STURT'S DISCOVERIES IN AUSTRALIA
Since the days of Flinders, much discovery had been done in the great new island-continent of Australia. The Blue Mountains had been crossed, and the river Macquarie discovered and named after the governor of that name. But Sturt's famous discovery of the river Darling and his descent of the Murray River rank among the most noteworthy of a bewildering number of lesser expeditions.
Captain Sturt landed with his regiment, the 39th, at Sydney in the year 1827, "to guard the convicts." His first impressions of Sydney are interesting. "Cornfield and orchard," he says, "have supplanted wild grass and brush; on the ruins of the forest stands a flourishing town; and the stillness of that once desert shore is now broken by the bugle and by the busy hum of commerce. It is not unusual to see from thirty to forty vessels from every quarter of the globe riding at anchor at one time."
Sir Ralph Darling, Governor of New South Wales, soon formed a high opinion of Sturt's ability, and when an expedition was proposed into the interior for further exploration, he appointed him leader.
There was a universal opinion in the colony that in the middle of the unknown continent lay a large inland sea. Oxley had made his way to a shallow ocean of reeds where the river Macquarie disappeared; natives spoke of "large waters" containing "great fish." To open up the country and to ascertain the truth of these rumours were the objects of this new expedition which left Sydney in November 1828. It consisted of Hamilton Hume, the first Australian-born explorer, two soldiers, eight convicts, fifteen horses, ten bullocks, and a small boat on a wheeled carriage. Across the roadless Blue Mountains they started, followed the traces of Oxley, who had died just a week before they started, and about Christmas time they passed his last camp and began to break new ground. Through thickets of reeds and marshy swamps they pushed on; the river Macquarie had entirely disappeared, but on 2nd February they suddenly found a large river some eighty yards broad enclosing an unbroken sheet of deep water. "Our surprise and delight," says Sturt, "are better imagined than described. Our difficulties seemed at an end. The banks were too steep to allow of watering the cattle, but the men eagerly descended to quench a thirst increased by the powerful sun. Never shall I forget their cry of amazement, nor the terror and disappointment with which they called out that the water was too salt to drink!" Leaving his party, Sturt pushed on, but no fresh water was to be found, so he named the river the Darling, after the Governor, and returned, but not till he had discovered brine springs in the bed of the river, which accounted for its saltness. Sturt had found no inland sea, but in the Darling he had discovered a main channel of the western watershed.
He now proposed to follow the line of the Murrumbidgee, "a river of considerable size and impetuous current," and to trace it if possible into the interior. Several of his old party again joined him, and once more he rode out of Sydney on this new quest.
The journey to the banks of the Murrumbidgee lay through wild and romantic country, but as they journeyed farther, broad reed belts appeared by the river, which was soon lost in a vast expanse of reeds. For a moment or two Sturt was as one stunned; he could neither sleep nor rest till he had regained the river again. When at last he did so he found the water was deep, the current rapid, and the banks high. But he turned on all hands to build the whale-boat which he had designed at Sydney for the purpose. Early in January he writes home: "I was checked in my advance by high reeds spreading as far as the eye can reach. The Murrumbidgee is a magnificent stream. I do not yet know its fate, but I have taken to the boats. Where I shall wander to God only knows. I have little doubt, however, that I shall ultimately make the coast."
By 6th January the boat was ready and Sturt started on his memorable voyage. After passing the junction of the Lachlan, the channel gradually narrowed; great trees had been swept down by the floods and navigation rendered very dangerous. Still narrower grew the stream, stronger the current. "On a sudden, the river took a general southern direction. We were carried at a fearful rate down its gloomy banks, and at such a moment of excitement had little time to pay attention to the country through which we were passing. At last we found we were approaching a junction, and within less than a minute we were hurried into a broad and noble river. It is impossible to describe the effect upon us of so instantaneous a change. We gazed in silent wonder on the large channel we had entered."
The Murrumbidgee had joined the great Murray River as Sturt now called it, after Sir George Murray of the Colonial Department.
To add to the unknown dangers of the way, numbers of natives now appeared in force on the banks of the river, threatening the white men with "dreadful yells and with the beating of spears and shields."