Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia,
by Thomas Mitchell
Journal of an Expedition
into the Interior of Tropical Australia
In Search of a Route from Sydney
to the Gulf of Carpentaria (1848)
by
Lt. Col. Sir Thomas Livingstone Mitchell Kt. D.C.L. (1792-1855)
Surveyor-General of New South Wales
Originally published in 1848
TO
THE HONOURABLE
THE SPEAKER AND MEMBERS
OF THE
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL OF NEW SOUTH WALES,
THIS JOURNAL
OF
AN EXPEDITION OF DISCOVERY,
PETITIONED FOR BY THE COUNCIL,
AND
UNDERTAKEN AT THE EXPENSE OF THE COLONY,
IS
DEDICATED
BY
THEIR MOST OBEDIENT,
HUMBLE SERVANT,
T. L. MITCHELL
PREFACE.
"Admiring Nature in her wildest grace,"[* Burns.] it has ever been the mostattractive of the author's duties to explore the interior of Australia. There thephilosopher may look for facts; the painter and the poet for original studies andideas; the naturalist for additional knowledge; and the historian might begin ata beginning. The traveller there seeks in vain for the remains of cities, temples,or towers; but he is amply compensated by objects that tell not of decay but ofhealthful progress and hope;—of a wonderful past, and of a promising future.Curiosity alone may attract us into the mysterious recesses of regions stillunknown; but a still deeper interest attaches to those regions, now that therapid increase of the most industrious and, may we add most deserving peopleon earth, suggests that the land there has been reserved by the Almighty fortheir use.
In Australia, the great family of civilized man seems still at that early periodbetween history and fable, upon which, even in "the world as known to theancients," the Roman poet had to look very far back:—
"Communemque priùs, ceu lumina solis et auras,Cautus humum longo signavit limite mensor."
[* Ovid, Met. lib. i.]
The Journey narrated in this work was undertaken for the extension ofarrangements depending on physical geography. It completes a series ofinternal surveys, radiating from Sydney towards the west, the south, and thenorth, which have occupied the author's chief attention during the last twentyyears; and, as on former occasions, it has enabled him to bring under the noticeof men of science some of the earth's productions hitherto unknown. He cannotsufficiently express his sense of obligation in this respect, to Mr. Bentham, SirWilliam Hooker, Dr. Lindley, and Professor De Vriese, for supplying thebotanical matter and notes contained in this volume, and thus contributing tothe general stock of human knowledge. It is also his pleasing duty to state, thatduring the long journey of upwards of a year, Captain P. P. King, R. N., kept aregister of the state of the barometer at the sea side; and, in the midst of hisimportant avocations, determined, by a very elaborate comparison of minutedetails, all the heights of localities herein mentioned.
The new geographical matter is presented to the public with confidence in itsaccuracy, derived as it is from careful and frequent observations of latitude;trigonometrical surveying with the theodolite, whereever heights wereavailable; and, by actual measurement of the line of route. This route wasconnected, at its commencement and termination, with the trigonometricalsurvey of the colony; and, in closing on Mount