Major Mitchell Was Then The Surveyor-General Of The Colony, And He Entirely Traversed And Made Known The Region He Appropriately Named Australia Felix, Now The Colony Of Victoria.

Mitchell, like Sturt, conducted three expeditions:

The first in 1831-1832, when he traced the River Darling previously discovered by Sturt, for several hundred miles, until he found it trend directly to the locality at which Sturt, in his journey down the Murray, had seen and laid down its mouth or junction with the larger river. Far up the Darling, in latitude 30 degrees 5', Mitchell built a stockade and formed a depot, which he called Fort Bourke; near this spot the present town of Bourke is situated and now connected by rail with Sydney, the distance being about 560 miles. Mitchell's second journey, when he visited Australia Felix, was made in 1835, and his last expedition into tropical Australia was in 1845. On this expedition he discovered a large river running in a north-westerly direction, and as its channel was so large, and its general appearance so grand, he conjectured that it would prove to be the Victoria River of Captain Lort Stokes, and that it would run on in probably increasing size, or at least in undiminished magnificence, through the 1100 or 1200 miles of country that intervened between his own and Captain Stokes's position. He therefore called it the Victoria River. Gregory subsequently discovered that Mitchell's Victoria turned south, and was one and the same watercourse called Cooper's Creek by Sturt. The upper portion of this watercourse is now known by its native name of the Barcoo, the name Victoria being ignored. Mitchell always had surveyors with him, who chained as he went every yard of the thousands of miles he explored. He was knighted for his explorations, and lived to enjoy the honour; so indeed was Sturt, but in his case it was only a mockery, for he was totally blind and almost on his deathbed when the recognition of his numerous and valuable services was so tardily conferred upon him. (Dr. W.H. Browne, who accompanied Sturt to Central Australia in 1843-5 as surgeon and naturalist, is living in London; and another earlier companion of the Father of Australian Exploration, George McCleay, still survives.)

These two great travellers were followed by, or worked simultaneously, although in a totally different part of the continent, namely the north-west coast, with Sir George Grey in 1837-1839. His labours and escapes from death by spear-wounds, shipwreck, starvation, thirst, and fatigue, fill his volumes with incidents of the deepest interest. Edward Eyre, subsequently known as Governor Eyre, made an attempt to reach, in 1840-1841, Central Australia by a route north from the city of Adelaide; and as Sturt imagined himself surrounded by a desert, so Eyre thought he was hemmed in by a circular or horse-shoe-shaped salt depression, which he called Lake Torrens; because, wherever he tried to push northwards, north-westwards, eastwards, or north-eastwards, he invariably came upon the shores of one of these objectionable and impassable features.

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