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Timeless landscape still a masterpiece

Even though 2013 was the 200th anniversary of the year that explorer and missionary David Livingstone was born, it is not him I am thinking about as I watch the Zambezi River pour over Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe.

It's Thomas Baines.

And more specifically, it is Mr Baines' painting of the Great Western, or Main, Fall that was published in 1865. Then, for white Europeans, this was still the largely unknown dark interior of Africa.

Through Baines' eyes we can see the water streaming over the falls, which I stand before now, lowering the shutter speed on my camera, trying to capture it somewhat as he did.

Even more interesting, I think, in another Baines painting called Falls by Sunrise, we can just see the landscape of what today is Zimbabwe, with Victoria Falls' plume of mist lit by sun. Baines had the courage to stand back and view things from a distance.

And Baines saw all this through the eyes with which he had also seen and painted Australia, for he had been on Augustus Gregory's epic explorations of northern Australia from 1855 to 1856.

Baines was born in King's Lynn in England, the son of a master mariner father and painter and decorator mother who introduced him to art. He had moved to South Africa when he was 22, established a portrait and maritime painting business, but failed to fulfil his sense of adventure and set out to sketch scenes during the so-called Kaffir Wars. In 1850 he joined a mapping expedition in South Africa.

Such was his reputation that in 1854, after returning to England, he was approached by the Royal Geographical Society and became the commissioned British government draughtsman and artist on A.C. Gregory's expedition to northern Australia. They quickly established a strong rapport.

Baines was clearly an interesting chap. Apart from his artistic prowess, both with his own landscape and botanical work, and in sketching Aboriginal rock art, to make a recording of it, he would have been a good man to have on an expedition. Gregory's Journals of Australian Explorations show that Baines was a more-than capable boat man and adeptly repaired a portable boat, was a good horseman and horse-drawn gig driver, could handle sheep and a rifle ("Mr Baines shot three whistling ducks on the island") and a talented tracker. On one occasion, he and others found the expedition's stray horses 25km from camp - a considerable distance in the bush.

But he was also clearly tough. The journal describes aggressive encounters with Aboriginals - in one, when a group attacked the camp with spears, Baines mounted a horse and galloped at them.

He eventually fell out with the party's geologist, J.S. Wilson, and was sent with a sea party to Timor for provisions while the rest continued overland. But at Kupang their schooner was condemned and Baines eventually, and admirably, crossed the Arafura Sea in a borrowed longboat to keep a planned meeting with Gregory.

Throughout, he had pencil and sketchbook close by and kept a thorough record of Gregory's expedition - one generally recognised as unmatched in contemporary Australian exploration.

With a sharp naturalist's eye, his washes and sketches of plants were accurate and well regarded by botanists and, indeed, 17 plant specimens in the collection at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, carry his name.

The National Gallery of Australia has an interesting oil-on-canvas work of a Gouty Stem Tree, which we now know as a boab, or Adansonia Gregorii. The tree, in the Victoria River region of the Northern Territory, was "58 feet circumference", he recorded - 24m around its girth.

Thomas Baines' "Gouty stem tree, Adansonia Gregorii, 58 feet circumference, near a creek south-east of Stokes Range, Victoria River" (1868, oil on canvas). Picture: National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Purchased 1973


Baines' studies of animals and insects were respected by zoologists, and Bolbotritus bainesi, a new genus of beetle which he discovered in south-east Africa, is named for him.

He caught the subtly different features of Aboriginal people in different regions, which has been praised by anthropologists.

And at the end of the Gregory expedition, when Baines returned to England in 1857, he took 24 oil paintings and 270 watercolours and sketches. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and received its gold medal the following year.

Gregory had named the East Baines River in the Northern Territory for him -just as Zimbabwe's Baines River would be.

Then Baines was invited to join David Livingstone's Zambezi expedition, and was back in Africa in 1858 as artist and storekeeper. But he argued with Livingstone after using a piece of canvas from the store to paint a portrait, and was dismissed for theft, clearly unfairly.

It was in 1862 that Baines finally reached Victoria Falls himself. He went firstly to meet Livingstone and clear his name, but Livingstone had already gone. And it was now that Baines painted the scenes that were reproduced in an album of prints called The Victoria Falls, Zambezi River, published in 1865.

"Great Western (or Main) Fall, from Three Rill Cliff to Garden Island", by Thoman Baines. Originally published in the 1865 album.


I see these images clearly and admiringly in my mind's eye as I focus my camera's lens on Victoria Falls, seeming both here, in familiar parts of England and in the north of Australia, to have stepped in Baines' footsteps, albeit in a more timid way.

In the 1860s, Baines had returned to both of our native England, where he went on the lecture circuit; quite a celebrity. But in 1868, wide horizons and the pulse of Africa drew him back. In 1868, he led an intrepid expedition to see King Mzilikazi of the Matabele warrior tribe, on behalf of the South African Goldfields Exploration Company, but Mzilikazi had died before Baines arrived.

In 1872 Baines came to Zimbabwe looking for gold and the following year he went to the Injembe district of Natal, again following gold deposits, but also to attend Zulu King Cetshwayo's coronation. He ended up back in Durban, South Africa, and was making his living as an artist when, in 1875, he was struck with dysentery and died at his cousin's home.

Lynn Museum, in King's Lynn, East Anglia, has a large collection of his paintings and drawings, as do galleries in southern Africa, including Africana Museum, Albany Museum, King George VI Art Gallery and the Local History Museums in Durban. The National Library of Australia has given us permission to reproduce the Gouty Stem Tree, which it holds in its collection.

I am drawn back to Victoria Falls, intrigued by Baines' sense of light and by the way he has captured an era as much as a moment. I have his paintings of Victoria Falls in hand. Well, not actually in hand, but on my iPad Mini.

I find a shady spot in the cafe by the falls, and order sparkling water and good coffee, and flick through them and consider parallelism and divergence.

Waitress: "How iss your hol-iday?"

Me: "Very good, thank you. How is your work?"

Waitress: "When you're here - perfect."

FACT FILE

Bench International has itineraries throughout southern and east Africa, and specialists who can advise. Victoria Falls is one of their key destinations. Phone 1300 237 422, visit benchinternational.com.au or email info@benchinternational.com.au. Bench International is based at Level 4, 55 York Street, Sydney.

South African Airways flies seven days a week from Perth to Johannesburg and connects to the rest of Africa. SA281 leaves Perth for Johannesburg at 11.45pm and SA280 leaves Johannesburg at 9.20pm, arriving in the following day at 12.55pm. See flysaa.com and travel agents.

Stephen Scourfield was in Zimbabwe as a guest of Bench International.