Looking-into-Leichhardt_catalogue_Oct2013_Gannon+friends

XIV BUT I AM ALMOST DEAD November 1845

It was towards the end of the dry season and they were crossing very rough and often barren ground as they travelled along Flying Fox Creek under unrelenting heat. Dissention within the group was rife. Leichhardt wrote "…everyone is against me…" . He and his companions suffered painfully from heat boils and prickly heat sores. Melancholy and dread hit Leichhardt. They had yet to descend the steep and treacherous walls of the Arnhem Land plateau down to the flats of today’s Kakadu National Park. Leichhardt lost interest in his scientific researches and for a while found it hard to continue, declaring in scratchy writing on his map of Flying Fox Creek on 13th November “…but I am almost dead.”

80 x 120 cm oil on board 2013

Leichhardt's 1844-45 route

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