Australia Twice Traversed | Page 5

speared by natives of what he justly called Treachery
Bay, near the mouth of the Victoria River in Northern Australia,
discovered by him. His voyages occurred between the years 1839 and
1843. He discovered the mouths of most of the rivers that fall into the
Gulf of Carpentaria, besides many harbours, bays, estuaries, and other
geographical features upon the North Australian coasts.
The early navigators had to encounter much difficulty and many
dangers in their task of making surveys from the rough achievements of
the Dutch, down to the more finished work of Flinders, King and
Stokes. It is to be remembered that they came neither for pleasure nor
for rest, but to discover the gulfs, bays, peninsulas, mountains, rivers
and harbours, as well as to make acquaintance with the native races, the
soils, and animal and vegetable products of the great new land, so as to
diffuse the knowledge so gained for the benefit of others who might
come after them. In cockle-shells of little ships what dangers did they
not encounter from shipwreck on the sunken edges of coral ledges of
the new and shallow seas, how many were those 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