For a period of twenty-five years after the first establishment of a
British settlement in Australia, the colonists were only acquainted with
the country along the coast extending northwards about 70 m. from Sydney
and about a like distance to the south and shut in to the west by the
Blue Mountain range, forming a narrow strip not more than 50 m. wide at
its broadest part.
Oxley.
The Blue Mountains attain a height of between 3000 and 4000 ft. only,
but they are intersected with precipitous ravines 1500 ft. deep, which
baffled every effort to reach the interior until in 1813, when a summer
of severe drought had made it of vital importance to find new pastures,
three of the colonists, Messrs Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth, more
fortunate than their predecessors in exploration, after crossing the
Nepean river at Emu Plains and ascending the Dividing Range, were able
to reach a position enabling them to obtain a view of the grassy valley
of the Fish river, which lies on the farther side of the Dividing Range.
The western descent of the mountains appeared to the explorers
comparatively easy, and they returned to report their discovery. A line
of road was constructed across the mountains as far as the Macquarie
river by the surveyor, Mr Evans, and the town of Bathurst laid out. This
marks the beginning of the occupation of the interior of the continent.
Some small expeditions were made from Bathurst, resulting in the
discovery of the Lachlan, and in 1816 the first of the great exploration
expeditions of Australia was fitted out under Lieutenant Oxley, R.N.
Oxley was accompanied by Mr Evans and Mr Allan Cunningham the botanist,
and the object of his expedition was to trace the course of the Lachlan
in a westerly direction. Oxley traced the river until it lost itself in
the swamps east of 147 deg. E., then crossing the river he traversed the
country between the Lachlan and Murrumbidgee as far as 34 deg. S. and
144 deg. 30' E. On his return journey Oxley again crossed the Lachlan
about 160 m., measured along the river, below the point where he left it
on his journey south. Continuing in a north-easterly direction Oxley
struck the Macquarie river at a place he called Wellington, and from
this place in the following year he organized a second expedition in
hopes of discovering an inland sea. He was, however, disappointed in
this, as after descending the course of the Macquarie below Mount
Harris, he found that the river ended in an immense swamp overgrown with
reeds. Oxley now turned aside--led by Mr Evans's report of the country
eastward--crossed the Arbuthnot range, and traversing the Liverpool
Plains, and ascending the Peel and Cockburn rivers to the Blue
Mountains, gained sight of the open sea, which he reached at Port
Macquarie. A valuable extension of geographical knowledge had been
gained by this circuitous journey of more than 800 m. Yet its result was
a disappointment to those who had looked for means of inland navigation
by the Macquarie river, and by its supposed issue in a mediterranean
sea.
During the next two or three years public attention was occupied with
Captain King's maritime explorations of the north-west coast in three
successive voyages, and by explorations of Western Australia in 1821.
These steps were followed by the foundation of a settlement on Melville
Island, in the extreme north, which, however, was soon abandoned. In
1823 Lieutenant Oxley proceeded to Moreton Bay and Port Curtis, the
first place 500 m., the other 690 m. north of Sydney, to choose the site
of a new penal establishment. From a shipwrecked English sailor he met
with, who had lived with the savages, he heard of the river Brisbane.
About the same time, in the opposite direction, south-west of Sydney, a
large extent of the interior was revealed. Messrs Hamilton Hume and
Hovell set out from Lake George, crossed the Murrumbidgee, and, after
following the river for a short distance, struck south, skirting the
foothills of what are now known as the Australian Alps until they
reached a fine river, which was called the Hume after the leader's
father. Crossing the Murray at Albury, the explorers, bearing to the
south-west, skirted the western shore of Port Philip and reached the
sea-coast near where the town of Geelong now stands. In 1827 and the two
following years, Cunningham prosecuted instructive explorations on both
sides of the Liverpool range, between the upper waters of the Hunter and
those of the Peel and other tributaries of the Brisbane north of New
South Wales. Some of his discoveries, including those of Pandora's Pass
and the Darling Downs, were of great practical utility.
