Ludwig Becker, born near Frankfurt in 1808, was the naturalist, geologist and artist of the Burke and Wills expedition. The essay follows him from Bendigo goldfields tent to a Melbourne watercolour to the crayfish he drew on the way north. Ordered to walk and stop his observations, he still made seventy watercolours, drawings and maps, and died of dysentery and scurvy on 29 April 1861.