[Illustration. Hamilton Hume, in his later life.]
[Map. Hume and Hovell's Route 1824; Sturt's Route, 1829 and 1830; Major
Mitchell's Route 1836.]
4.1. EARLY ACHIEVEMENTS.
Hamilton Hume was the son of the Reverend Andrew Hume, who came to the
colony with his wife in the transport Lady Juliana, and held an
appointment in the Commissariat Department. Hamilton was born in
Parramatta in the year 1797, on the 18th of June. He seems to have been
specially marked out by Nature for prominence as an explorer, for, from
his earliest boyhood he was fond of rambling through the bush, and his
father encouraged him in his desire for a free country life and his love
of adventure. School facilities were lacking, but fortunately his mother
attended to his education and saw to it that he did not grow up destitute
of that instruction common to youth of those times and of his standing.
At the age of seventeen he made his initial effort at exploration in the
country around Berrima, in company with his brother Kennedy and a black
boy. They were successful in their endeavours, and found some good
pastoral country. In the following year, encouraged by their success, the
brothers made another excursion. In 1816, a Mr. Throsby bought some of
the land that young Kennedy and Hamilton had found; and their father sent
them out with him to show him the country he had purchased. John Oxley,
too, held a farm in the Illawarra district, and the Surveyor-General, who
must have heard of Hamilton's repute for good bushmanship, engaged him to
go out with his overseer and guide the men on to the locality. Governor
Macquarie also seems to have had his attention drawn to the same
conspicuous quality, for he sent young Hume out with Meehan, a surveyor,
and Throsby to examine the country about the Shoalhaven River. On the
way, however, Throsby disagreed with Meehan about the course they should
adopt, and, taking a black boy with him, left his companions and made the
best of his way to Port Jervis. Meehan and Hume carried out the work as
originally decided on, and then forced their way up the range, which had
now seemingly been deprived of a great many of its original terrors by
the hardy pioneers of the coast. On the highlands they discovered and
named Lake George, a freshwater lake, and a smaller one which they called
Lake Bathurst, both, strange to say, seemingly isolated.
Here we may remark on the tenacity with which the Murrumbidgee River long
eluded the eye of the white man. It is scarcely probable that Meehan and
Hume, who on this occasion were within comparatively easy reach of the
head waters, could have seen a new inland river at that time without
mentioning the fact, but there is no record traceable anywhere as to the
date of its discovery, or the name of its finder. When in 1823 Captain
Currie and Major Ovens were led along its bank on to the beautiful
Maneroo country by Joseph Wild, the stream was then familiar to the early
settlers and called the Morumbidgee. Even in 1821, when Hume found the
Yass Plains, almost on its bank, he makes no special mention of the
river. From all this we may deduce the extremely probable fact that the
position of the river was shown to some stockrider by a native, who also
confided the aboriginal name, and so it gradually worked the knowledge of
its identity into general belief. This theory is the more feasible as the
river has retained its native name. If a white man of any known position
had made the discovery, it would at once have received the name of some
person holding official sway. But this is altogether a purely
geographical digression.
It was while on this expedition that Hume found the Goulburn Plains. On
another occasion he went with Alexander Berry, a noted south-coast
pioneer, up the Shoalhaven River, and accompanied the party when they
landed and conducted different excursions. By the time he reached
manhood, Hume was justly classed amongst the finest bushmen in the
colony. In his after career when he led the famous expedition to the
south coast, and again, when as Sturt's right hand he accompanied that
explorer on the notable expedition that solved the mystery of the outflow
of the inland rivers and gave to settled Australia the mighty Darling, he
fully proved his right to the title.
4.2. DISCOVERY OF THE HUME OR MURRAY.
It is perhaps by his fame as leader of the party that crossed from Lake
George to the Southern Ocean that Hume's name is best remembered. At that
time especially it aroused anew the bright hopes for the future of the
interior that Oxley's gloomy prognostications had done so much to
depress. The Surveyor-General having been unable to determine the
question as to whether any large river entered the sea between Cape Otway
and Spencer's Gulf, a somewhat hazardous idea entered the head of the
then Governor, Sir Thomas Brisbane, to land a party of convicts near
Wilson's Promontory, and induce them by the offer of a free pardon and a
grant of land to find their way back to Sydney overland. It was further
proposed that an experienced bushman should be put in charge of them. The
flattering offer of this responsible, if somewhat precarious position,
was made to young Hamilton Hume who, on mature consideration declined it.
He offered, however, to conduct a party from Lake George to Western Port
if the Government would provide the necessary assistance. This offer the
authorities accepted, but they forgot the essential condition of
furnishing assistance. Naturally, much delay and vexation were caused by
this display of official ineptitude. At this juncture a retired coasting
skipper, Captain William Hilton Hovell, made an offer to join the party,
and find half the necessary cattle and horses. This offer aroused the
Government to some sense of its responsibility, and it agreed to do
something in the matter. This "something" amounted to six pack-saddles
and gear, one tent of Parramatta cloth, two tarpaulins, a suit of slop
clothes a-piece for the men, and an order to Hume to select 1,200 acres
of land for himself. In addition, the Government generously granted the
explorers two skeleton charts upon which to trace the route of their
journey, some bush utensils, and promised a cash payment for the hire of
the cattle should an important discovery be made. This cash payment was
refused on their return, although one would have thought that the
discovery of the Hume (Murray) should surely take rank as an important
discovery. Hume also stated that he had much difficulty in obtaining
tickets-of-leave for the men, and the confirmation of his own order to
select land for himself.
