#australian explorers

On this day, 13th August 1790, William Charles Wentworth, was born.                                 

W C Wentworth was an Australian  explorer, journalist and politician, and one of the leading figures of early colonial New South Wales. He was born on Norfolk Island to a convict mother but his father was D’Arcy Wentworth, the assistant surgeon in the colony of New South Wales.

In 1813, Wentworth, along with Gregory Blaxland and William Lawson, led the expedition which found a route across the Blue Mountains west of Sydney and opened up the grazing lands of inland New South Wales. The State Library of New South Wales holds Wentworth’s  journal of the journey of exploration.

William’s father D'Arcy Wentworth died in 1827 and William inherited his property, becoming one of the wealthiest men in the colony. He bought land in eastern Sydney and built the mansion, Vaucluse House.  However, because his parents had never married, and his mother had been a convict, and was the daughter of two convicts, he could not become a member of Sydney’s “respectable” class, known as “the exclusives.” Embittered by this rejection, he placed himself at the head of the “emancipist” party, which sought equal rights and status for ex-convicts and their descendants.

A gifted orator and a vitriolic journalist, Wentworth became the colony’s leading political figure of the 1820s and 1830s, calling for representative government, the abolition of transportation, freedom of the press and trial by jury.

Wentworth founded a newspaper, The Australian, the colony’s first privately owned paper, to champion his causes.  In 1853 Wentworth chaired the committee to draft a new constitution for New South Wales, which was to receive full responsible self-government from Britain.  Wentworth was later instrumental in founding the University of Sydney, seen as an important step in the development of the colony of New South Wales. 

On this day, 16th June 1845, Ludwig Leichhardt, named the Mitchell River in North Queensland.

Ludwig Leichhardt was born in Prussia, studied in Germany and was a passionate botanist. In 1843, despite having poor eye sight and lacking any bush skills, Leichhardt decided to trek overland from the Hunter River region in NSW to Moreton Bay. This was an impressive adventure for such an inexperienced traveller. 

After this first trek, Leichhardt became determined to pursue his scientific interests by travelling into far North Queensland.  He left on an expedition from the Darling Downs in Queensland to Port Essington, near Darwin, in October 1844 and named the Mitchell River (for Sir Thomas Mitchell) on 16th June 1845.

Like other explorers, Leichhardt understood that the lasting work of his expedition would lie in the information provided for future European settlement. In carefully drafted fieldbooks, he recorded the botany, geology and the lie of the land through which he travelled. He noted the presence of useful natural resources such as water, timber and minerals and recognised the support of friends and benefactors by naming geographical features in their honour.

 Leichhardt left behind a detailed record of his experiences in Australia in the form of field books, note books, journals and letters. His reputation as an explorer rests largely on his one successful expedition and the intriguing mystery of his disappearance during his attempt at an east-west crossing of Australia in 1848.