Darling.
By this time much had thus been done to obtain an acquaintance with the
eastern parts of the Australian continent, although the problem of what
could become of the large rivers flowing north-west and south-west into
the interior was still unsolved. With a view to determine this question,
Governor Sir Ralph Darling, in the year 1828, sent out the expedition
under Captain Charles Sturt, who, proceeding first to the marshes at the
end of the Macquarie river, found his progress checked by the dense mass
of reeds in that quarter. He therefore turned westward, and struck a
large river, with many affluents, to which he gave the name of the
Darling. This river, flowing from north-east to south-west, drains the
marshes in which the Macquarie and other streams from the south appeared
to be lost. The course of the Murrumbidgee, a deep and rapid river, was
followed by the same eminent explorer in his second expedition in 1831
with a more satisfactory result. He travelled on this occasion nearly
2000 m., and discovered that both the Murrumbidgee, carrying with it the
waters of the Lachlan morass, and likewise the Darling, from a more
northerly region, finally joined another and larger river. This stream,
the Murray, in the upper part of its course runs in a north-westerly
direction, but afterwards turning southwards, almost at a right angle,
expands into Lake Alexandrina on the south coast, about 60 m. south-east
of the town of Adelaide, and finally enters the sea at Encounter Bay in
E. long. 139 deg.
Mitchell.
After gaining a practical solution of the problem of the destination of
the westward-flowing rivers, Sir Thomas Mitchell, in 1833, led an
expedition northward to the upper branches of the Darling; the party met
with a sad disaster in the death of Richard Cunningham, brother of the
eminent botanist, who was murdered by the blacks near the Bogan river.
The expedition reached the Darling on the 25th of May 1833, and after
establishing a depot at Fort Bourke, Mitchell traced the Darling
southwards for 300 m. until he was certain the river was identical with
that reported by Sturt as joining the Murray about 142 deg. E.
Eyre.
Meantime, from the new colony of Adelaide, South Australia, on the
shores of Gulf St Vincent, a series of adventurous journeys to the north
and to the west was begun by Mr Eyre, who explored a country very
difficult of access. In 1840 he performed a feat of extraordinary
personal daring, travelling all the way along the barren sea-coast of
the Great Australian Bight, from Spencer Gulf to King George Sound. Eyre
also explored the interior north of the head of Spencer Gulf, where he
was misled, however, by appearances to form an erroneous theory about
the water-surfaces named Lake Torrens. It was left to the veteran
explorer, Sturt, to achieve the arduous enterprise of penetrating from
the Darling northward to the very centre of the continent. This was in
1845, the route lying for the most part over a stony desert, where the
heat (reaching 131 deg. Fahr.), with scorching winds, caused much
suffering to the party. The most northerly point reached by Sturt on
this occasion was about S. lat. 24 deg. 25'.
[Illustration: Map: Australia]
Leichhardt.
A military station having been fixed by the British government at Port
Victoria, on the coast of Arnheim Land, for the protection of
shipwrecked mariners on the north coast, it was thought desirable to
find an overland route between this settlement and Moreton Bay, in what
then was the northern portion of New South Wales, now called Queensland.
This was the object of Dr Leichhardt's expedition in 1844, which
proceeded first along the banks of the Dawson and the Mackenzie,
tributaries of the Fitzroy river, in Queensland. It thence passed
farther north to the Burdekin, ascending to the source of that river,
and turned westward across a table-land, from which there was an easy
descent to the Gulf of Carpentaria. Skirting the low shores of this
gulf, all the way round its upper half to the Roper, Leichhardt crossed
Arnheim Land to the Alligator river, which he descended to the western
shore of the peninsula, and arrived at Port Victoria, otherwise Port
Essington, after a journey of 3000 m., performed within a year and three
months. In 1847 Leichhardt undertook a much more formidable task, that
of crossing the entire continent from east to west. His starting-point
was on the Fitzroy Downs, north of the river Condamine, in Queensland,
between the 26th and 27th degrees of S. latitude. But this eminent
explorer had not proceeded far into the interior before he met his
death, his last despatch dating from the Cogoon, 3rd of April 1848. In
the same region, from 1845 to 1847, Sir Thomas Mitchell and Mr E.B.
