Australia Twice Traversed | Page 5

who were never heard of again; how many a little exploring bark with its adventurous crew have been sunk in Australia's seas, while those poor wretches who might, in times gone by, have landed upon the inhospitable shore would certainly have been killed by the wild and savage hordes of hostile aborigines, from whom there could be no escape! With Stokes the list of those who have visited and benefited Australia by their labours from the sea must close; my only regret being that so poor a chronicler is giving an outline of their achievements. I now turn to another kind of exploration--and have to narrate deeds of even greater danger, though of a different kind, done upon Australia's face.
In giving a short account of those gallant men who have left everlasting names as explorers upon the terra firma and terra incognita of our Australian possession, I must begin with the earliest, and go back a hundred years to the arrival of Governor Phillip at Botany Bay, in 1788, with eleven ships, which have ever since been known as "The First Fleet." I am not called upon to narrate the history of the settlement, but will only say that the Governor showed sound judgment when he removed his fleet and all his men from Botany Bay to Port Jackson, and founded the village of Sydney, which has now become the huge capital city of New South Wales. A new region was thus opened out for British labour, trade, capital, and enterprise. From the earliest days of the settlement adventurous and enterprising men, among whom was the Governor himself, who was on one occasion speared by the natives, were found willing to venture their lives in the exploration of the country upon whose shores they had so lately landed. Wentworth, Blaxland, and Evans appear on the list as the very first explorers by land. The chief object they had in view was to surmount the difficulties which opposed their attempting to cross the Blue Mountains, and Evans was the first who accomplished this. The first efficient exploring expedition into the interior of New South Wales was conducted by John Oxley, the Surveyor-General of the colony, in 1817. His principal discovery was that some of the Australian streams ran inland, towards the interior, and he traced both the Macquarie and the Lachlan, named by him after Governor Lachlan Macquarie, until he supposed they ended in vast swamps or marshes, and thereby founded the theory that in the centre of Australia there existed a great inland sea. After Oxley came two explorers named respectively Hovell and Hume, who penetrated, in 1824, from the New South Wales settlements into what is now the colony of Victoria. They discovered the upper portions of the River Murray, which they crossed somewhere in the neighbourhood of the present town of Albury. The river was then called the Hume, but it was subsequently called the Murray by Captain Charles Sturt, who heads the list of Australia's heroes with the title of The Father of Australian Exploration.
In 1827 Sturt made one of the greatest discoveries of this century--or at least one of the most useful for his countrymen--that of the River Darling, the great western artery of the river system of New South Wales, and what is now South-western Queensland. In another expedition, in 1832, Sturt traced the Murrumbidgee River, discovered by Oxley, in boats into what he called the Murray. This river is the same found by Hovell and Hume, Sturt's name for it having been adopted. He entered the new stream, which was lined on either bank by troops of hostile natives, from whom he had many narrow escapes, and found it trended for several hundreds of miles in a west-north-west direction, confirming him in his idea of an inland sea; but at a certain point, which he called the great north-west bend, it suddenly turned south and forced its way to the sea at Encounter Bay, where Flinders met Baudin in 1803. Neither of these explorers appear to have discovered the river's mouth. On this occasion Sturt discovered the province or colony of South Australia, which in 1837 was proclaimed by the British Government, and in that colony Sturt afterwards made his home.
Sturt's third and final expedition was from the colony of South Australia into Central Australia, in 1843-1845. This was the first truly Central Australian expedition that had yet been despatched, although in 1841 Edward Eyre had attempted the same arduous enterprise. Of this I shall write anon. On his third expedition Sturt discovered the Barrier, the Grey, and the Stokes ranges, and among numerous smaller watercourses he found and named Strezletki's, Cooper's, and Eyre's Creeks. The latter remained the furthest known inland water of Australia for many years after Sturt's return. Sturt was accompanied,