2019 |
We acknowledge the traditional custodians of our land, and invite you to visit the world's largest island.
Come and discover for yourself the Leichhardt Land Down Under.
For the expedition, each day could hold the promise of great discovery or ...
What will your journey bring?
Today, a visit to the Jondaryan Woolshed, between Toowoomba and Dalby, is the closest we may come to Leichhardt's 1844 departure point.
Between the Bunya Mountains and the South Burnett district, good grazing lands await the traveller.
The 600m-high sandstone escarpment of the Blackdown Tableland continues to gaze westwards toward the setting sun ...
... 170 years after the expedition passed by beneath, seeking tracks and waterholes.
The Barcoo is just one of many names to roll off the tongue ... or to cast a line from its banks.
What stream or river flows which way from the high ground? How do we make progress, while keeping man and beast alive?
After we shake off the night's dew, which way this morning?
First, we must collect the strayed stock ...
A good tree - a young Coolabah like this one - and a knife or axe, will show where we have blazed a trail.
Canvas water bags become sticky with mud, as every creature - on two legs or four - seeks the next life-giving rockpool or sandbank.
A 'good' season means rivers swollen with run-off and difficult to cross ...
... better than a prolonged 'dry' with cracked clay and hooves, and the need to dig through sand ...
Is this a legacy of good rains long before we arrived, a foretaste of an ocean's coast nearby ...
or perhaps a hint of the fabled 'inland sea' ... ?
So near yet so far! Serpentine mangrove waterways, teeming with dangerous creatures and, on the breeze, the scent of an ocean which cannot be quite reached ...
Giant, termite-created structures punctuate a grassy landscape.
From the shoulder of Ubirr Rock, we may gaze out across Arnhem Land country little changed since Leichhardt saw it almost 170 years ago ..
Today we visit the Falls by boat, 4WD or light aircraft ... imagine trying to descend from these heights with exhausted, emaciated men, horses and cattle!
The South Alligator branch proved every bit as impenetrable as the Gulf Country river estuaries, and the expedition's backtrack around the East branch shows why.
Today, the Cobourg Peninsula is the preserve of its Indigenous custodians, and the realm of its visually spectacular but frequently fatal wildlife ... Port Essington was abandoned not long after the expedition's arrival.
Sheets of life-giving rain falling from torrid Outback skies evoke the mixed reactions which followed the 1844-45 expedition's success, and portend a fate which lay in store ...
New grass grows from scorched ground, as fallen branches reach out with their desperate, unheard, message ...
... she'll be right, mate, let's put the billy on.
He's not 'lost', you know, he just hasn't returned ... yet.