Kennedy explored the northern tributaries of the Darling, and a river in
S. lat. 24 deg., named the Barcoo or Victoria, which flows to the
south-west. This river was more thoroughly examined by Mr A.C. Gregory
in 1858. Mr Kennedy lost his life in 1848, being killed by the natives
while attempting to explore the peninsula of Cape York, from Rockingham
Bay to Weymouth Bay.
Among the performances of less renown, but of much practical utility in
surveying and opening new paths through the country, we may mention that
of Captain Banister, showing the way across the southern part of Western
Australia, from Swan river to King George Sound, and that of Messrs
Robinson and G.H. Haydon in 1844, making good the route from Port
Phillip to Gipps' Land with loaded drays, through a dense tangled scrub,
which had been described by Strzelecki as his worst obstacle. Again, in
Western Australia there were the explorations of the Arrowsmith, the
Murchison, the Gascoyne, and the Ashburton rivers, by Captain Grey, Mr
Roe, Governor Fitzgerald, Mr R. Austin, and the brothers Gregory, whose
discoveries have great importance from a geographical point of view.
Stuart.
These local researches, and the more comprehensive attempts of
Leichhardt and Mitchell to solve the chief problems of Australian
geography, must yield in importance to the grand achievement of Mr
Stuart in 1862. The first of his tours independently performed, in 1858
and 1859, were around the South Australian lakes, namely, Lake Torrens,
Lake Eyre and Lake Gairdner. These waters had been erroneously taken for
parts of one vast horse-shoe or sickle shaped lake, only some 20 m.
broad, believed to encircle a large portion of the inland country, with
drainage at one end by a marsh into Spencer Gulf. The mistake, shown in
all the old maps of Australia, had originated in a curious optical
illusion. When Mr Eyre viewed the country from Mount Deception in 1840,
looking between Lake Torrens and the lake which now bears his own name,
the refraction of light from the glittering crust of salt that covers a
large space of stony or sandy ground produced an appearance of water.
The error was discovered, after eighteen years, by the explorations of
Mr Babbage and Major Warburton in 1858, while Mr Stuart, about the same
time, gained a more complete knowledge of the same district.
A reward of L10,000 having been offered by the legislature of South
Australia to the first man who should traverse the whole continent from
south to north, starting from the city of Adelaide, Mr Stuart resolved
to make the attempt. He started in March 1860, passing Lake Torrens and
Lake Eyre, beyond which he found a pleasant, fertile country till he
crossed the Macdonnell range of mountains, just under the line of the
tropic of Capricorn. On the 23rd of April he reached a mountain in S.
lat. nearly 22 deg., and E. long. nearly 134 deg., which is the most
central marked point of the Australian continent, and has been named
Central Mount Stuart. Mr Stuart did not finish his task on this
occasion, on account of indisposition and other causes. But the 18th
degree of latitude had been reached, where the watershed divided the
rivers of the Gulf of Carpentaria from the Victoria river, flowing
towards the north-west coast. He had also proved that the interior of
Australia was not a stony desert, like the region visited by Sturt in
1845. On the first day of the next year, 1861, Mr Stuart again started
for a second attempt to cross the continent, which occupied him eight
months. He failed, however, to advance farther than one geographical
degree north of the point reached in 1860, his progress being arrested
by dense scrubs and the want of water.
Burke and Wills.
