears utterly impassable, and it is evidently rising. Human Houvel estimated that the river was thirty to forty yards across, and in this account that they kept they said the current was between five and six knots an hour. So initially they made camp where they were, and they couldn't cross the next day either, but they did manage to catch some fresh fish and eat it. On October twenty two, seeing no evidence that the river was going to diminish or slow, they decided that they had to go ahead and attempt a crossing. As they put it quote without further delay and whatever the risk. But the trees around the river were water logged from the rains, so they weren't buoyant and they couldn't be used like to float across. So they stripped one of the carts down and they covered it with a tarpaulin to create a raft that could be passed back and forth across the river if they could attach it to a rope that was anchored on the opposite shore. Hume and one of the assistants took on the task of swimming across the river to affix this rope, which they had to carry across by biting it as they swam. Per their account quote. This was not done without great difficulty and some danger. They were successful, though they landed farther downstream than they had initially intended. But once the setup was completed and they had the rope, they started moving supplies across the river in that raft. They walked and swam the animals across with a tow rope. After all the time that it took to get the supplies and the other cart over, one of the steer rolled on its back and made a lot of the crossing in that position. Once they got everything and all the animals across, they made camp and they slept on the river bank. I sort of feel like that's all I would have the energy to do after all that. Yeah, I mean they talked about how it took you know, five hours just to get all the stuff across, and then the animals were a couple of hours more, uh, because they couldn't do them all at once since they didn't have enough men to make sure everything worked. So that's like a full work day of just crossing this river of terror. But their troubles were just the beginning. The day after the river crossing, the expedition traveled ten miles and ended up at kind of a mountain barrier. Hume and Hovell disagreed on the way to go to try to get around this obstacle. They couldn't go straight up. They were really at like a rock face. Here is the description of what happened from the jointly published account that they put out some years later. Sunday, October up to two o'clock. The day was spent in a laborious but ineffectual attempt to discover a pass through the mountain barrier. In their advance. The party now separated Mr. Hovell, with one of the men following a chain of ponds in the direction northwest for four or five miles, when these ponds were found to form a stream which made its escape through a chasm dividing the Northern and Western Barrier Ranges from each other. Down this chasm, the stream soon press sipated itself in numerous falls that it became impracticable to follow it further. They would now have returned to the tent, but lost their way in the attempt to find an emu, which they had killed on their way out. Hume, on the other hand, headed in a southwest direction. He had followed a chain of ponds, but unlike Hovel, Hume's route led to the discovery of a pass through the mountains into a valley. The jointly published account merely mentions that Hovel and Boyd rejoined the rest early in the morning, although biographies of Hume indicate he actually went out and found them. Yeah they did not find their way back by themselves. This trip continued to be quite difficult. Over and over they had trouble with crossing bodies of water and mountain ridges. The pack animals were difficult to steer through a lot of the treacherous areas, and in some cases, roots which had been described to them as passable by some of the indigenous people were possible for a person but not for a cart. They eventually had to ditch their carts, but that also meant that the animals each had to carry more weight, which slowed them down. They also were pretty plagued with bush flies, march flies, and mosquitoes. At one point, one of their accounts say something like I considered taking off all my clothes and just rolling in the dirt like they were miserable. Um, it's pretty clear that this entire trip was very difficult and tensions between human Hovel continued to bubble over throughout. On Monday, November eight, they had a very good day and Hovel and Hume became the first Europeans on record to see what was dubbed the Australian Alps. They had been hiking through various smaller ranges throughout the trip, and in the jointly published account it's described as follows, quote Mrs Hovell and Hume having ascended close to the stream with some difficulty, about half the height of this range in order to be the better enabled to decide as to their future opera. Rations were suddenly surprised by a sight to the utmost degree. Magnificent mountains, of a conoidal form and of an apparently immense height, and some of them covered about one fourth of their height with snow, were now seen, extending semi circularly from the southeast to south southwest at the supposed distance of about twenty miles. The sun was bright, it was about ten or eleven in the forenoon, and gave them an appearance the most brilliant. The mountains which they had hitherto seen, compared with these stupendous elevations, were no more than hillocks, from which also their forum, as well as their other general characters, rendered them not the less dissimilar. But that thrilling view led to an argument. For several days they were kind of moving along and taking in these mountains, and after having seen them, Hugh really