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Updated: June 27, 2025
It was therefore evident that this district had already been visited by a white man; and the fact that he had come overland filled me with hopes that some day I, too, might return to civilisation in the same way. The English-speaking black chief assured me that his father had acted as guide to Leichhardt, but whether the latter got back safely to Sydney again he never knew.
Leichhardt, if successful, will put an end to every theory, and complete the discovery of the internal features of the Australian continent, and when we look at the great blank in the map of that vast territory, we cannot but admit the service that intrepid traveller is doing to the cause of Geography and Natural History, by the undertaking in which he is at present engaged.
In 1848 the German explorer Leichhardt lost his life in an attempt to penetrate the interior northward; but in 1860 two explorers, named Burke and Wills, managed to pass from south to north along the east coast; while, in the four years 1858 to 1862, John M'Dowall Stuart performed the still more difficult feat of crossing the centre of the continent from south to north, in order to trace a course for the telegraphic line which was shortly afterwards erected.
Leichhardt and myself, for our labours in the cause of Geography, alluded to and approved "the prudence with which further advance was abandoned, when it could only have risked the loss of those entrusted to my charge."
The history of their progress is now monotonous in the extreme, the country through which they travelled presented no great obstacle to the travellers' advance, being well-grassed and watered; and finally on the 6th May they reached the Leichhardt River.
The day after the retrograde movement of the cattle to Ruined Castle Creek, and just as Dr Leichhardt was about to start on a reconnoissance, the Blackfellows came down to where the horses were grazing, and speared one of them in the shoulder. This was the first act of hostility.
The country still improved: the river was completely salt, and in one continuous sheet of running water, in two channels 300 or 400 yards in width, and together about half-a-mile at the spot where he turned back. Here it was flat and shallow, and fordable at low water. Mangroves and salt-water creeks commenced as described by Leichhardt,* and alligator tracks were seen.
The territory was provisionally annexed to the Province of South Australia by commission under the great seal, bearing date 8th July, 1863. It comprised all the country to the northward of the twenty-sixth parallel south latitude, and between the 129th and 138th degrees of east longitude. The inland country was known only from the description of Stuart, Gregory and Leichhardt.
Instead, therefore, of following it up, and thereby lessening his journey, and discovering the beautiful pastoral downs that this most important river flows through, he wandered away to the north, and followed up the Gilbert River, thus duplicating, only further to the south, the eccentric course of Leichhardt.
Knowing what Kennedy had encountered on the lower part of the river, and anticipating finding more traces of Leichhardt to the westward. Gregory, on reaching the Thomson, followed that river up for some distance, but turned back disheartened at the want of grass, although the river was running from recent rains.
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