Meanwhile, in the province of Victoria, by means of a fund subscribed
among the colonists and a grant by the legislature, the ill-fated
expedition of Messrs Burke and Wills was started. It made for the Barcoo
(Cooper's Creek), with a view to reach the Gulf of Carpentaria by a
northerly course midway between Sturt's track to the west and
Leichhardt's to the east. The leading men of the party were Mr Robert
O'Hara Burke, an officer of police, and Mr William John Wills, of the
Melbourne observatory. Leaving the main body of his party at Menindie on
the Darling under a man named Wright, Burke, with seven men, five horses
and sixteen camels, pushed on for Cooper's Creek, the understanding
being that Wright should follow him in easy stages to the depot proposed
to be there established. Wright frittered away his time in the district
beyond the Darling and did not attempt to follow the party to Cooper's
Creek, and Burke, tired of waiting, determined to push on. Accordingly,
dividing his party, leaving at the depot four men and taking with him
Wills and two men, King and Gray, with a horse and six camels, he left
Cooper's Creek on the 16th of December and crossed the desert traversed
by Sturt fifteen years before. They got on in spite of great
difficulties, past the McKinlay range of mountains, S. lat. 21 deg. and
22 deg., and then reached the Flinders river, which flows into the head
of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Here, without actually standing on the
sea-beach of the northern shore, they met the tidal waters of the sea.
On the 23rd of February 1861 they commenced the return journey, having
in effect accomplished the feat of crossing the Australian continent.
Gray, who had fallen ill, died on the 16th of April. Five days later,
Burke, Wills and King had repassed the desert to the place on Cooper's
Creek (the Barcoo, S. lat. 27 deg. 40', E. long. 140 deg. 30'), where
they had left the depot, with the rest of the expedition. Here they
experienced a cruel disappointment. The depot was abandoned; the men in
charge had quitted the place the same day, believing that Burke and
those with him were lost. The men who had thus abandoned the depot
rejoined the main body of the expedition under Wright, who at length
moved to Cooper's Creek, and, incredible to relate, neglected to search
for the missing explorers. Burke, Wills and King, when they found
themselves so fearfully left alone and unprovided in the wilderness,
wandered about in that district till near the end of June. They
subsisted miserably on the bounty of some natives, and partly by feeding
on the seeds of a plant called nardoo. At last both Wills and Burke died
of starvation. King, the sole survivor, was saved by meeting the
friendly blacks, and was found alive in September by Mr A.W. Howitt's
party, sent on purpose to find and relieve that of Burke.
Four other parties, besides Howitt's, were sent out that year from
different Australian provinces. Three of them, respectively commanded by
Mr Walker, Mr Landsborough, and Mr Norman, sailed to the north, where
the latter two landed on the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria, while Mr
Walker marched inland from Rockhampton. The fourth party, under Mr J.
McKinlay, from Adelaide, made for the Barcoo by way of Lake Torrens. By
these means, the unknown region of Mid Australia was simultaneously
entered from the north, south, east and west, and important additions
were made to geographical knowledge Landsborough crossed the entire
continent from north to south. between February and June 1862; and
McKinlay, from south to north, before the end of August in that year.
The interior of New South Wales and Queensland, all that lies east of
the 140th degree of longitude, was examined. The Barcoo or Cooper's
Creek and its tributary streams were traced from the Queensland
mountains, holding a south-westerly course to Lake Eyre in South
Australia; the Flinders, the Gilbert, the Gregory, and other northern
rivers watering the country towards the Gulf of Carpentaria were also
explored. These valuable additions to Australian geography were gained
through humane efforts to relieve the lost explorers. The bodies of
Burke and Wills were recovered and brought to Melbourne for a solemn
public funeral, and a noble monument has been erected to their honour.
Mr Stuart, in 1862, made his third and final attempt to traverse the
continent from Adelaide along a central line, which, inclining a little
westward, reaches the north coast of Arnheim Land, opposite Melville
Island. He started in January, and on the 7th of April reached the
farthest northern point, near S. lat. 17 deg., where he had turned back
in May of the preceding year. He then pushed on, through a very thick
forest, with scarcely any water, till he came to the streams which
supply the Roper, a river flowing into the western part of the Gulf of
Carpentaria. Having crossed a table-land of sandstone which divides
these streams from those running to the western shores of Arnheim Land,
Mr Stuart, in the month of July, passed down what is called the Adelaide
river of north Australia. Thus he came at length to stand on the verge
of the Indian Ocean; "gazing upon it," a writer has said, "with as much
delight as Balboa, when he crossed the Isthmus of Darien from the
Atlantic to the Pacific." The line crossing Australia which was thus
explored has since been occupied by the electric telegraph connecting
Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, and other Australian cities with London.
