On this journey I was accompanied and seconded by Mr. William Henry Tietkens. We had both been scholars at Christ's Hospital in London, though many years apart. Of the toils and adventures of my second expedition the readers of my book must form their own opinion; and although I was again unsuccessful in carrying out my object, and the expedition ended in the death of one member, and in misfortune and starvation to the others, still I have been told by a few partial friends that it was really a splendid failure. On that expedition I explored a line of nearly 700 miles of previously unknown country, in a straight line from my starting point.
During my first and second expeditions I had been fortunate in the discovery of large areas of mountain country, permanently watered and beautifully grassed, and, as spaces of enormous extent still remained to be explored, I decided to continue in the field, provided I could secure the use of camels. These volumes will contain the narratives of my public explorations. In the preface to this work I have given an outline of the physical and colonial divisions of Australia, so that my reader may eventually follow me, albeit in imagination only, to the starting points of my journeys, and into the field of my labours also.
[PREFACE.]
The Island Continent of Australia contains an area of about three millions of square miles, it being, so to say, an elliptically-shaped mass about 2500 miles in length from east to west, and 2000 from north to south. The degrees of latitude and longitude it occupies will be shown by the map accompanying these volumes.
The continent is divided into five separate colonies, whose respective capitals are situated several hundreds of miles apart. The oldest colony is New South Wales. The largest in area is Western Australia, next comes South Australia; then Queensland, New South Wales, and lastly Victoria, which, though the smallest in area, is now the first in importance among the group. It was no wonder that Mitchell, the Surveyor-General of New South Wales, designated that region “Australia Felix.”
It may be strange, but it is no less true, that there is almost as great a difference between the fiscal laws and governments of the various Australian Colonies as between those of foreign States in Europe—the only thing in common being the language and the money of the British Empire. Although however, they agree to differ amongst themselves, there can be no doubt of the loyalty of the group, as a whole, to their parent nation. I shall go no further into this matter, as, although English enough, it is foreign to my subject. I shall treat more especially of the colony or colonies within whose boundaries my travels led me, and shall begin with South Australia, where my first expedition was conducted.
South Australia includes a vast extent of country called the Northern Territory, which must become in time a separate colony, as it extends from the 26th parallel of latitude, embracing the whole country northwards to the Indian Ocean at the 11th parallel. South Australia possesses one advantage over the other colonies, from the geographical fact of her oblong territory extending, so to speak, exactly in the middle right across the continent from the Southern to the Indian Ocean. The dimensions of the colony are in extreme length over 1800 miles, by a breadth of nearly 700, and almost through the centre of this vast region the South Australian Transcontinental Telegraph line runs from Adelaide, via Port Augusta, to Port Darwin.
At the time I undertook my first expedition in 1872, this extensive work had just been completed, and it may be said to divide the continent into halves, which, for the purpose I then had in view, might be termed the explored and the unexplored halves. For several years previous to my taking the field, I had desired to be the first to penetrate into this unknown region, where, for a thousand miles in a straight line, no white man's foot had ever wandered, or, if it had, its owner had never brought it back, nor told the tale. I had ever been a delighted student of the narratives of voyages and discoveries, from Robinson Crusoe to Anson and Cook, and the exploits on land in the brilliant accounts given by Sturt, Mitchell, Eyre, Grey, Leichhardt, and Kennedy, constantly excited my imagination, as my own travels may do that of future rovers, and continually spurred me on to emulate them in the pursuit they had so eminently graced.
My object, as indeed had been Leichhardt's, was to force my way across the thousand miles that lay untrodden and unknown, between the South Australian telegraph line and the settlements upon the Swan River. What hopes I formed, what aspirations came of what might be my fortune, for I trust it will be believed that an explorer may be an imaginative as well as a practical creature, to discover in that unknown space. Here let me remark that the exploration of 1000 miles in Australia is equal to 10,000 in any other part of the earth's surface, always excepting Arctic and Antarctic travels.