30
Leichhardt's 1844-45 route
XV
JOURNEY’S END,
JOURNEY AGAIN
December 1845
Remarkably, Leichhardt’s spirits lifted and he
resumed his detailed scientific record-keeping and
wrote passages in his diary appreciating the kind
and attentive 'natives'. On 17th December 1845, as
the wet season was moving over the Top End, their
15 month trek came to an end when they reached
the then Victoria Settlement, Port Essington, on the
Cobourg Peninsula. It had been an epic journey.
Leichhardt wrote of his arrival
“…I was deeply
affected in finding myself in civilized society, and
could scarcely speak…enabled by a kind providence
to perform such a journey with so small means…”
Commenting on their arrival, the commander of the
settlement wrote of Leichhardt
"…a thin, spare,
weather beaten and bent down man, wearing a
long beard and well worn habitments…"
The small
garrison settlement, with its formal cluster of brick
buildings, was to be abandoned in 1848, little more
than two years later. It was an isolated post on a
wide harbour overlooked by a white cliff but had
little fresh water.
120 x 80 cm
oil on board
2013
Leichhardt, was soon to be titled by the Sydney Morning Herald
as the‘Prince of Explorers’, and awarded rare medals from both
the Royal Geographic Society of London and the Geographic
Society of Paris. He was already planning his next: a more
ambitious scientific expedition east-west across the Australian
continent. The first attempt failed around the Peak Ranges
in early 1847 and his strange ways and leadership came into
further question. The next attempt commenced in April 1848
and was to be a journey from which he was never to return.