Gosse.
Warburton.
A third part, at least, of the interior of the whole continent, between
the central line of Stuart and the known parts of Western Australia,
from about 120 deg. to 134 deg. E. long., an extent of half a million
square miles, still remained a blank in the map. But the two expeditions
of 1873, conducted by William Christie Gosse (1842-1881), afterwards
deputy surveyor-general for South Australia, and Colonel (then Major)
Egerton Warburton, made a beginning in the exploration of this _terra
incognita_ west of the central telegraph route. That line of more than
1800 m., having its southern extremity at the head of Spencer Gulf, its
northern at Port Darwin, in Arnheim Land, passes Central Mount Stuart,
in the middle of the continent, S. lat. 22 deg., E. long. 134 deg. Mr
Gosse, with men and horses provided by the South Australian government,
started on the 21st of April from the telegraph station 50 m. south of
Central Mount Stuart, to strike into Western Australia. He passed the
Reynolds range and Lake Amadeus in that direction, but was compelled to
turn south, where he found a tract of well-watered grassy land. A
singular rock of conglomerate, 2 m. long, 1 m. wide, and 1100 ft. high,
with a spring of water in its centre, struck his attention. The country
was mostly poor and barren, sandy hillocks, with scanty growth of
spinifex. Mr Gosse, having travelled above 600 m., and getting to 26
deg. 32' S. and 127 deg. E., two degrees within the Western Australian
boundary, was forced to return. Meantime a more successful attempt to
reach the western coast from the centre of Australia was made by Major
Warburton, with thirty camels, provided by Mr (afterwards Sir) T. Elder,
of South Australia. Leaving the telegraph line at Alice Springs (23 deg.
40' S., 133 deg. 14' E.), 1120 m. north of Adelaide city, Warburton
succeeded in making his way to the De Grey river, Western Australia.
Overland routes had now been found possible, though scarcely convenient
for traffic, between all the widely separated Australian provinces. In
northern Queensland, also, there were several explorations about this
period, with results of some interest. That performed by Mr W. Hann,
with Messrs Warner, Tate and Taylor, in 1873, related to the country
north of the Kirchner range, watered by the Lynd, the Mitchell, the
Walsh and the Palmer rivers, on the east side of the Gulf of
Carpentaria. The coasting expedition of Mr G. Elphinstone Dalrymple,
with Messrs Hill and Johnstone, finishing in December 1873, effected a
valuable survey of the inlets and navigable rivers in the Cape York
Peninsula.
Forrest.
Giles.
Of the several attempts to cross Western Australia, even Major
Warburton's expedition, the most successful, had failed in the important
particular of determining the nature of the country through which it
passed. Major Warburton had virtually raced across from the Macdonnell
range in South Australia to the headwaters of the Oakover river on the
north-west coast, without allowing himself sufficient time to note the
characteristics of the country. The next important expedition was
differently conducted. John (afterwards Sir John) Forrest was despatched
by the Perth government with general instructions to obtain information
regarding the immense tract of country out of which flow the rivers
falling into the sea on the northern and western shores of Western
Australia. Leaving Yewin, a small settlement about lat. 28 deg. S.,
long. 116 deg. E., Forrest travelled north-east to the Murchison river,
and followed the course of that river to the Robinson ranges; thence his
course lay generally eastward along the 26th parallel. Forrest and his
party safely crossed the entire extent of Western Australia, and
entering South Australia struck the overland telegraph line at Peake
station, and, after resting, journeyed south to Adelaide. Forrest
traversed seventeen degrees of desert in five months, a very wonderful
achievement, more especially as he was able to give a full report of the
country through which he passed. His report destroyed all hope that
pastoral settlement would extend to the spinifex region; and the main
object of subsequent explorers was to determine the extent of the desert
in the direction of north and south. Ernest Giles made several attempts
to cross the Central Australian Desert, but it was not until his third
attempt that he was successful. His journey ranks almost with Forrest's
in the importance of its results and the success with which the
appalling difficulties of the journey were overcome. Through the
generosity of Sir Thomas Elder, of Adelaide, Giles's expedition was
equipped with camels. It started on the 23rd of May 1875 from Port
Augusta. Working westerly along the line of the 30th parallel, Giles
reached Perth in about five months. After resting in Perth for a short
time, he commenced the return journey, which was made for the most part
between the 24th and 25th parallels, and again successfully traversed
the desert, reaching the overland telegraph line in about seven months.
