Thomas Mitchell (explorer)

In 1831 a runaway convict named George "The Barber" Clarke, who had lived with Wiradjuri people in the area for several years, claimed that a large river called Kindur flowed north-west from the Liverpool Ranges in New South Wales to the sea. Charles Sturt believed that the Murray-Darling system formed the main river system of New South Wales and Mitchell wanted to prove Sturt wrong. Mitchell formed an expedition consisting of himself, assistant surveyor George Boyle White and 15 convicts who were promised remission for good conduct. Mitchell took 20 bullocks, three heavy drays, three light carts and nine horses to carry supplies, and set out on 24 November 1831 to investigate the claim. On reaching Wollombi in the Hunter Valley, the local assistant surveyor, Heneage Finch, expressed a desire to join the expedition which Mitchell approved, provided he first obtain extra provisions and rendezvous later.[15]

The expedition continued northward, and having climbed the Liverpool Range on 5 December, they found an Aboriginal tribe who had fled from their home in the Hunter Valley and were suffering from what appeared to be smallpox. On 8 December they arrived at Quirindi and by 11 December the expedition had reached Wallamoul Station near Tamworth, the northern extent of white settlement at the time.[15]

Mitchell continued his northward push into uncolonised territory, guided by a local Gamilaraay man named "Mr. Brown". In mid December, near to where Boggabri now stands, they located the remains of a stockyard and huts built by George Clarke and his Aboriginal colleagues. By early January 1832 Mitchell's group was travelling along the Namoi River, by which stage Mr Brown had left them. Mitchell's party then headed north unguided but managed to reach the Gwydir River in mid-January where they found a small Aboriginal village of conical-roofed huts. They followed the Gwydir west and made it to the Barwon River by the end of the month. Mitchell came to the correct conclusion that the Barwon flowed into the Darling River and decided not to proceed any further.[15]

At this stage, Finch had finally caught up with the main group. Finch conveyed the news that the provisions he had obtained had been ransacked by Aboriginal people at Gorolei. Two men he had left to guard the supplies had also been killed. The immediate effect was that Mitchell decided to abandon the expedition and return south. The party retraced their path having tense but peaceful interactions with large groups of Gamilaraay people along way. They reached Gorolei on 18 February where Mitchell buried the bodies of the two killed men and salvaged some equipment. Aboriginal people approached the group laying down their spears and offering females to Mitchell's men in an apparent attempt at appeasement for the killings. Mitchell refused the offer but accepted their guidance on an easy way back to the Namoi River. Once back at Wallamoul, Mitchell placed White in charge of the main party, while he returned hastily to Sydney. He was satisfied that there was no truth about the river Kindur claimed by Clarke.[15] Fourteen years later, Mitchell revealed that the convicts had indulged in sexual relations with Aboriginal women.

Mitchell's next expedition was in 1835. The purpose was to explore the course of the Darling River from where Sturt had turned back in 1829, to where it joined the Murray River. There were 24 men in the party including Mitchell, James Larmer (assistant surveyor) as second in command, Richard Cunningham (colonial botanist) and 21 other men. The main party under Larmer left Parramatta on 9 March and rendezvoused with Mitchell at Boree near the township of Orange. From there, the expedition was guided through the Goobang Ranges by local Wiradjuri people toward the Bogan River. On 17 April 1835, Richard Cunningham wandered away from the party while looking for botanical specimens and went missing. The party, with the assistance of various local Aboriginal people, searched for him until 5 May, following Cunningham's tracks around the headwaters of the Bogan until they disappeared. Cunningham's dead horse, saddle, glove and fragments of his coat and map were all they found. Months later, a search party of military mounted police commanded by Lieutenant Henry Zouch of the first division, discovered that Cunningham had been killed by four Wiradjuri men and his bones were found and buried at Currindine.[16]

After the fruitless search for Cunningham, Mitchell decided to continue the expedition. He was assisted by a local unnamed elder who provided a guide called Tackijally. This man led Mitchell downstream along the waterholes adjacent to the Bogan River as far as Nyngan. Tackijally left them at this point and the group was soon involved in a brief confrontation after they startled an Aboriginal man at a waterhole. The man, who was shot in the hand, had his wounds dressed by the group and later departed. They proceeded down the Bogan, encountering several gatherings of people to which Mitchell gave tomahawks and pieces of an old sword. On 25 May the junction with the Darling River was reached. Here, on a high point of land which bore many Aboriginal grave sites, Mitchell decided to build a fort as he realised that they "had not asked permission to come there" and he needed a stockade for "stout resistance against any number of natives." He named it Fort Bourke in honour of the Governor, Richard Bourke.[16]

