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Leichhardt's 1844-45 route
I
WITH HOPE INTO THEWILDERNESS OF AUSTRALIA
October 1844
It was mid-Spring 1844 when the expedition set out from Jimbour Station in south-east Queensland.
Initially it consisted of 10 men, of whom the youngest was aged just 15, led by Ludwig Leichhardt, a
tall, thin short-sighted Prussian, only 30 years old himself, accompanied by 17 horses, 16 cattle and
several hunting dogs. Leichhardt wrote in his diary
“… [we] launched buoyant with hope into the
wilderness of Australia…”.
Publicly, their objective was to find an overland route between eastern
Australia and the Top End at Port Essington, 150 km north-east of today's Darwin. They intended to
investigate inland waterways and potential grazing and farming lands.
Privately, Leichhardt's motivation was scientific pursuit in this, the Great Age of gentlemen botanists
astronomers, geographers and zoologists. He had studied widely at universities across Europe. In line
with the great German scientist, Alexander von Humbolt, his 'naturalist's' studies covered geology,
biology and other natural sciences, medicine, languages and philosophy.
They had no government support, no overland maps, no knowledge of what, if any, rivers they could
follow, and they knew little of each other. Yet most were familiar with the southern hemisphere's
night sky. Perhaps it gave them comfort. Leichhardt had spent his previous two and a half years in
Australia exploring lands between Sydney and today’s Brisbane. On this journey he preferred to sleep
without a tent under the stars with the two aboriginal members of the team, Charley Fisher and
Harry Brown. Later he wrote in his diary that at night Harry would
“…tune his corroboree songs…”
80 x 120 cm
oil on board
2013
