Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia: From Moreton Bay to Port Essington, a distance of upwards of 3000 miles, during the years 1844-1845Leichhardt, Ludwig
History
Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia: From Moreton Bay to Port Essington, a distance of upwards of 3000 miles, during the years 1844-1845
Leichhardt, Ludwig
Australia -- Description and travel; Australia -- Discovery and exploration
Oct. 20.--This morning, at half-past nine o'clock, Messrs. Roper,
Hodgson, and Charley, returned with John Murphy and Caleb. They had
strayed about twelve miles from the camp, and had fairly lost themselves.
Their trackers had to ride over seventy miles, before they came up to
them, and they would certainly have perished, had not Charley been able
to track them: it was indeed a providential circumstance that he had not
left us. According to their statement, the country is very open, with a
fine large creek, which flows down to the Condamine; this is the creek
which we passed on the 10th Oct., and which I called "Charley's Creek."
The creek first seen by Mr. Hodgson joins this, and we are consequently
still on westerly waters.
Thermometer, at sunrise, 54 degrees (in the water 64 degrees); at eight
o'clock 64 degrees. Strong easterly and northerly winds during the last
two nights. It becomes calm at a quarter past three, with the rise of
Venus.
Mr. Calvert brought an edible mushroom out of Flourspill Scrub.
The Loranthus of the Myal grows also on other Acacias with glaucous
leaves. A bright yellow everlasting is very fine and frequent.
Oct. 22.--I left Kent's lagoon yesterday. In order to skirt the scrub, I
had to keep to the north-east, which direction brought me, after about
three miles travelling through open forest, to Mr. Hodgson's creek, at
which John Murphy and Caleb had been lost. The creek here consists of a
close chain of fine rocky water-holes; the rock is principally clay,
resembling very much a decomposed igneous rock, but full of nodules and
veins of iron-stone. I now turned to the northward, and encamped at the
upper part of the creek. To-day I took my old course to the north-west,
and passed a scrubby Ironbark forest, and flat openly-timbered forest
land. I came again, however, to a Bricklow scrub, which I skirted, and
after having crossed a very dense scrubby Ironbark forest, came to a
chain of rushy water-holes, with the fall of the waters to the
north-east. The whole drainage of a north-easterly basin, seems to have
its outlet, through Charley's Creek, into the Condamine.
On the banks of Hodgson's Creek, grows a species of Dampiera, with many
blue flowers, which deserves the name of "D. floribunda;" here also were
Leptospermum; Persoonia with lanceolate pubescent leaf; Jacksonia
(Dogwood); the cypress-pine with a light amber-coloured resin (Charley
brought me fine claret-coloured resin, and I should not be surprised to
find that it belongs to a different species of Callitris); an Acacia with
glaucous lanceolate one-inch-long phyllodia; and a Daviesia; another
Acacia with glaucous bipinnate leaves; a white Scaevola, Anthericum, and
a little Sida, with very showy blossoms. Spotted-gum and Ironbark formed
the forest; farther on, flooded-gum.
Pigeons, mutton-birds (Struthidia), are frequent, and provided us with
several messes; iguanas are considered great delicacies; several black
kangaroos were scen to day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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