Overland from Adelaide to King George’s Sound

Edward John Eyre · 1840 CE – 1841 CE · Earth

Overland from Adelaide to King George’s Sound — Edward John Eyre · 1840 CE – 1841 CE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Force a way into the interior north of Adelaide and, failing that, open an overland stock route to Western Australia.

Historical context

Adelaide subscribed to an expedition that was supposed to go north and find the good country everyone believed lay behind the ranges; Eyre found instead a horseshoe of salt lakes and no way through. Rather than return the money he turned west along a coast where limestone cliffs drop straight into the Southern Ocean and no river reaches the sea. What followed was less an exploration than a survival march, and it was won by the knowledge of a sixteen-year-old Noongar named Wylie.

The voyage, step by step

  1. Adelaide, June 1840

    June 1840

    A subscription expedition sets out to find the good country believed to lie in the interior.

  2. The horseshoe of salt

    1840 CE

    Every route north ends in a bed of glittering salt too soft to carry a horse.

  3. Fowlers Bay, the last depot

    1840 CE

    Eyre sends most of his party home by sea and keeps four companions for the west.

  4. The head of the Bight

    1841 CE

    For 200 kilometres the plain ends in a wall of limestone dropping straight into the sea.

  5. The treeless plain

    1841 CE

    Saltbush to the horizon in every direction, and a limestone floor with no surface water at all.

  6. 29 April 1841

    29 April 1841

    Joey and Yarry shoot John Baxter at the evening watch and leave with most of the food.

  7. A ship in an empty bay

    June 1841

    Starving in June, the two men see the French whaler Mississippi at anchor.

  8. Albany, 7 July 1841

    7 July 1841

    Wylie comes home to King George Sound, and the settlement hears the shouting before it sees them.

Outcome

Turned back by the salt lakes, walked 2,000 kilometres west along the Bight with Wylie and reached Albany on 7 July 1841; John Baxter was murdered on the way.

Edward John Eyre

Sheep drover turned explorer who walked the waterless coast of the Great Australian Bight from Adelaide to Albany with a young Noongar man, Wylie, who kept him alive.

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Sources

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