Brad Pillans, Director, National Rock Garden
Published in the National Rock Garden Newsletter No. 28, December 2024
Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Leichhardt is perhaps best remembered for disappearing while trying to cross Australia from east to west in 1847. However, his overland expedition of discovery from Brisbane to Port Essington, in 1844–45, was a monumental success. In September this year I briefly walked in Leichhardt’s footsteps near the coal-mining town of Blackwater, Queensland.
The following background information is summarised from his entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography (Erdos 1967). Leichhardt was born in Prussia in 1813 and studied languages and philosophy at Berlin and Gottingen Universities, before travelling to England and France to study medical and natural sciences at the Royal College of Surgeons, the British Museum and the Jardin des Plantes. Although he never completed a university degree, in later years he was addressed as ‘Doctor’ Leichhardt, in recognition that he was a man of learning. In 1841 his close friend, William Nicholson, paid his fare to Australia to allow him to pursue his study of natural sciences. After arriving in Sydney in early 1842, Leichhardt spent time studying the geology, flora and fauna of Sydney region, the Hunter Valley and Morton Bay. In August 1844, Leichhardt and six companions sailed from Sydney to Morton Bay to begin a privately funded expedition to Port Essington. Four more joined the group in Moreton Bay, from whence they travelled west to the furthest European outpost (Jimbour) on the Darling Downs, not far from the modern town of Dalby. The party’s venture into the unknown began in earnest, when they left Jimbour on 1 October 1844, with Leichhardt as leader.
I now continue the story with reference to Leichhardt’s expedition journal, which he published after his return (Leichhardt 1847). Although the journal is now available online, I was fortunate to purchase a facsimile copy at a recent Lifeline bookfair in Canberra—for the princely sum of $3!
Needless to say, Leichhardt’s journey was an arduous undertaking in those times—two of the party turned back after several weeks and in June 1845, another member, John Gilbert, was killed by Aboriginal people in the Gulf of Carpentaria. After 14 months, during which time the expedition had been given up for dead, the remaining seven members of the party reached Port Essington on 17 December 1845, having traversed some 3000 miles of country previously unknown to Europeans. From my reading of Leichhardt’s journal, it seems that they survived largely because of the excellent bush skills of two Aboriginal members of the party, Charley and Brown. However, Leichhardt himself became a very good bushman as the expedition progressed. His detailed journal entries on geology, botany and zoology, also reveal him to be an accomplished naturalist. He also made regular meteorological observations as well as calculating latitude and longitude (the latter less reliably than the former). Many rivers, creeks, hills and mountains, which were named during the expedition, retain those names on modern maps.
I now wish to highlight Leichhardt’s field observations near the modern coal mining town of Blackwater. It is here that I walked in Leichhardt’s footsteps, albeit briefly, 180 years later. In September, this year, my wife (Sue) and I did a road trip from Canberra to Winton (and back), ostensibly to visit the famous Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum at Winton. In doing so, we travelled around 4,800 km in just 12 days, averaging about 400 km/day in the air-conditioned comfort of a modern car. Coincidentally, Leichhardt’s journey covered the same distance, but it took him just over 400 days at an average of around 12 km/day. He was travelling on horseback, after all.
Our respective paths, briefly crossed, just west of Blackwater, where Leichhardt travelled north along Comet Creek to its junction with the Mackenzie River, both of which he named. His journal entry on 10 January 1845 reads:
‘The plains are basaltic, and occasionally covered with pebbles of white and iron-coloured quartz and conglomerate, and are in the vicinity slight elevations, which are probably composed of sandstone and conglomerate, and usually covered with low scrub and cypress-pine. Sandstone crops out in the gullies of the valley, in horizontal strata, some of which are hard and good for building, others like the blue clay beds of Newcastle, with the impressions of fern-leaves identical with those of that formation. At the junction of Comet Creek and the river, I found water-worn fragments of good coal, and large trunks of trees changed into ironstone. I called this river the “Mackenzie,” in honour of Sir Evan Mackenzie, as a small acknowledgement of my gratitude for the very great assistance which he rendered me in the preparations for my expedition.’
Four days later, some 20 km downstream, Leichhardt reported more coal, this time in situ. Journal entry 14 January 1845:
‘We passed some very high cliffs, which showed a fine geological section of horizontal layers of sandstone and coal-slate. There were also some layers of very good coal, but the greater part of those visible were of a slaty character.’ Leichhardt’s observation of coal at the junction of Comet Creek and the Mackenzie River, marks the discovery of coal in the Bowen Basin—Australia’s largest coal-producing basin today. His pioneering geological work is recognised with the biennial Leichhardt Award by the Bowen Basin Geologist’s Group. See: https://bbgg.cqu.edu.au/?page_id=746.
A major mine currently operating in the Blackwater area, within 30 km of Leichhardt’s original discovery, is the Curragh mine, operated by Coronado Global Resources. After NRG Advisory Council member, Tom Kapitany, put me in touch with geologists at the Curragh mine, I asked whether they might donate a specimen of fossilised wood from their mine to the NRG. A positive response then led to a mine visit by Sue and me en routeto Winton, to select a suitable display specimen—we actually chose two. The picture below shows Curragh mine geologist, Chris Alickson, with his hand on one of the selected rocks. I am pleased to report that both specimens have now been delivered to Canberra, where they are being prepared for display. I thank Coronado Global Resources for donating these interesting specimens.
Postscript: The Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum, Winton
As I mentioned above, our road trip to Winton was to visit the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum, near Winton, said to house the world’s largest collection of Australian dinosaur fossils. We stayed 3 nights in Winton and opted to do the VIP tour, over 2 days, of the Dinosaur Museum and Dinosaur Stampede Monument at Lark Quarry Conservation Park, the latter some 100 km south of Winton.
Day 1 included guided tours of the museum exhibits, housed in the main building, as well as the fossil preparation laboratory and a self-guided walk through the outdoor “Dinosaur Canyon”, the latter including life-like dinosaur models (Figure 3).
Day 2 included our visit to the spectacular dinosaur tracks at Lark Quarry, where more than 3000 footprints from a 95-million-year-old stampede of turkey-sized dinosaurs (Skartopus australis) are preserved. There is also a line of much larger footprints, attributed to a dinosaur called Tyrannosauropus, which appears to have been hunting the stampeding herd of Skartopus (Figure 4). No bones are preserved with the footprints, so it is not possible to say much about either dinosaur, except that they were bipedal therapod dinosaurs. The whole exhibit is housed within a large building to protect it from the elements. In the evening, we also joined a star-gazing group, with expert commentary and telescopes set up to view the night sky.
In a word, the dinosaur museum is FABULOUS, and I highly recommend it to anyone.
References
Erdos, R., 1967. Leichhardt, Ludwig (1813–1848), Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 2, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/leichhardt-ludwig-2347/text3063, published first in hardcopy 1967, accessed online 27 December 2024.
Leichhardt, L. (1847). Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia from Morton Bay to Port Essington. T. & W. Boone, London, 544 pp. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139107617.