thought they needed to alter their planned course, because he was certain they were going to end up trapped if they continued to head east as they had been. Huvell was not having it. He did not want to change the plan at all, and an epic fight ensued. This fight is often what people reference when they talk about this expedition, because while it involves too theoretically experienced explorers making fairly big decisions about their entire team safety, it devolved into what sounds like a petty sitcom construct. The two men just could not come to any kind of resolution on the matter, and so they decided, out in unmapped territory that neither of them had ever been in before, to just part ways then and there. Their equitable solution was to divide the supplies evenly, but that was actually a problem because when they had dropped their carts to streamline the journey, they had also eliminated any redundancies they could, so for a lot of things they needed to use every day, they only had one and that included the tent. These two men bickered so much about who had rights to the tent that they decided that the only solution was to cut it in half. But Human is said to have aborted that plan because he realized that half a tent is really still no tent in terms of the structure working, so he let Hovel take it. And then there was the frying pan. This is one of those details that does not appear in the jointly published account, but was mentioned in accounts by the attendants. The two men essentially got into a tug of war over who was going to get this fry pan, and in both pulling at it, they broke it into One had the handle and one had the plate, and they each took their broken peace and angrily parted ways. I'm curious about what this frying pan was made of. I know, like it's not a cast iron pan if they pulled it apart. Yeah, like I'm imagining in my head an iron skillet. And so we get to the part where it's just broken and half in a tug of war. The separation did not last long. Hume turned west as he had intended, Hovell continued toward the east, as had been the initially plotted course. Thomas Boyd was with Hubble, and once the navigator had calmed down, made the case that they were going to end up in snowy terrain if they kept on going as they were, and that they could easily get stuck there and died. They did not have the equipment for those kinds of conditions. Huvel acquiesced and they backtrack and then hurried to catch up with Hume. William Hovell's journal entry from that day does not mention the fight or the frying pan or splitting up. He merely states, quote, as we found it impossible to proceed any further in that direction without endangering the lives of both men and beasts, and perhaps to no purpose. I proposed that we should attempt a passage over the range west of us, and to endeavor to get fifty or sixty miles in a westerly direct him. Hume's account reads quote, I found we were getting in too high a country for the snowy mountains. The Australian Alps were observed crossing our course. I propose that we should take a direction more westerly in order to avoid the formidable barrier which threatens to interrupt our way. But Mr Howell dissented from my proposal. Hume goes on to describe their quote wrangling and disputing, each being positive of the correctness of his own opinion, although he does not mention the tent or the frying pan. Thomas Boyd's account lines up with the argument and Hume having proposed the better course, although he also notes quote I had to go with Mr Hovell. It is actually Henry Angel's account that is the one that offers up the details of the tent and the frying pan, which have been much repeated ever since. Coming up, we'll talk about Hume's ongoing quest to get to Australia's southern shore and the fraying health and nerves of really the entire team. First, though, we will hear from the sponsors that keep stuffy missed in history class. Going on November six, the group encountered a river about which Hume was quite excited, and according to Thomas Boyd, Hume named it the Hume River after his father. This was another potentially treacherous crossing. The river was wide, even wider than the other river that had given them trouble, and the water was whirling, but Hume was very eager to go to the other side. That started another conflict. Hubble thought that the expedition had discovered quite enough to please the governor and that they really could turn back for home. At this point, they were all getting tired, they were doing dangerous things, but Hume was insistent that they had not finished the intended route, and that he was going to make it to the coast. Hume built a boat by using their remaining tarpaulin and poles and branches cut from trees, and they spent the next day or so trying to find a good point for crossing. Hovell wrote in his journal that he followed the river north and found a crossing point, and at that point the tarp boat was built in the style of when he had made before on another expedition. His account is completely different than that of all the other men. Yeah, he definitely in his journals makes every good idea sound like his. Uh. The next river they encountered led to an even larger disagreement. Hovel really really thought that they were being rash and continuing to use this tarpaulin for a boat. He noted that there was only one tarp and that it was in rough shape, and in response, Hume reportedly yelled at him quote, I do not think it necessary to point out the defects in the tarpaulin to the men, and if they do not like to risk themselves in it, they can stop and be damned. He had a plan if the tarp failed to kill one of the pack animals and use it for food and then make the hide into a boat. He had no intention of falling short of completing the