Two whale boats had been transported the whole distance on bullock drays and on 1 June Mitchell launched the boats on the Darling to transport the party downriver. However, the Darling became shallower and unnavigable resulting in the expedition resorting once again to overland progress.[17] They encountered many tribes as they headed south, with Mitchell documenting the agricultural practices of some, such as the harvesting of Panicum decompositum, and the large permanent dwellings of others. One clan appeared more hostile than others, kicking up dust and spitting at party members. Mitchell acknowledged that his group were "rather unceremonious invaders of their country" but inflamed tensions by firing a pistol at a tree. Mitchell wrote that "the more they saw of our superior weapons...the more they shewed their hatred and tokens of defiance." The party continued downriver, meeting with more friendlier locals, passing through villages and noting the construction of their tomb-sites.[16]

Just north of the Menindee Lakes, the expedition came across a large congregation of several tribes and Mitchell decided that continuing the exploration would be too dangerous. On 11 July, just as Mitchell had resolved to return to Sydney, shots were heard from a forage party up the river. Mitchell sent a further three armed men to the scene of the shooting and the firing continued. After more than an hour, some members of the group returned reporting that a skirmish had occurred over the possession of a kettle and at least three Aboriginal people had been shot dead, including a woman and her child. One of Mitchell's men had been knocked unconscious. The party then commenced their return via the outbound route with Mitchell deciding to avoid contact with the various tribes as much as possible. The "spitting tribe" attempted to burn down their camp on this return journey which resulted in Mitchell ordering shots to be fired over their heads. They arrived at Fort Bourke on 10 August and continued back along the Bogan River. Near Nyngan they met again with members of Tackijally's tribe who allowed Mitchell to walk through their cemetery at Milmeridien. Mitchell soon tired of the clan asking for food and ordered some of his men to march at them with bayonets. On 9 September they came to the upper reaches of the Bogan where they found a cattle-station had already been formed along their route by William Lee. The expedition arrived back at their starting point of Boree on 14 September.[16]

While Mitchell did not trace the Darling River to its junction with the Murray River, the course and terrain of the Bogan River and much of the Darling River had been charted.[18] The places where this and other Mitchell expeditions were most assailed by Aboriginal Australians, including the location of Cunningham's killing, are marked on an 1836 map produced by Mitchell.[19]

Piper

The goal of Mitchell's third expedition was to explore and survey the lower part of the Darling River, with instructions to head up the Murray River and then return to the settled areas around Yass. Second in command was assistant surveyor Granville Stapylton. A Wiradjuri guide named John Piper was also recruited and 23 convicts and ticket of leave men made up the rest of the party. The group set out from a valley near Mount Canobolas on 17 March 1836, and made their way to Boree and the Bogan River as on previous journeys, then veered south to the Lachlan River to approach the Darling from its southern end where it joined the Murray.[20]

The party travelled along the Lachlan, passing Condobolin and Lake Cargelligo, as John Oxley did in 1817. Piper was able to converse with tribes to learn where vital waterholes were, as the Lachlan was drying out. On 2 May an Aboriginal widow named Turandurey with her four-year-old daughter Ballandella from the Muthi Muthi tribe joined the expedition as a guide. She remembered Oxley from nineteen years earlier and Sturt as well, and knew the lower Lachlan. The Murrumbidgee River was reached on 12 May, but at a point downstream from the junction with the Lachlan.

The party camped while Mitchell took five men and went upstream to find the junction. Once found, they turned about and continued down the Murrumbidgee until 21 May when they were close to the junction with the Murray River. A depot was established at this point, so Mitchell left Staplyton and eight men to guard the stock, while he ventured downstream with fifteen men. On 24 May Mitchell noticed that Barkindji tribesmen from the Darling River were gathering in large numbers, and by 27 May the hostile intentions of these men became known, when local Murray River people told Piper that the Barkindji were planning to kill Mitchell and his men. Mitchell had to decide whether to wait for an attack, or plan a pre-emptive manoeuvre. His numbers were reduced, as Staplyton and eight men were still at the depot. He split his party again, leaving half the men to hide in the scrub in ambush, while he continued ahead with the carts. When the armed Barkindji warriors approached, the convict Charles King, who was involved in the earlier killings, fired first without waiting for orders. The tribesmen fled into the river and Mitchell's two groups reunited on the shore and continued to shoot at the people for up to 15 minutes.[21] Around 75 shots were fired[22] with Piper later being told that seven Barkindji were killed and four wounded.[23] Mitchell wrote about the loss of life in his journal, describing the Barkindji as "treacherous savages", and detailing how his men had chased them away, "pursuing and shooting as many as they could."[24] This section was withheld from Mitchell's report when it was released to the public in Sydney.[25][26] Mitchell named the hill near to where the mass-shooting occurred Mount Dispersion and it is now the heritage-listed Mount Dispersion Massacre Site Aboriginal Place.[27]

