Sixth expedition: Adelaide to the northern sea

John McDouall Stuart · 1861 CE – 1862 CE · Earth

Cross the continent through its centre and find a practicable line for an overland telegraph to the north coast.

Historical context

A telegraph to Europe would need a route across the continent to the north coast, and the prospect of one weighed with South Australia, as it did with Stuart’s backer James Chambers. Stuart had tried twice to cross: in 1860 the Warumungu turned him back at Attack Creek, and in 1861 the scrub beyond Newcastle Waters stopped him. Within a month of his return the government sent him out again, with the Chambers brothers and William Finke still behind him. His party was ten strong, himself included, with some seventy horses and no wagons or camels, and his method was to leave the party at a known water under Kekwick while he rode ahead with two or three men to find the next.

The voyage, step by step

1. North Adelaide, October 1861

   October 1861

   Stuart’s sixth expedition, his third attempt to cross the continent, leaves James Chambers’s house in North Adelaide.

2. Past the salt of Lake Torrens

   December 1861

   From Moolooloo in the Flinders Ranges the party passes the north end of Lake Torrens to the water at Chambers Creek.

3. The Finke River

   February 1862

   A wide sandy bed lined with gums carries the party north-west into the ranges.

4. The centre of the continent

   12 March 1862

   The party passes the hill where Stuart had raised a flag and a cone of stones in 1860.

5. Past Attack Creek

   28 March 1862

   The creek where the Warumungu turned him back in 1860 is crossed without a challenge.

6. Newcastle Waters, April 1862

   April 1862

   For more than five weeks Stuart probes the scrub west and north of the water before a chain of ponds leads him to Daly Waters.

7. Into the rivers of the Top End

   8 July 1862

   Running water, palms and paperbarks replace the spinifex as the party crosses from the Roper to the Katherine.

8. Chambers Bay, 24 July 1862

   24 July 1862

   Stuart washes his hands in the Indian Ocean and marks a tree near the beach.

Outcome

Reached the sea on Van Diemen Gulf on 24 July 1862 and returned to Adelaide in December with every man alive; the Overland Telegraph followed the route ten years later.

John McDouall Stuart

Scottish surveyor who crossed Australia from Adelaide to the northern sea on his sixth expedition, and brought every one of his men home alive.

Read on Wikipedia

Sources

• John McDouall Stuart — Wikipedia
• The Journals of John McDouall Stuart during the Years 1858, 1859, 1860, 1861 & 1862John McDouall Stuart, edited by William Hardman · Saunders, Otley and Co., London · 1864
• Explorations in Australia: The Journals of John McDouall Stuart during the Years 1858, 1859, 1860, 1861 & 1862, second edition (Project Gutenberg eBook #8911)John McDouall Stuart, edited by William Hardman · Saunders, Otley and Co., London · 1865
• Stuart, John McDouall (1815–1866), Australian Dictionary of Biography, volume 6Deirdre Morris · Melbourne University Press · 1976
• The South Australian Great Northern Exploring Expedition 1861–1862John McDouall Stuart Society

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