expedition, and he was going to do whatever it took to complete it. But that finish at all costs attitude was really starting to rattle the rest of the crew, and Claude Bosswa decided he agreed with Hovel, which made him furious. Hume is said to have grabbed Bosswa by the neck and threatened to throw him in the river if he chose not to cross. Although it looked like the two leads were going to split apart again and go their separate ways, hubbl decided to cross the river with the group at the last minute. This apparently also really irritated Hume, who had been kind of relieved that he was not going to have to be with Huvel any longer. Oh, it's hard to travel with the group. As the expedition reached its late stages, things were predictably more and more difficult. Rations were running low, they had lost all but one dog to hunt, and the terrain had taken a toll on the horses in the steer. During a particularly arduous effort to get through mountains and terrain just north of modern day Melbourne, sometimes crawling on hands and knees to do it. Because there was so much shrubbery and brush around them. The men really started to lose their spirit. Hubvill didn't want to keep going, but this time no one else did either except for Hume, and at this point a lot of their clothes had been destroyed by brush. These men were literally wearing rags at this point, their boots were falling apart, and they were starting to be severely malnourished. This is a situation where Hume really held all the cards. He was by far the most experienced explorer among them, and the others would have been unlikely to survive if they turned back and tried to make it home without him. But instead of merely being insistent, he made them a deal. He felt like they were very close to the coast, so he asked him to go just two more days, and if they hadn't hit their goal by then, they would all turn back together. Everyone agreed, a deal was struck, and fortunately the next couple of days were much easier than a lot of the trip. Then, on December six, the expedition saw what it believed to be a stretch of water on the horizon, and they pressed on until they reached the shore where they camped. At last, they had reached the destination, which they believed to be Western Port. This sounds like a wonderful, happy ending, but remember they had to turn around and march all the way back with only five weeks worth of supplies when the trip down had taken eleven weeks. As they were preparing for the return journey, James Fitzpatrick had an interaction with two indigenous men while he was out hunting duck. These two men approached him with spears, and he claimed he had accidentally fired his gun, although it was a misfire and hit no one. The two men chased him back to camp, and Hume engaged them by showing them his weapon and putting it on the ground, and then encouraging them to do the same through hand signals and miming. The indigenous men indicated to the members of the expedition that they had seen a ship in the harbor and colonists building shelter. That's believed to have been a reference to the Botany Bay Colony of the seventeen eighties. Hume later described the Aboriginal people they had encountered as quote friendly and peaceable. While Hovel kind of admired their life free of taxes and industrialization. He talks about them in this sort of idyllic way, but he also wrote that their conduct was quote very suspicious and treacherous. This entry and Hovel's journal may have seemed really foolish to him. The next morning, when the men returned with their families, their wives and their children just to visit. On December eighteenth, Hume, Hovel, and their attendants started their track home. This time, Hume knew the land well enough to skirt around the most difficult parts of the trip, so that sped things along. They had to kill one of their steer who was injured and couldn't make the trip. They ate the meat, which they really desperately needed, and then they used the hide to make shoes, which they also really desperately needed. Hume was fairly relentless and pushing the men every day, which he needed to do to get them all home before their reserves were totally depleted. There were several instances on the way home where the expedition met with indigenous communities. It seems like more so going back than when they they had headed south. Hume reported later in life that one of the men that they met along the way actually moved to Yes and would occasionally visit him over the years and they became friends. Hume called him Mickey. Hovel tended to opt out of these social interactions, and when they had these engagements with people who were part of indigenous communities, he would just kind of continue on the planned route and right ahead of Hume and usually wait for them to catch up. The trip back was almost rougher than the one on the way out, because despite sticking as often as they could with more gentle terrain, the men and the animals were all just depleted. Things looked really grave and early January until the team was able to relocate the carts, which were where they had left them. That eased the situation a little bit. They started to travel almost relay style, where some of the men would rest while others would go ahead and then rest while the others caught up. Finally, on January they had all made at home, although none of their dogs or steer were with them. Yeah, it's kind of heartbreaking. I didn't include a lot of it here, but they really described kind of the degrading state of the animal's health, because in some cases, you know, if the men weren't eating, neither were the animals. And they were still carrying these heavy loads and their their hooves were really breaking down. They had a very hard time. Not long after they had made their reports