INDEX

• Introduction
• Maps
• Significant Places in Australia's Maritime History
• Naming Australia
• Naming Australia's Coastal Features

WHO DID DISCOVER AUSTRALIA?

• The Phoenecians & Egyptians
• The Greeks & Romans
• The Chinese
• The Muslims
• The Portuguese
• The Dutch
• The British
• The French

COLONIAL EXPLORATION

• Index
• The French
• The British
• Other
• Inland explorers

Colonial Exploration: Allan Cunningham (1791 - 1839)

A botanist, sent by Joseph Banks to New South Wales in 1816 to collect plants, Cunningham joined John Oxley's expedition to the Lachlan and Macquarie rivers in 1817. He was botanist on the "Mermaid" 1817-20 and made inland explorations of New South Wales. Cunningham, whose name was given to a species of pine tree (Araucaria Cunninghamii), assisted Philip Parker King in his survey of the Queensland coastline in 1819.

In September 1824 he accompanied John Oxley to Moreton Bay and surveyed the Brisbane River to the head of boat navigation. Oxley is credited with discovering the Brisbane River which he named in honour of Sir Thomas Brisbane, Governor of the colony of New South Wales. Oxley had been on an expedition with instructions from Governor Brisbane to assess Port Curtis, Moreton Bay and Port Bowen as sites for convict settlements. It was as a result of this trip of Oxley's that it was decided to establish a settlement at Moreton Bay. Oxley returned again to explore the Brisbane River the following year, in September 1824. On that occasion, accompanied by the botanist, Allan Cunningham, the exploration continued upstream to beyond present-day Kholo.

From the Mount Ommaney encampment upstream Cunningham noted a distinct change in the river in that "the primary or upper banks are now frequently open and unencumbered by brushes and beyond, forest Hills appear occasionally, the Soil appears evidently improved ... timbered with Apple Tree (Angophora lanceolata). ... Hibiscus heterophyllus is very frequent on the immediate bank clothed with a profusion of its specious flowers. Pelicans, Black Swan ... and Ducks were very abundant in every reach of the River ...".

The reach westward from Mount Ommaney, Cunningham records, was "alternately concealed by a thick brush wood and open forest land, occasionally showing the prevailing rock formation which is quartzose with a breccia in which quartz is imbedded". Then referring to this study's site, Pullen Reach, Cunningham continues "again the River takes a bend from the Southward, the banks become lower, which abound in Hibiscus heterophyllus and a Casuarina, the Crinum observed in the lower Reaches of the River, being here very general on the mud flats on each side which at the present low level of this water are partially dry".

The pastoral industry was rapidly expanding and men wondered what lay north of the Liverpool Plains (NSW) and west of Brisbane, so the government sent Cunningham to find the answer. Leaving Segenhoe in the Hunter River valley (N.S.W.) on 30 April 1827, he discovered on 6 June a vast area of excellent land which he named the Darling Downs in honour of the Governor.

A year later, he went to Brisbane and, after one unsuccessful attempt, discovered a way from Brisbane to the Darling Downs through Cunningham's Gap. For these explorations he has sometimes been called the real founder of Queensland. Later he advised Patrick Leslie to take up land on the Darling Downs.

In 1828 he had also charted the Bremer River. From May to September 1829 he was again in Moreton Bay collecting botanical specimens. This extensive trip departed Limestone Hills (Ipswich) travelling to Glamorganvale, Rosewood, west to the Little Liverpool Ranges, Laidley and as far west as Murphy's Ck. The party then turned east to Lake Clarendon and advanced up the Brisbane River to Esk, travelling on to Cressbrook Ck. discovered by Major Lockyer in 1825. The then went as far North to Lister's Peak near Linville, returning via Mt Esk Pocket and thence to Ipswich.

In 1831 he returned to Kew Gardens to sort out the plant specimens sent back. A few years later (1835) he returned to Australia to become superintendent of the Sydney Botanical Gardens. Later he went to New Zealand for 6 months, became ill and died on his return to Sydney in 1839.

Allan Cunningham (1791 - 1839)

Born in Wimbledon, England, on 13 July 1791, died in Sydney, New South Wales, on 27 June 1839.
Selected by Banks from among Kew staff to be an overseas collector ('King's Botanist to the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew'). Between 1814 and 1816 he collected in Brazil, arriving in Australia in December 1816. Cunningham joined several expeditions, including that of Oxley along the Lachlan and Macquarie Rivers (1817) and Philip Parker King's coastal surveys (Mermaid and Bathurst, 1817-1822). In 1818 he collected at Illawarra, New South Wales, and in Tasmania at Hobart and Macquarie Harbour. Other localities visited by the King survey included Port Macquarie and Hastings River in New South Wales, Rodd's Bay, Percy Isles, Cleveland Bay, Halifax and Rockingham Bays, and Endeavour River in Queensland, and Goulburn Island, Vernon Islands, Cambridge Gulf and Port Wanderer in northern Australia. In 1822 Cunningham collected in New South Wales at Illawarra, Blue Mountains, Pandora Pass and Liverpool Plains. In 1824 he visited the source of the Murrumbidgee and Brisbane Rivers, and in 1825 the Nepean and Hunter Rivers, Pandora Pass, Liverpool Plains, Wellington Valley, Coxs River and other places in New South Wales. He was in New Zealand (1826) and on the Darling Downs, Queensland (1827). He returned to England in 1831, but came back to New South Wales in 1837 as Government Botanist, a position he resigned after a year.

Text of Cunningham's journals