Journey of Discovery to Port Phillip

PREFACE

An explanation is due for the lateness of this Publication, and it is therefore necessary to state the Gentlemen who performed the journey, were at first, (a circumstance often connected with real merit) fearful that their exertions were hardly deserving of public notice; nor were they induced to change this opinion, until a considerable time after their return,--nor then, but at the suggestion of their friends. This circumstance was some time afterwards mentioned to the Editor, who with much pleasure undertook the arrangement of the papers, but was prevented in the commencement of his task by an illness, which did not allow him to resume his design for many months, when, a considerable portion of the work having been actually printed, a new and most unexpected obstacle to its progress occurred, it being announced that the printer had no more paper, and that it was utterly impossible at that time to procure a supply of that article in the Colony.
The late journey of Captain Sturt down the Murrambidgee, which may be considered a mere continuation of the previous plan of Messrs. Hovell and Hume, it is hoped will be admitted a happy opportunity for their present, though late introduction of the results of their laborious undertaking to the public, not only on account of the important intrinsic value of their labors, but from their almost inseparable connection with those of the latter traveller. Thus to give a geometrical idea of the relation of the route of Messrs. Hume and Hovell, and of that of Captain Sturt, it may be said, that the line of march of the former may be considered as the base line of a triangle, one side of which is formed by the route of Captain Sturt, the other by the line of coast to the southward, extending from Encounter Bay (in which is situate the Emboucheur of the Lake Alexandrina*), to Port Phillip: and the whole contents of which triangle, a space of about 112,500 square miles, consisting generally of an extremely fine country, intersected by numerous streams and rivers, are now by the conjoint labours of Messrs. Hovell and Hume, and of Capt. Sturt, laid open to the public.
* See Appendix, No. 3.
The real merit of the task of the two original travellers will be best estimated by a reference to the work of the late Mr. Oxley, Surveyor General, in which the very FINE country actually TRAVERSED by them is denounced as* UNINHABITABLE, and according to the prevailing opinions of that time IMPASSABLE also; indeed, the Colonists must well remember how hopeless the attempt of these two travellers appeared at the time at which it was undertaken. However, by their courage and perseverance, and almost without assistance, the work was achieved, and by it an accession of information respecting the interior of this country acquired, far superior to any thing that had preceded it, and which, as far as regards this Colony, cannot indeed hereafter be readily surpassed.
* We had DEMONSTRATED BEYOND A DOUBT, that no River could fall into the Sea, between Cape Otway, and Spencer's Gulf, at least none deriving its waters from the Eastern Coast, and that the Country South of the parallel of 34, and West of the Meridian 147, 30 East, was uninhabitable and useless for all the purposes of civilised man.
Oxley's Journal, APPENDIX--Page 372.
See also Pages 74, 80,100,101, and 106, of the same journal, in which the same opinion is still more positively and strongly expressed.