Moreton Bay to Port Essington

Ludwig Leichhardt · 1844 CE – 1845 CE · Earth

Moreton Bay to Port Essington — Ludwig Leichhardt · 1844 CE – 1845 CE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Find an overland stock route from the Darling Downs to the garrison at Port Essington and describe the country on the way.

Historical context

Port Essington was a lonely marine garrison on the Arnhem coast that Sydney hoped would become a northern Singapore, and no one knew whether cattle could be walked to it. When the government expedition was cancelled Leichhardt raised the money himself and left with volunteers, two Aboriginal guides and a herd of bullocks that was both transport and larder. Fourteen months later a party given up for dead walked out of the bush into the garrison, and the map of tropical Australia had a spine of named rivers running across it.

The voyage, step by step

  1. Jimbour, 1 October 1844

    1 October 1844

    The party leaves the last station on the Darling Downs with seventeen horses and sixteen bullocks.

  2. The Dawson River

    1844 CE

    The first of the great unmapped river systems is named and followed north.

  3. The Comet and the Expedition Range

    December 1844

    A sandstone range is crossed and a river named for the comet burning over the camp.

  4. The Burdekin

    1845 CE

    The largest river of the tropical east is traced upstream towards its headwaters.

  5. Over the divide to the Lynd

    1845 CE

    Beyond the watershed the rivers turn west towards the Gulf of Carpentaria.

  6. The night attack, 28 June 1845

    28 June 1845

    A camp near the Mitchell River is rushed at dusk and John Gilbert is killed.

  7. Round the Gulf to the Roper

    1845 CE

    Eleven months out, the party rounds the head of the Gulf and finds a tidal river running east.

  8. Port Essington, 17 December 1845

    17 December 1845

    Seven survivors walk out of the bush into a garrison that had given them up for dead.

Outcome

Walked into Port Essington on 17 December 1845 after fourteen and a half months and 4,800 kilometres, having named a dozen river systems and lost John Gilbert.

Ludwig Leichhardt

Prussian naturalist who walked 4,800 kilometres from Moreton Bay to Port Essington in 1844–45 and vanished without trace in the interior three years later.

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Sources

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