Each of the leaders brought with him three men, so that the strength of
the party was eight all told. Their outfit of animals consisted of five
bullocks and three horses, and they had two carts with them.
Hovell was born at Yarmouth on the 26th of April, 1786. He arrived in
Sydney in 1813, but after being engaged in the coasting trade with
occasional trips to New Zealand, he had relinquished his career as a
sailor and had settled at Narellan, New South Wales. After his exploring
expedition with Hume, he settled down at Goulburn, and he died at Sydney
in 1876.
On the 14th of October, 1824, Hume and Hovell left Lake George. Reaching
the Murrumbidgee, they found that river flooded, and after waiting three
days for the water to fall, they crossed it borne on the body of one of
their carts, with the wheels detached, and with the aid of the tarpaulin,
rigged like a punt. South of the Murrumbidgee the country was broken and
difficult to traverse, but it was well grassed and admirably adapted for
grazing purposes. As it became too rough for the passage of their carts,
these were abandoned, and the baggage and rations were packed on the
bullocks for the remainder of their journey.
After following the course of the Murrumbidgee for some days, the
travellers turned from its bank and pursued a south-westerly direction,
which led them through hills and valleys richly grassed and plenteously
endowed with running streams. On the 8th of November they beheld a sight
rarely witnessed before by white men in Australia. Ascending a range in
order to obtain a view of the country ahead of them, they suddenly found
themselves confronted with snow-capped mountains. There, under the
brilliant sun of an Australian summer's day, rose the white crests of
lofty peaks that might have found fitting surroundings amidst the
chilling splendours of some far southern clime, robed as they were for
nearly one-fourth of their height in glistening snow.
Skirting this range, which received the name of the Australian Alps, the
explorers, after wandering for eight days across its many spurs, came
upon a fine, flowing river, which Hume named after his father, the Hume.
This river was destined to be re-named the Murray, when its course was
eventually followed to the ocean.*
*[Footnote.] See Chapter 6.
There being no safe ford, a makeshift boat was constructed with the aid
of the serviceable tarpaulin, and the Hume was crossed, close to the site
of the present town of Albury. Still passing through good pastoral land,
watered by numerous creeks, they crossed a river which was named the
Ovens, and on the 3rd of December they came to another, named by them the
Hovell, but now called the Goulburn; and on the 16th of December they
reached their goal, the shore of the Southern Ocean, at the spot where
Geelong now stands.
This expedition had a great and immediate influence on the extension of
Australian settlement. Within a few years after the chief surveyor had
characterised the western interior, beyond a certain limit, as unfitted
for human habitation, and had expressed his opinion that the monotonous
flats across which he vainly looked for any elevation extended to the
sea-coast, snowy mountains, feeding the head tributaries of perennial
rivers had been discovered to the southward of his track.
Hume was exceptionally fitted for the work of exploration at this
particular juncture in colonial history. Born and reared in the land, he
was well competent to judge justly of its merits and demerits; his
opinion was not likely to be tainted by the prejudices formed and
nourished in other and different climes. The history of Australian
exploration was then a statement of hasty conclusions, formed perhaps
under certain climatic circumstances to be falsified on a subsequent
visit when the conditions were radically different. In Hume's case, there
was no ill-founded conclusion of the availability of the
freshly-discovered district. The journey just recorded at once added to
the British Colonial Empire millions of acres of arable land watered by
never-failing rivers, with a climate and altitude calculated to foster
the growth of almost every species of temperate fruit or grain.
It is to be regretted that the narration of an expedition fraught with so
much benefit to the young colony, and executed with so much courage,
endurance, and facility of resource should be marred by any discordant
note. But friendly and genial relations were endangered by the presence
of two independent leaders. Divided authority here, as it nearly always
does, caused petty and undignified squabbles, which were in later days
elaborated into unseemly paper conflict. It is painful if somewhat
amusing to read of the acrid disputes as to the course, under the very
shadow of the majestic Australian Alps whose solitude had only then been
first disturbed by white men; and how, on agreeing to separate and divide
the outfit, it was proposed to cut the only tent in two, and how the one
frying-pan was broken by both men pulling at it. Thomas Boyd, who was the
only survivor of the party in 1883, and was then eighty-six years old,
signed a document assigning to Hume the full credit of conducting the
expedition to safety. Boyd was one of the most active members of the
expedition, always to the front when there was any trying work to be
done. He was the first white man to cross the Hume River, swimming over
with the end of a line in his teeth.
After Hume's return he lived for some time quietly on his farm, until the
call of the wild drew him forth from his retirement to join Sturt in his
first battle with the wilderness. His temporary association with that
explorer will find its due place in the account of that expedition.* He
died at Yass, near the scene of one of his early exploits.
*[Footnote.] See Charles Sturt. 6.2. The Darling.