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Updated: June 29, 2025
We have now traced the gradual extension of exploration to the westward, and seen a river system growing up, as it were, piece by piece, as the result of these expeditions; it may, therefore, be as well to continue to follow up Captain Sturt's expeditions, and note how the Murray and its tributary streams were gradually elaborated, before touching upon events at this time occurring afar on the south-west coast of the continent.
The desire to ascertain the course of the Darling naturally became a subject of great interest so soon as the result of Captain Sturt's expedition was known; and the Macquarie and Lachlan rivers having failed to afford a means of reaching the interior, it was determined to try the Morumbidgee.
In 1858 a new aspirant for geographical honours appeared on the field in the person of John McDouall Stuart, of South Australia, who, as before mentioned, had formerly been a member of Captain Sturt's Central Australian expedition in 1843-5 as draftsman and surveyor. Stuart's object was to cross the continent, almost in its greatest width, from south to north; and this he eventually accomplished.
Beyond this point no continuation of the channel could be found, and Gregory too easily recognised the aspect of the desert country that had baffled him before. The creek was named Sturt's Creek, and a prominent hill, parallel with the lowest salt lake was called Mount Mueller.
Still however a better range to the westward was unaccounted for; but, on ascending a hill which was still higher and whose rocky crest was clear of trees, I was able to identify the whole by the bearings of the high land as given in Captain Sturt's book, and by the strip of plain visible in the south, which had appeared to that traveller to resemble the bed of a rapid river.
The natives are generally good-humoured, if properly managed; and throughout Sturt's trip the white men and the blacks contrived to spend a very friendly and sociable time together. After following the Murray for about two hundred miles below the Lachlan they reached a place where a large river flowed from the north into the Murray.
Sturt's boating expedition came very quickly to a close. In the afternoon of the day he started: " . . . the channel which had promised so well, without any change in its breadth or depth, ceased altogether, and while we were yet lost in astonishment at so abrupt a termination of it the boat grounded."
One of these opportunities occurred in the very neighbourhood of the hill from which Mr. Poole is said to have seen the inland sea, as described in Captain Sturt's despatch. There are several reasons for supposing Mr.
Our guard was now reduced to six, the remainder being employed to escort Sturt's instruments into Cabul, so that I really did not much like the appearance of things; when about midnight my servant reported to me that the sentry saw a great many lights moving about us. I instantly rose and distinctly observed the lighted slow matches of firearms; there might have been forty or fifty.
Sturt's Expeditions in Australia, vol. ii. pp. 109, 110. Cheered with the gratification of national feeling thus powerfully described, the patient crew returned to their toils in descending the Murray, whose banks continued unchanged for some distance; but its channel was much encumbered with timber, some very large sand-banks were seen, and several rapids were passed.
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