The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work

Cunn

STAL EXP

on on the 21st of December, 1816.* He first started collecting about the present suburb of Woolloomooloo in Sydney, which we may infer therefrom presented a very different appearance from that which it now presents. He next went with Oxley on his Lachlan expedition. On his return, he commenced the first of his five coastal voyages, in which he accompanied Captain P.P. King around most of the continent of Australia. In the tiny cutter the Mermaid, of 84 tons, they left Port Jackson on the 22nd of December, 1817, and sailed round the south coast of Australia to King George's Sound, the west coast, the north coast, and finally to Timor. The Mermaid returned by the same route and anchored in Port Jack

fework I am indebted to the Biographical Notes concerning Allan Cunningh

ended Mount Cook, where he made a fine collection of seeds and plants. She coasted north again and picked up the survey at Cassini Island once more. At Careening Bay, where they had occasio

esumed her work on the north-west of Australia. While thus engaged she was found to be in a dangerous condition, and went to Port Louis to refit. They sailed from Mauritius on the 15th of November, and reached King George's Sound on the 24th of December. Here Cunningham found that the garden he had been at great pains to form during his visit in 1818 had disappe

ANDORA

s record as an inland

vain to the eastward for any opening that would enable him to pierce the barrier. He then retraced his steps, and, exploring more to the eastward, he came upon a pass through a low part of the mountain belt which he considered practicable and easy. The valley leading to the pass he named Hawkesbury Vale, and the pass itself Pandora's Pass, inasmuch as, in spite of the hardships

ley to Moreton Bay, to investigate that locality and pronounce on its suitability as a settlement site. In March, 1825, he left Parramatta, threaded the Pandora Pas

E DARLI

d the destiny of the yet unborn colony of Queensland, and afford homes for thousands of settlers. It was mainly by his exertions that the young community at Moreton Bay was able to stretch its grow

nd provisions for fourteen weeks. He left civilisation, or the outskirts of it, on the 2nd of May, and on the 11th he crossed the parallel on which Oxley had crossed the Peel River in 1818, and once beyond that point he was traversing unexplored country. The land was suffering unde

of rain, Cunningham came on the 19th of May to a valley. Here, on the bank of a cree

om any farming establishment, the traces of horned cattle, only two or three days o

determine. On consideration, however, it was thought by no means impossible that they were stragg

e, first sighted by Evans in 1817, being already an acknowledged resort of wild cattle in seven years.

er. The country he passed through was inferior, but on the 28th he came to the bank of a river "presenting a handsome reach, half-a-mile in length, thirty yards wide, and evidently very deep." This river he named the Dumaresque, and it led him to the northward, through what he considered poor land, until the new-found river took an easterly direction, when the party left it, still keeping north. At the end of the

fording it on account of its extreme rapidity. The party continued on, now in a north-ea

st ridge immediately before us allowed me distinctly to perceive that at a distance of eight or nine miles, open plains or downs of great ex

to the "bank of a small river, about fifteen yards in breadth, having a brisk current to the North-West." As there was deep water in th

ettlement of Australia. Peel's Plains and Canning Downs were named by him, and to the north-west "beyond Peel's Plains an immeasurable extent of flat country met the eye, on which not the s

s horses were recruiting all the time on the luxuriant herbage, he did not so much regret their own scarcity of rations. Finding a beautiful grassy valley which he named Logan Vale, after Captain Logan, the well-known commandant of Moreton Bay, leading to the base of the principal range, he proceeded to make a nearer inspection. After much climbing of successive tiers or ridge

homeward journey on the 18th of June. In order to render his chart of the country traversed as complete as possible, he kept a course about equidistant between the route of his outward journ

Cunningham, Botani

ap he had taken particular notice of, and connecting with his former camp on the Downs. In this attempt he was also accompanied by Captain Logan, but they were unsuccessful. Then Cunningham again went from the outpost of Limestone, with three

nd were launching her when they were challenged by a sentry. One of them replied that they were going for Mr. Cunningham, and they got away though they were fired upon. They did go for Mr. Cunningham, and robbed him of his chronometer,

sgusted to find that supplying Government officials with vegetables was to be a chief part of his duties. He resigned, and after another visit to New Zealand, whence he returned in 1838, so ill was he that he was compelled to decline to accompany Captain Wickham on his survey of the north-west c