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INDEX
WHO DID DISCOVER AUSTRALIA?
COLONIAL EXPLORATION
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Colonial Exploration: 1840 - Edward John Eyre
When Matthew Flinders in 1802 urged the boat of the Investigator up the creek at the head of Spencer's Gulf till its oars touched either bank, his naturalist, Robert Brown, climbed the mountain that bears his name, and they both saw a mountain still farther north which they named Mount Arden. This was Eyre's first objective point. His party consisted of six white men and two black boys; they had with them thirteen horses, forty sheep, and provisions for three months, and it was arranged for a further supply to be sent to the head of Spencer's Gulf. During the previous year he had penetrated as far as the basin of Lake Torrens, his farthest point being by the governor named Mount Eyre. The prospect thence was dreary and repulsive. The wide and glistening expanse of the lake was a barrier to the westward, but he derived encouragement from the continuance in undiminished elevation of the Flinders Range as far as the eye could reach, and hoped he might find water and feed for his horses along its slopes. All the way to the he-ad of the gulf he was delighted with the country through which he passed. After fourteen days' travelling, he reached the neighbourhood of Mount Arden, where he formed a depot to serve as a base of operations, but from that time his difficulties began. He found the basin of Lake Torrens utterly destitute of both water and grass. The lake itself was a tantalising delusion; it appeared to be about twenty-five miles across, and to be wider to the northward. Its surface consisted of a crust of salt about an eighth of an inch thick, below which was soft mud. Every attempt to reach the water's edge - if there was water - was baffled. At one point he struggled onward for six miles till the horses sunk to the saddle-girths in the slime. The mirage was a constant deception - mountains, hundreds of feet in altitude, diminished to hillocks on close inspection, and huge rocks to mere clods lying on the saline surface. Every attempt to proceed northward by keeping to the ranges was defeated. A chain of immense salt lakes, which were supposed, though erroneously, to be connected, seemed to stretch from the west to the east in the form of an immense horseshoe, and after months of severe struggling, he was forced to abandon his cherished purpose.
The country was one sheet of rock, and the dead had to be left unburied, so when morning came Eyre and his black boy hurried away. Hemmed in between impassable scrub on one side and the sea on the other, he slowly struggled on. Living on dried horseflesh, eaten raw, and covering stretches of barren country as much as one hundred and fifty miles in length, without water, his only companion a selfish and untrustworthy aboriginal, his case was desperate indeed. When almost at the last gasp, he was relieved by a French whaling barque, commanded by Captain Rossiter, and finally reached Albany after such a twelve months' experience as few mortals have ever known. By his 2,300 kms of travel along the coastline, he had proved that it was unbroken by any watercourse leading into the interior, and that there was no practicable route for land traffic between the western colonies. |
In the year 1840, the country to the east and south of Adelaide was becoming fairly well known. Overlanding parties with cattle had traversed it by various routes running roughly parallel with each other, between the great bend of the river Murray, in the north, to the mouth of the Glenelg, near the southeastern extremity of the colony. Away, to the north and west, however, there was an immense untrodden wilderness of which scarcely anything was known, save from the observations of Captain Flinders and his officers in the "Investigator." The blank on the map of Australia nearly thirty years afterwards was the largest of any similar terrestrial space on the globe, excepting only the polar regions. There was a strong desire in Adelaide to open overland communication with Perth in Western Australia, and the subject was much discussed. Mr. Edward John Eyre in a published letter affirmed his conviction that no practicable route existed near the coast, but he believed one might be found farther inland. Public attention was thus directed to northern exploration, and eventually Eyre volunteered to lead a party in that direction. His offer was accepted, and an outfit provided, towards which the government granted one hundred pounds, besides rendering assistance in other ways. No better man could have been found. He had travelled and explored in both east and west Australia, was one of the first to bring cattle overland from New South Wales, had ample experience as a bushman, and was intrepid and tenacious to a fault. After a farewell banquet at Government House, he started, accompanied by a gay and gallant cavalcade for some miles, on 18th June 1840, carrying with him a silken Union Jack presented by the ladies of Adelaide which it was his ambition to unfurl in the centre of the continent. None of the party imagined that twenty years would elapse before that point was reached.
Beaten, but not yet finally repulsed, he determined to try the western route, and made his way to Port Lincoln for a fresh start. After enduring great hardships, he at length reached Fowler's Bay, a little cutter named the "Hero" acting as a kind of tender to the party. Thence, despite the most pressing solicitations to return, he set himself, with one white companion and three natives, to the accomplishment of his terrible task. 1,300 km of desert lay before him, but it would have broken his heart to turn back. His black companions 'proved treacherous, and two of them, being probably caught pilfering the stores, shot the overseer in the night, and decamped with nearly all the provisions. Eyre was a short distance away watching the horses, but bearing the report of the gun, hastened to the camp to find his solitary white comrade weltering in blood and breathing his last. The horror of the situation is difficult to realise. There were still six hundred miles of unknown and presumably desert country between him and his goal. Only about forty pounds of flour, four gallons of water and a little tea and sugar were left, and he was practically alone; yet still his stout heart upheld him, and he would not - could not - retreat. 