to the Governor tom As Brisbane about the land, the potential for farming in various areas, and the ruggedness of the terrain and others, the governor arranged for a follow up expedition by sea to the point they had reached on the continent southern shore. This actually took a little while to get going, but Huvell was part of that trip and it was discovered that the team had not actually made it to Western Ports as they had believed, but to Port Philip, which sits in a bay about seventy kilometers that's about forty three miles north of Western Port. This error was not really considered a problem or a failure. The expedition was successful in giving the colonial government a lot of information about the land, and that ultimately led to the founding of Melbourne the following decade. Both Hume and Hovel were given very sizeable land grants for their work Humes and Hovels. Conflict went on past the expedition as their accounts differred. For example, Hume claimed that he named the Hume River after his father, but Hubble claimed that he named the river after his colleague. Now it's known as the Murray River. Both men asserted that they had been the head of the expedition and had been responsible for the greater part of its successes. Anytime one of them was publicly lauded for the expedition, the other one became enraged and would publish pamphlets setting the records straight on their differing versions. Hume married a woman named Elizabeth Dight in November of eighteen twenty five, so about ten months after they got back. He also headed up several additional expeditions like this, and then he became magistrate Magistrate and Yes, a position that he served in for decades, right up until his death on April nineteenth, eighteen seventy three, at the age of seventy five. Despite being eleven years older than Hume. Hubvell outlived his colleague and fhrenem Me. He died on November nine, eighteen seventy five, at the age of eighty nine, so Yes for almost fifty years they just kind of seethed about each other. Today there are multiple monuments to the two of them and their expedition in various places in Australia. And if there's an afterlife, they're probably bickering about having to share credit on all of them. Yes, Oh, I have so many thoughts. We'll talk about those on Friday. UM. I also have listener mail. We got so much good listener mail about the French Republican Calendar. You may hear a lot of it, but this one made me laugh and laugh and laughs from our listener, Amanda. And it's titled manure Day, My Dad's Best Break, and Amanda writes, I heard my favorite holiday mentioned on your Republican Calendar episode and I nearly dropped my phone. Longtime listener, and this is not what I thought I would be writing about. My dad is a Christmas baby. When I was very little, I told him that I wished I had been born on a holiday too, and he assured me that I had that I was born on Manure Day. I had never heard of it and it was not on the calendar, but he explained that that's because it was a Canadian holiday. Well, That satisfied me, and I definitely told a lot of people that I was born on manure Day at Canadian holiday. It wasn't until fourth grade at a new school when I was telling somebody about it at recess and as the words came out of my mouth, I heard them. I mean I really heard them for the first time. The embarrassment. I confronted my dad about it, and he had no recollection of telling me this. That only made it worse. When I found out that manure Day was a real day, I felt vindicated, both personally and on behalf of my dad. I immediately went to look up whether I really was born on manure Day. I wasn't. Manure Day falls around December, while I am a springtime baby. But to me, my birthday will always be manure Day, a celebration of an important agricultural resource. I'm including pictures of my two cats, Bagheera and Shackleton. Yes, like that other Shackleton who was podcast subjec. There are five year old litter mates and take care of each other through thick and thin. Like Sir Ernest Shackleton, He's a bit of an explorer and he also has endurance. Shacky suffers from UM I'm probably gonna mispronounce this I sinophilic granuloma complex and sometimes has flare ups causing serious facial and tongue swelling and sores. But through it all he endures is the most affectionate can and if he's having a flare up and can't groom everyone in the house, Bagheera will pick up the slack and groom him. I feel lucky to have him on my crew. These two are like two cute. I can't deal with it. See Shackleton the adventure getting into the space ut of the tub and between the ceiling floor via the plumbing access in the wall, and also then being wishes thank you for being wonderful, Amanda. I love this story so much. This is the kind of thing that would go on, I am sure amongst my friends or something, and I probably would have told everyone my birthday was manure Day too. But it's very very charming um and it reclaims manure Day. I love that you celebrate it. It's an important resource day. Although I will also say that like I wish my birthday were on a holiday, thing is probably made by people who don't you know, realize that when your birthday is on a holiday, you also have to share that day with the holiday. Listen. One of us on this podcast turned twenty one a Memorial Day when all the bars closed. I'm just saying, big problem. So if you would like to write to us and share your perhaps frech Republican calendar birthday, you can do that at History Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. You can also find us as Missed in History pretty much everywhere, and if you would like to subscribe to the podcast and haven't, you can do that on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen into your favorite shows. H