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Margarets Pages - My Australia series
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AUSTRALIA ..Explorers.
These pages will include a few notes on the most important explorers of our Australian continent.
In 1788 the first settlement came into Botany Bay, near Sydney, New South Wales.  Captain Cook discovered our land in 1770 and his botanist named many of the native species we have today.
Matthew Flinders and George Bass were the new colony's first maritime explorers.
In 1795, they explored Botany Bay and the Georges River in the 2.5 metre rowing boat "Tom Thumb".  In 1796 they sailed south from Sydney as far as Lake Illawarra.  Their journeys are marked in yellow around the map (sorry for quality)
George Bass and Matthew Flinders
In 1801 Bass sailed a whaleboat as far as Western Port and concluded that Tasmania was separated from the mainland by a strait.  He & Flinders confirmed this in 1798 when they circumnavigated Tasmania in HMS Norfolk.

From 1801 to 1803 Flinders charted the unknown Australian coast from King George Sound in the south of Western Australia to New South Wales and north to the Gulf of Capentraria and the north-west of Western Australia.
Bass & Flinders aboard "Tom Thumb" with 15 year old servant, William Martin.  Painting based on original lithography by J.R. Ashton, published in Max Colwell's The Voyages of Matthew Flinders.
Settlers Blaxland, Wentworth, and Lawson would not be deterred from seeking the land which would be the colony's lifeblood, even if it mean pitting themselves agains the Blue Mountains.
William Wentworth William Lawson
Gregory Blaxland
The Blue Moutanins were a big barrier to expansion of the new colony of New South Wales, confining Sydney town to a narrow coastal strip for 25 years.  Before 1813 many trips to cross these mountains failed, with some escaped convicts losing their lives.
As the colony expanded, need for pastures was urgent.  Gregory Blaxland, a grazier joined settlers William Wentworth and William Lawson to find a way through the mountains.
With bushman James Burns, 3 convict settlers, 5 dogs "to track down game" and 4 pack horses laden with provisions and ammunition, the trio set off on May 11, 1813.  They cut paths through the bush with axes and had to lower and lift their horses on makeshift winches.  After 18 days, exhausted and almost out of supplies, they saw good grazing land from the slopes of Mt York.
A way had been found over the mountains and the men were elated although their clothes with torn and ripped with thorns, and their boots worn through. 
Blaxland wrote in his diary that they found a great stream and ate fish and kangaroo.  After resting they set off on a 10 km journey to discover enough land on the western plains "to support the stock of the colony for at least 30 years".  On February 1814, the then Governor present the 3 explorers with a grant of 405 hectares each in the newly-discovered country over the mountains.
The Three Sisters in the Blue Mountains ,west of Sydney.  Part of the Great Dividing Range.  Settlement opened up the area west of here.
In 1824 Governor Thomas Brisbane, ordered an expedition from the Monaro district in southern New South Wales, to explore lands to the south.  Hamilton Hume, an Australian-born pastoralist and acclaimed bushman, and William Hovell, a former seaman who came to the colony from England, were to walk to Victoria and back.
The 2 quarrelled constantly, on their journey to find suitable grazing lands.
The explorers crossed the Murrumbidgee, Murray & Ovens rivers, but arrived in Corio Bay in stead of Western Port.

Both men deserve credit for important discoveries, but even 30 years after this exploration, they were arguing over who made the mistake and who should have the honour of inspiring the later Port Phillip settlement.
Hamilton Hume  and   William Hovell
The faint red lines show the journey.  Other marks are the previous explorers mentioned earlier.
Captain Charles Sturt was the first to determine the true nature of Australia's vast and mysterious water system.  In 1828, he and his party, which included adventurer, Hamilton Hume, headed north-west
down the Macquarie River, and found the Darling.
In 1829/30 he travelled the Murrumbidgee in an 8.2 metre (26 foot) whaleboat, found the Murray River and followed it to the sea.
The journey was harsh, with heat, starvation and exhaustion.  Sturt put his life at risk to bring harmony between the aborigines and the white explorers/settlers.
In 1844 Sturt led another expedition, to central Australia to find an inland sea.
This journey took 16 months and Sturt came within 600 kms of the continent's centre, but was forced back home ill and exhausted.  On 27 January 1845, Sturt and party found rest and water at a spot they named Depot Glen (below) near the present township of Milparinka in north-western New South Wales. Here they stayed for 6 months while all watercourses around dried up in the drought.  One of their men died and is buried at Depot Glen near a grevillea tree.
Sturt's journals of exploration, which accurately recounted his extraordinary deeds, encouraged many others to settle on the new continent.

The heat on this particular journey was intense, the  worst known at the time.  The men's hair ceased to grow and their finger nails became as brittle as glass.  Sturt found is almost impossible to write his diary, the lead dropped out of his pencils when he picked them up, and when he used a pen, the ink dried as it touched the paper.
Rain fell on July 12, and then they had floods to contend with.
feint red lines are Mitchell's journeys
Major Thomas Mitchell's exploring through the heart of the land he called Australia Felix uncovered some of the continent's richest land.
As Surveyor-General of New South Wales, Major Mitchell (later Sir Thomas), discovered the rich, rolling grasslands of south and central-western Queensland in 1846.  He first saw them on his 4th expedition, which was also notable for the discovery of grazing lands watered by the Barcoo River.
He followed the inland river systems as far as the present day Blackall and central Queensland coalfieldareas, passing places now known as Mitchell, Injune and Roma.
Before travelling north on his final trip into what became called Queensland, Mitchell had already opened up huge tracts of land around the Darling and Murray Rivers in the south.  He took to England the first gold and diamonds found in Australia after an official examination of the Bathurst goldfields.
Edward John EYRE
journeys marked in red along bottom part of Australia west towards the east
On 18 June 1840, Edward John Eyre began his 3rd attempt to penetrate the mystery of the Australian interior by following the sandhills of the Great Australian Bight (down on the south of the continent.)
This incredible journey, across the continent from east to west would end more than a year later with Eyre near starvation and exhausted.  His party headed north from Mt Arden towards Lake Torrens in South Australia.
Leaving from a depot established at Fowlers Bay in South Australia, the expedition suffered a severe setback in Eucla in South Australia, when 2 Aboriginals murdered Eyre's companion John Baxter and stole provisions.
Eyre, determined either to succeed in his quest or perish, pushed ahead and was saved when he met with a French whaler near Esperance in Western Australia.  In July 1841, he reached Albany on the west coast.
MORE Explorers OVER PAGE.....
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