Without disparagement to the adventurous foreign navigators who for centuries earlier than the British occupation had suspected the existence of "Terra Australis," the "fifth continent" of the globe, and had done their best to discover it, it may be safely contended that the honour of the delineation of the coast-line belongs to Englishmen, the chief of whom were William Dampier and James Cook. In 1688 Dampier, as super-cargo of the "Cygnet," a trading vessel whose crew had turned buccaneers, landed on the north-west coast of Australia in lat. 16 deg. 50 min. S. In the year 1699 he again visited the coast in charge of H.M.S. "Roebuck," landing at Shark Bay, and sailing thence northward to Roebuck Bay. Thus a new continent was added to the British Empire. It was occupied by only a few score thousand native blacks, and was believed to be uninhabitable by civilised people unless possibly along a strip of land south of the Tropic of Capricorn on the eastern, western, and southern shores of the continent. Of the north-west Dampier had written: "The land is of a dry, sandy soil, destitute of water, unless you make wells, yet producing divers sorts of trees." Cook occasionally found difficulty in getting water unless by sinking in the shore sand; he made no attempt to penetrate the fringe of coast or even to explore its inlets. It was not until 1798 that Flinders and Bass discovered the channel through Bass Strait, and the former's discoveries may be said to have completed the coast map of Australia. By successive proclamations six colonies were subsequently constituted, the last being that of Queensland on 10th December, 1859. On 1st January, 1901, Queen Victoria's proclamation of the Commonwealth of Australia was formally made at Melbourne, the prescribed place for the sitting of the Parliament until the federal seat of government had been determined. This important step was taken 131 years after Captain Cook had annexed the eastern coast at Possession Island, and 72 years after Captain Fremantle made the possession of the continent as British territory complete by hoisting the flag at Swan River. The story of Australian land exploration is a long one, and it would, if complete, reveal many a startling tale of privation and death. The earliest exploring expeditions were those of Governor Phillip, in 1789, when he set out from Sydney to discover Broken Bay first, and then explore the Hawkesbury River. In 1828 Captain Charles Sturt discovered the Darling River. In the next year he reached the Murray near its confluence with the Darling; in 1830 he went down the stream by boat, and finally reached the sea at Encounter Bay, east of St. Vincent Gulf. In 1826 Major Lockyer founded King George Sound Settlement; in 1828 Captain Stirling examined the mouth of the Swan River, and was afterwards, in 1831, appointed Lieutenant-Governor at Perth, the settlement established in 1829 by Captain Fremantle. Other explorers traced the country for some distance to the northward, and a settlement, called Port Essington, which had an In 1831 Major Bannister crossed from Perth to King George Sound. In 1836 John Batman landed at Port Phillip, and permanently settled there. The same year Adelaide was founded by Captain Sir John Hindmarsh, the first Governor of South Australia. In 1838 E. J. Eyre discovered Lake Hindmarsh on his journey from Port Phillip to Adelaide. Next year George Hamilton travelled overland from Sydney to Melbourne, and Eyre penetrated from the head of Spencer's Gulf to Lake Torrens. In 1840 Patrick Leslie settled on the Condamine; in the year following Stuart and Sydenham Russell formed Cecil Plains station. In 1842 Stuart Russell discovered the Boyne River, travelling from Moreton Bay to Wide Bay in a boat. In 1844-5 Captain Sturt conducted his Great Central Desert expedition. In the same year Dr. Ludwig Leichhardt started on his first expedition from Jimbour station to Port Essington; and in the next year Sir Thomas Mitchell went on his Barcoo expedition. In 1846 A. C. Gregory entered upon his first expedition in Western Australia. In 1848 Leichhardt set out upon his last journey, from which he never returned. In the same year Kennedy made his fatal venture up the Cape York Peninsula, and A. C. Gregory explored the Gascoigne. Next year J. S. Roe, Surveyor-General of Western Australia, travelled from York to Esperance Bay. In 1852 Hovenden Hely, in charge of a Leichhardt search party, started from Darling Downs. In 1855 Gregory and Baron von Mueller started on an expedition to North Australia in the same search, and discovered Sturt's Creek and the Elsey River. In 1858 Frank Gregory reached the Gascoigne River, Western Australia, and discovered Mount Augustus and Mount Gould. A. C. Gregory in the same year, when searching for Leichhardt, confirmed the identity of the Barcoo River with Cooper's Creek. In 