The expedition continued and on 31 May they reached the junction of the Darling and Murray rivers. Mitchell travelled up the eastern side of the Darling for some distance, and when he was certain that it was the same river he had explored in 1835, he turned back and headed upstream on the Murray to join Stapylton at the depot. The reunited expedition now travelled south-east following the Murray, crossed the river on 13 June and named Swan Hill on 21 June. At the end of June the country had improved considerably, so Mitchell chose to leave the Murray to investigate better looking lands to the south-west. Upon climbing the 300-foot Pyramid Hill, he was so impressed with the country he saw, he named it Australia Felix. In early July the party crossed the Loddon River, and made their way in a south-westerly direction which brought them to the Grampians, and later to the mouth of the Glenelg River on the coast. It was now August, so Mitchell altered direction towards Portland and the south-east. When Portland was reached on 29 August, Mitchell was surprised to find an established farm manned by the Henty brothers, Edward and Frank. There were several whaling boats on Portland Bay as well.

After a brief sojourn, the expedition commenced the return to Sydney in a north-easterly direction, meeting few Aboriginal people on the way, though they were aware of being watched. On 17 September, in order to speed his return, Mitchell split the party in two once more taking 14 men with him, and leaving the remainder with Stapylton to follow with the bullocks and drays. The young girl Ballandella went with Mitchell, while Turandurey remained with the rear party. On 30 September, Mitchell climbed and named Mount Macedon, from the summit of which he had a view of Port Phillip. Progress was slow due to wet ground, and the Murrumbidgee was not reached until 24 October. When Mitchell arrived in Sydney in early November he was received with great joy. However, when the remainder of his party arrived two weeks later, rumours circulated about the mass killing on the Murray. He subsequently faced a Legislative Council Inquiry in December 1836, receiving an official rebuke. Ballandella joined Mitchell's family of eight other children and learnt to read and write, but was left by Mitchell when he returned to England. Ballandella later married and raised a family at Sackville where she died around the age of thirty.[28]

Mitchell's fourth expedition was into Queensland in 1845–46. He was convinced that a significant river must flow north-west into the Gulf of Carpentaria, this being the main thrust of the endeavour.[29]

On 15 December 1845 Mitchell started from Boree (Buree in Mitchell's journal) with a large party including Edmund Kennedy as second in command (later speared to death at Escape River near Cape York). He struck the Darling River above Fort Bourke then continued to the Narran River, the Balonne, and the Culgoa. On 12 April 1846 he came to a natural bridge of rocks on the main branch of the Balonne which he called St. George Bridge, now the site of the town of St George. Kennedy was left in charge of the main body here, and was instructed to follow on slowly while Mitchell pushed ahead with a few men. Mitchell followed the Balonne to the Maranoa, and the Cogoon (now called Muckadilla Creek, near Roma). This rivulet led him to a magnificent pastoral district in the midst of which stood a solitary hill that he named Mount Abundance. He then crossed a low watershed to the Maranoa and awaited Kennedy's arrival. Kennedy rejoined Mitchell on 1 June 1846.[29]

Leaving Kennedy for a second time, he set out on an extensive excursion of more than four months.[30] Mitchell traversed the country at the head of the Maranoa and sighted the Warrago River. Keeping north over the watershed, he traversed the Claude and Nogoa rivers, then reached the Belyando River, an upper reach of the Burdekin River.[29] This had already been visited by Ludwig Leichhardt on his expedition to Port Essington on 2 April 1845. Intensely mortified to find that he was on a tributary of the Burdekin River, and approaching the ground already trodden by Leichhardt, he returned to the head of the Nogoa and struck west, after dividing his party and forming a stationary camp. He continued west, making a new finding which he was certain was the fabled north-west river. In honour of the sovereign of the time he decided to call it Victoria River.[29] Having run out of time, he turned back towards the main party. It was here that Mitchell first noticed the well known grass that bears his name. On the homeward journey he trekked along the Maranoa River to St.George Bridge, arriving in Sydney 20 January 1847.[31] Later that year, Kennedy proved beyond doubt that the Victoria did not continue north-west, but turned south-west and joined Cooper Creek. He renamed the watercourse the Barcoo River from a name mentioned by local Aboriginal people.[29]