David Carnegie (explorer)
David Wynford Carnegie ( born March 23, 1871 in London, † November 21, 1900 in Kerifi, Nigeria ) was an important explorer and gold prospector in the early Australia.
Early life
David Carnegie was the fourth son of James Carnegie, 6th Earl of Southesk and his second wife, Susan Catherine Mary, daughter of the Earl of Dunsmore. He was educated at Charterhouse School and the Royal Indian Engineering College in Staines near London. He was a short time on a tea plantation in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, works.
Expeditions
In September 1892 he traveled with Percy Douglas, 10th Marquess of Queensberry to the goldfields at Coolgardie in Western Australia. Carnegie found there some gold.
Between February 1894 and March 1895, he undertook two privately funded expeditions to search for gold deposits.
On 9 July 1896 he Coolgardie began his important expedition to search for a direct path from Coolgardie in the Kimberley. He followed the path of the expeditions by Peter Warburton from the years 1872-1873 and John Forrest from the year 1874. His team consisted of three other whites, Joseph Breaden, Godfrey Massie and Charles Stanmore, as well as an Aboriginal, Warri. The Expeditionsteilnemern were eight camels, only a riding camel and provisions for five months. He crossed the Gibson Desert and reached on 16 September, the Great Sandy Desert, and on December 4, Halls Creek. On March 22, 1897, the return began and he reached Coolgardie in early August, after they had traveled a distance of 4828 kilometers in 13 months. Stanmore, during the course of the expedition died because he accidentally shot himself.
When he returned to England in 1897, he was awarded the Gill Medal of the Royal Geographical Society for his expedition performance. In 1898 he published a book entitled Spinifex and Sand. In December 1899 he went to the north of Nigeria and was taken on November 21, 1900 in a small skirmish at Kerifi in northern Nigeria by a poisoned arrow and died.
Personality
David Carnegie was in his time one of the most experienced and successful explorer in Australia. His methods were thoroughly criticized. On the expedition on which he reached the interior deserts of Australia, he became known that he captured Aborigines and gave them salt meat to eat, thirsty to elicit them, the positions of water bodies.
Afterlife
He died at the age of 29 and was buried at Lokoja in Nigeria. In the Brechin Cathedral in Scotland a memorial to him was built. Also located since 1925 in a replica of St George 's Cathedral in Perth. His sister published in 1902 his letters from Nigeria.
The Carnegie Station and leading to her David Carnegie Road, an outback track in Western Australia, were named after him.
In April 2004, the collection of his personal travel diaries and original drawings was sold in Sydney. The price was 135,000 Australian dollars, then about 84,000 euros.