AustLit

Nineteenth-Century Travel Writing

John Oxley (1781-1828) was surveyor general of the Territory and Lieutenant of the Royal Navy and an explorer and writer. As Surveyor General he undertook a number of expeditions in New South Wales, including to the Lachlan River (1817), Macquarie River (1818), and the Brisbane River (1823). The journals of his expeditions through the interior of New South Wales were accompanied by maps and views of the "newly discovered country." The introduction to Journal of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales chronicles Oxley’s earlier interior explorations in the colonies, with the text presented in first person diary form. Oxley provided detailed descriptions of the landscape, flora, fauna, geography, geology, weather, which he wrote to encourage a scientific and cataloguing discourse. According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Journal of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales was the first publication to provide a detailed description of the Australian inland, and despite Oxley’s grave doubts of the value of the lands he had traversed his discoveries paved the way for the later work of Charles Sturt and T. L. Mitchell. Oxley also wrote a lengthy governmental report on the settlements in Van Diemen's Land.