19 February 2008

Australian Explorers and their Journals

Posted by Mick under: Expeditions; Historical Info; People; Websites .

Explorers Journals are one of those things were you really can’t imagine having one without also having the other, and with the exploration of Australia (by white explorers) only starting in 1606 with the Dutchman Willem Janszoon landing on the western shore of Cape York (by accident because he missed the entrance to what was later to be called the Torres Strait), we are pretty blessed by having a large amount of explorer journals available to us to peruse at our pleasure.

Twenty years ago you would have had to find a facsimile¹of a journal (I have quite a few in the ExpeditionOz Library) or have some pretty darn good reason for wanting to view the original at a library or museum, but with the advent of the internet, everything is available online (well almost everything and not all of its good) and if you hunt around a bit it doesn’t take long to find a bunch of journals of famous explorers who traversed this huge continent in its early days of white history.

Below are some links to some sites which might interest you:

Project Gutenberg Australia - Journals of Australian Land and Sea Explorers and Discoverers
This site has a pretty good collection of journals from Gregory Blaxland, David Carnegie, William Carron, James Cook, William Dampier, Edward John Eyre, Matthew Flinders, John and Alexander Forrest, Ernest Giles, Frank and Augustus Gregory, George Grey, William Hovell and Hamilton Hume, Alexander and Frank Jardine, Phillip Parker King, William Landsborough, Ludwig Leichhardt, John MacGillivray, John McKinlay, Thomas Mitchell, John Oxley, John Lort Stokes, John McDouall Stuart, Charles Sturt, Able Tasman, Frederick Walker and William John Wills.

For maps and other information on a wide range of people, check out their Australian Explorers, Discoverers and Pioneers section.

Western Kentucky University - Nineteenth Century Exploration of Australia
This site is based around a map that outlines a number of explorers paths through Australia with links to other websites containing more detailed information.

Roma Reilly’s Australian Explorers (Also available at this site)
This site, which was designed for primary school aged children, has some pretty concise and basic information on John Forrest, Edmund Kennedy, Ludwig Leichardt, Thomas Mitchell, John Oxley, Edward John Eyre, Robert O’Hara Burke, Matthew Flinders, Charles Sturt and George Bass.

I’ll be the first to admit that text documents or PDF’s are no substitute for having a good old fashioned leather bound book in your hands while you are sitting at the camp fire reading about expeditions of old, but journal facsimiles aren’t the easiest things to find these days, so I guess we take what we can get our hands on…so happy reading :)

ADDITION: If you actually want to lay your hands on some good old fashioned printed material, go and check out the books available at the Early Australian Exploration Books page and some of the other book category pages that Westprint (Victorian based map makers and publishers) have listed on their site…they have a pretty good selection and i’ll certainly be adding a few to the ExpeditionOz Library from it :)

¹ - facsimile: Used to describe a copy or reproduction especially when describing a copy of a journal with regard to explorers..

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