1858 also McDouall Stuart started on his first expedition across the continent; in the following year he started again, and one of his party, Hergott, discovered and named In 1860 the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition left Melbourne, and reached the Gulf of Carpentaria, but their return journey resulted in the death of Burke, Wills, and Gray. In 1861 McDouall Stuart crossed the continent; Frank Gregory discovered the Hammersley Range, and the Fortescue, Ashburton, de Grey, and Oakover Rivers in Western Australia. In the same year William Landsborough left the Gulf of Carpentaria in search of Burke and Wills; and Alfred Howitt started from Victoria on the same errand. Edwin J. Welch, Howitt's second in command, found King, the only survivor of the expedition; and McKinlay, with W. O. Hodgkinson as lieutenant, started from Adelaide in the search, and crossed the continent, reaching the coast at Townsville. In 1863 John Jardine formed a settlement at Somerset, Cape York; and in the next year his adventurous brothers, Alexander and Frank, travelled overland to Somerset along the Peninsula, which Kennedy had failed to do. In 1864 Duncan McIntyre travelled from the Paroo to the Gulf of Carpentaria, and died there. Next year J. G. Macdonald visited the Plains of Promise, and Frederick Walker marked the telegraph line from Rockingham Bay to the Norman River. In 1869 Mr. (now Sir John) Forrest made his first expedition to Lake Barlee; in 1870 he travelled the Great Bight from Perth to Adelaide, and in 1871 took charge of a private expedition in search of pastoral country. In 1872 William Hann, a Northern squatter, led an expedition equipped by the Queensland Government, and discovered the Walsh, Palmer, and Upper Mitchell Rivers, and found prospects of gold which led to great mineral discoveries in North Queensland. Hann reached the coast at Princess Charlotte Bay. In the same year J. W. Lewis travelled round Lake Eyre to the Queensland border. Ernest Giles also made his first expedition in 1872, discovering Lake Amadeus, and on a second trip in 1873 discovered and named Gibson's Desert, after one of his party who died there. In 1873 Major Warburton crossed from Alice Springs, on the overland telegraph line, to the Oakover River, Western Australia. In 1875-6 Ernest Giles made a third and successful attempt from Adelaide to reach Western Australia. In 1878 Prout brothers, looking for country across the Queensland border, never returned. In 1878 N. Buchanan, on an excursion to the overland telegraph line from the Queensland border, discovered Buchanan's Creek. In 1878-9 Ernest Favenc, starting from Blackall in charge of the "Queenslander" transcontinental expedition, reached Powell's Creek station, on the overland telegraph line; four years later he explored the rivers flowing into the Gulf, particularly the Macarthur, and then crossed to the overland telegraph line. In 1878 Winnecke and Barclay, surveyors, started to determine the border lines of Queensland and South Australia, returning in 1880 with their work done. In 1879 Alexander Forrest led an expedition from the de Grey River, Western Australia, to the overland telegraph line, discovering the Ord and Margaret Rivers. By this time there was little left of the continent, save Western Australia, to explore, though men in search of pastoral country still found occupation in expeditions to discover the unknown in Queensland and the Northern Territory. In 1896 Frank Hann, younger brother of the explorer, who had left Queensland, traversed the country to the north of King Leopold Range, discovering a river which he named the Phillips, but which was afterwards renamed the Hann by the Surveyor-General of Western Australia. Afterwards Hann travelled from Laverton, Western Australia, to Oodnadatta, in South Australia. F. S. Brockman is another explorer who was leader of a Kimberley expedition a few years ago, and discovered in North-west Australia 6 million acres of basaltic country clad with blue grass, Mitchell and kangaroo grasses, and other fodder vegetation. The Elder expedition, projected on an ambitious scale in 1891 to complete the exploration of the continent, started under David Lindsay, but the results were less valuable than its generous and enterprising originator anticipated. From a second Elder expedition under L. A. Wells no great results were recorded. The same may be said of the Carnegie expedition in Western Australia. Yet the sum total of the information obtained was valuable. Australia owes much to her adventurous explorers, as well as to the men who, following up their tracks, placed stock on much of the country that produced great wealth to the people, though as a rule neither explorers nor pastoral pioneers personally benefited much by their labours and privations.
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