AustLit

Nineteenth-Century Travel Writing

Captain Charles Sturt (1795-1869) of the 39th Regt. F.L.S. and F.R.G.S., famous explorer, soldier and public servant, who led several expeditions into the interior of Australia. This narrative provides an account of two expeditions: one down the Macquarie River and into the Western interior in 1828 and 1829 (vol. 1) and the other down the Murrumbidgee and Murray Rivers, in 1829, 1830, and 1831 (vol. 2). Written as a coherent narrative of travel, rather than in diary form, Two Expeditions provided details of the landscape, both peaceful and hostile encounters with various Aboriginal communities, geology and fossils, and flora and fauna. Volume One concluded with advice for those intending similar expeditions. He was particularly interested in interpreting the landscape by way of river systems, quoting approvingly from Sir William Temple's Netherlands in its epigraph: "For though most men are contented only to see a river as it runs by them ... yet he that would know the nature of the water, and the causes of those accidents (so as to guess at their continuance or return), must find out its source, and observe with what strength it rises, what length it runs, and how many small streams fall in, and feed it to such a height, as make it either delightful or terrible to the eye, and useful or dangerous to the country about it." Sturt later authored Narrative of an Expedition into Central Australia (1849).