Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
in a waterless red expanse of stones and sandhills. If nothing else, he had discovered the
Simpson Desert.
In 1844 Prussian scientist Ludwig Leichhardt set off from Queensland to blaze an
overland route into the NT. The party reached the Gulf of Carpentaria and headed north-
west. Leichhardt was afforded hero status for his efforts, but his route was too difficult
for regular use and no promising grazing areas were discovered.
DINNER ON KI
British explorer Matthew Flinders bumped into Kangaroo Island on 2 March 1802.
His crew of hungry sailors stormed ashore in search of sustenance - their eyes
boggled at the thousands of kangaroos bouncing around on the beach. Flinders
described the inevitable feeding frenzy in his journal: 'The whole ship's company
was employed this afternoon in the skinning and cleaning of kangaroos. After four
months' privation they stewed half a hundred weight of heads, forequarters and
tails down into soup for dinner… In gratitude for so seasonable a supply, I named
this south land 'Kangaroo Island'.'
The hard-drinking John McDouall Stuart made several epic forays into central Aus-
tralia between 1858 and 1862. His successful south-north crossing of the continent led to
SA wresting governmental control of the NT from NSW in 1863. The Stuart Hwy, from
Port Augusta in SA to Darwin, is named in his honour.
During the 1850s gold rush in Victoria, thousands of Chinese miners dodged the Victori-
an government's $10-per-head tax by landing at Robe in SA, then walking 400km to Bal-
larat: 10,000 arrived in 1857 alone. But the loophole closed when the SA government in-
stituted its own tax on the Chinese.
Wheat, Sheep, Copper & Gold
By 1865 SA was growing half of Australia's wheat. Overcropping in the Adelaide Hills
and Fleurieu Peninsula led to more land being opened up in the mid-north and Flinders
Ranges. A 'wheat boom' ensued. Enthusiastic trumpeting of 'a rich golden harvest' ex-
tending into the NT continued until drought struck in the mid-1880s.
Sheep farmers also helped to open up SA, but a tendency to overestimate carrying ca-
pacity led to overstocking, and with no pasture kept in reserve, the 1880s drought ruined