Giles's journeys added greatly to our knowledge of the characteristics
of Western and South Australia, and he was able to bear out the common
opinion that the interior of Australia west of 132 deg. E. long, is a
sandy and waterless waste, entirely unfit for settlement.
Recent explorers.
The list of explorers since 1875 is a long one; but after Forrest's and
Giles's expeditions the main object ceased to be the discovery of
pastoral country: a new zest had been added to the cause of exploration,
and most of the smaller expeditions concerned themselves with the search
for gold. Amongst the more important explorations may be ranked those of
Tietkins in 1889, of Lindsay in 1891, of Wells in 1896, of Hubbe in
1896, and of the Hon. David Carnegie in 1896-97. Lindsay's expedition,
which was fitted out by Sir Thomas Elder, the generous patron of
Australian exploration, entered Western Australia about the 26th
parallel south lat., on the line of route taken by Forrest in 1874. From
this point the explorer worked in a south-westerly direction to Queen
Victoria Springs, where he struck the track of Giles's expedition of
1875. From the Springs the expedition went north-west and made a useful
examination of the country lying between 119 deg. and 115 deg. meridians
and between 26 deg. and 28 deg. S. lat. Wells's expedition started from
a base about 122 deg. 20' E. and 25 deg. 54' S., and worked northward to
the Joanna Springs, situated on the tropic of Capricorn and near the
124th meridian. From the springs the journey was continued along the
same meridian to the Fitzroy river. The country passed through was
mostly of a forbidding character, except where the Kimberley district
was entered, and the expedition suffered even more than the usual
hardships. The establishment of the gold-fields, with their large
population, caused great interest to be taken in the discovery of
practicable stock routes, especially from South Australia in the east,
and from Kimberley district in the north. Alive to the importance of the
trade, the South Australian government despatched Hubbe from Oodnadatta
to Coolgardie. He successfully accomplished his journey, but had to
report that there was no practicable route for cattle between the two
districts.
One of the most successful expeditions which traversed Western Australia
was that led and equipped by the Hon. David Carnegie, which started in
July 1896, and travelled north-easterly until it reached Alexander
Spring; then turning northward, it traversed the country between Wells's
track of 1896 and the South Australian border. The expedition
encountered very many hardships, but successfully reached Hall Creek in
the Kimberley district. After a few months' rest it started on the
return journey, following Sturt Creek until its termination in Gregory's
Salt Sea, and then keeping parallel with the South Australian border as
far as Lake Macdonald. Rounding that lake the expedition moved
south-west and reached the settled districts in August 1897. The
distance travelled was 5000 m., and the actual time employed was eight
months. This expedition put an end to the hope, so long entertained,
that it was possible to obtain a direct and practicable route for stock
between Kimberley and Coolgardie gold-fields; and it also proved that,
with the possible exception of small isolated patches, the desert
traversed contained no auriferous country.
It may be said that exploration on a large scale is now at an end; there
remain only the spaces, nowhere very extensive, between the tracks of
the old explorers yet to be examined, and these are chiefly in the
Northern Territory and in Western Australia north of the tropic of
Capricorn. The search for gold and the quest for unoccupied pasturage
daily diminish the extent of these areas.