Looking-into-Leichhardt_catalogue_Oct2013_Gannon+friends

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.

Leichhardt's 1844-45 route

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