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Cracked and gaping plains, desolate, desert and abandoned of life, scorched beneath a lurid sun of burning fire, waterless, hopeless, relentless, and accursed: that is the picture he draws of the great interior. He had followed up Oxley's footsteps and exposed the fallacies into which that explorer had fallen, and erred just as egregiously himself.
See BURTON on Education and Religion in New South Wales, pp. 8, 9, 12, 16. We may add, by way of illustrating the regard paid to religious worship, even in Governor Macquarie's time, that Oxley's first expedition into the interior was permitted to set out from Bathurst on a Sunday! See his Journal, p. 3. Sunday, indeed, seems to have been a favourite starting-day with Mr. Oxley. See p. 37.
On the 15th of December, he came to the Peel, and crossing Oxley's Hardwicke Range, reached the Namoi River on the 16th. After penetrating some distance into a range, which he called the Nundawar Range, he made back for the Namoi, and proceeded to set up the canvas boats he had with him, intending to try to follow the river in them.
"It would be impossible for his Excellency, consistently with his feelings, to announce the decease of the late Surveyor-General without endeavouring to express the sense he entertains of Mr. Oxley's services, though he cannot do justice to them.
Oxley's account, can be more monotonous and wearying, than the dull, unvarying aspect of the level and desolate region through which the Lachlan winds its sluggish course. One tree, one soil, one water, and one description of bird, fish, or animal, prevails alike for ten miles, and for a hundred.
How easy was the main range crossed here, and the fertile downs laid open, compared to the years of labour spent on the pass of the Blue Mountains. In the year following Cunningham made his last expedition, closing ten years of unceasing work in the cause of exploration. Sturt followed Oxley's tracks.
In addition he introduced various details of large plains, BALYRAN, that he had crossed, and a burning mountain named COURADA. As he saw no prospect of getting away from Australia, Clarke decided on returning. This wild tale, and the expedition it led to, brings on the scene one of the most noted figures of the past, Oxley's successor, Surveyor-General Major Mitchell.
Oxley's name a distinguished place in that class to which his devotion to the interests of the colony has so justly entitled him, the Government would do honour to his memory in the same degree as it feels the loss it has sustained in his death." Sir T. L. Mitchell, Kt., Surveyor-General Chief of the Expedition. Edmund B. Kennedy, Esq., Assistant Surveyor Second in Command.
Also, I have at last completed the submarine which has been my pet project for almost as long as I can remember, and now all that I need is the opportunity to try her: indeed, but for Oxley's strict injunctions to me to cut business altogether, I should certainly spend my holiday in putting the boat to a complete series of very much more thorough and exhaustive tests than have thus far been possible.
Lawson and Scott attempted to reach Liverpool Plains, Oxley's great discovery, from Bathurst; they were, however, unable to penetrate the range that formed the southern boundary of the Plains, and returned, having discovered a new river at the foot of the range, which they named the Goulburn. In 1823, Oxley, Cunningham, and Currie were all in the field in different directions.
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