Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia — Complete

This book is Sturt's account of his first two expeditions, both of which yielded highly important discoveries about the geography of inland Australia. Sturt's first expedition set out from Sydney in 1828, with a brief from Governor Darling to follow the course of the Macquarie River. Within the first month he, and his second-in-command Hamilton Hume, had discovered the extent of the Macquarie Marshes. To the north they discovered and named the Darling River, and went on to trace the Bogan and Castlereagh rivers into the Darling, and the Macquarie into the Castlereagh. On his return to Sydney, Sturt pushed for command of an expedition to follow the Darling River to the supposed inland sea, however was instead commissioned to trace the Murrumbidgee River toward the south coast. Travelling along the river by boat, they were swept into a much broader fast-flowing river which they named the Murray, without realizing it was the Hume River earlier discovered by Hume and Hovell. Sturt also discovered the junction of the Darling and the Murray, before reaching Lake Alexandrina. The most arduous aspect of the expedition awaited: after the vessel which was supposed to meet them on the south coast failed to materialize, Sturt and his men, with depleted provisions, were forced to row against the current for nearly one thousand miles to Sydney. They arrived in Sydney after many weeks of starvation and grueling exertion. This is the first edition of Sturt's account of over four thousand miles of exploration over a four-year period. It was written while Sturt was in England, undergoing treatment for the blindness that had struck him during the voyage home.