Mt Riddell (781m) on the 17^th of October 2008
Mt Useful (1435m) on the 29^th of December 2008
Mt Selma (1456m) on the 29^th of December 2008

I had also planned to finally bag Victoria’s highest mountain, Mt Bogong, (on New Years Eve) but unfortunately a tyre puncture on the 28th of December put my plans out of motion :(

Anyway…photos, reports and maps coming soon for my three new additions :)

Last thing i need is a really early wet season…though we do need the water :(

The options i’m currently looking at:

Across mainland Australia from East to West
After driving from Melbourne into northern NSW, this one would start at Australia’s most eastern-point which is “Cape Byron” in New South Wales (28°37′58″S, 153°38′20″E – map) and would go through the middle of our great country to the most western-point at “Steep Point” in Western Australia (26°09′05″S 113°09′18″E – map). The return trip would be down to Perth, across the Nullabor and back to Melbourne.

In a straight line its nearly 4,000km or 2,479 miles one way.

Across mainland Australia from South to North
Starting at the Australia’s most southern-point at “South Point” in Victoria (39°08′20″S, 146°22′26″E – map)..or as close as i can get to it and then heading to out most northern-point at “Cape York” in Queensland (10°41′0″S, 142°32′0″E – map).

In a straight line its nearly 3,200km or 1,981 miles one way.

Here are some interesting links on Australian Extremities – Geoscience Australia and “Extreme points of Australia” at wikipedia.

The Burke & Wills Expedition Route
Starting at the monument at “Royal Park” (map) in Melbourne and following the track to “Karumba” (map) which is just a little north of where they actually finished and on the southern coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria itself.

In a straight line its nearly 2,300km or 1,427 miles one way.

Hmmm…all of them have sections that will require a permit of one type or another so its off to do a few more weeks of research before a decision is made :)

I love the shop at the National Museum of Australia as it continues an interesting mixed bag of items from aboriginal art, flags, tourist trinkets, pottery and fluffy kids toys. While in there I picked up a coffee mug for mum which is covered with the National and State Floral Emblems of Australia.

While in the shop at the National Film & Sound Archive i picked up an ABC DVD, Constructing Australia. This is a three episode DVD covering the stories behind the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the famous explorer John McDouall Stuart (who traversed the Australian mainland from south to north in 1862) and the construction of the Australian Overland Telegraph Line which followed and allowed fast communication between Australia and the rest of the world in 1872, and the design and construction of the Coolgardie Pipeline which is a 530km long pipeline suppling water to the Western Australian goldfields from Perth. This is a fascinating DVD.

A quick stop at the Old Parliament House shop, ended with me not purchasing anything…though over the years i have picked up a few interesting items there.

Final stop was the National Library of Australia. It’s been a while since visits to the National Library, so i spent quite a while in the well stocked shop and ended up getting a copy of “The Dig Tree: The Extraordinary Story of the Ill-fated Burke and Wills 1860 Expedition” by Sarah Murgatroyd.

Before leaving the National Library, i thought i should go in and see the exhibition that was on which is called, Bridging the distance, and is on between March the 6th and June the 15th 2008.

Was i glad i went in as i got to see some amazing pieces from the Library collection which don’t often come out on display including the three items below which just =blew me away :)

The first fascinating item of history was a water bottle used by Captain Charles Sturt (wikipedia) in the 1820′s – IMAGE: nla.pic-an6393462.

The second item was a huge surveying instrument used by Sir Thomas Mitchell (wikipedia) during his three expeditions between 1831 and 1846 – IMAGE: nla.pic-an6393476-1.

The final and most amazing thing i saw was the diary of William John Wills (wikipedia), which was used between the 23rd of April and the 18th of June 1861, during the ill-fated Burke & Wills expedition (wikipedia) to cross Australia. A transcript and other information on Wills Diary can be found at this NLA site.

It’s not often you get to see some major artefacts from Australia’s “white” history like the three above, so i highly recommend you drop in to the National Library of Australia and check the exhibition out.

20080307

Drove into the Sydney CBD from my mate Andrew’s place out in the western suburbs of Sydney (Winston Hills) in the morning and it took ages to find a parking station that would take the height of DSCVRY (2.3m), but i finally found one and it was right around the corner from The Blacket hotel where i was staying for the night.

After checking in and attending the AIMIA board meeting (I’m a national board member) i wandered into Strand Hatters and checked out some Akubra hats that i have been looking at for a while now…the Akubra Adventurer, the Akubra International, the Akubra Swing and the Akubra Henry Lawson. I was thinking about picking up an Akubra Adventurer, which is a Fedore (Indiana Jones) style hat that was originally made for sale only in the old Gowings Store in Sydney…which i used to love shopping at. The didn’t have an Adventurer in black, so i thought i would pop back in later after working out if i really needed another Akubra hat ;)

Went back to The Blacket and got ready for the 14th Annual AIMIA Awards (which was being held at the NIDA theatre) and then caught a cab down there. It was a great night and all of the winners were of a high standard…as one would expect.

It’s 3am and i’m finally back at The Blacket, so i figure i can get about five hours sleep before heading back out to Winston Hills to meet up with Andrew and his family and then head out to the Blue Mountains :)

20080306 1100hrs – Melbourne
One hour after leaving the ExpeditionOz Melbourne HQ i reach the outer edge of Melbourne…this short part of the trip takes longer everytime i do it :(

20080306 1400hrs – Albury / Wodonga
Just crossed over the Murray River near the towns of Albury (NSW) and Wodonga (Vic) which marks the State border between Victoria and New South Wales.

20080306 1900hrs – Sydney
After a nine hour drive, i have finally reached the outer edge of Sydney. There was lots of roadwork on the Hume Highway as they are finally trying to finish the work which will make the Highway a freeway-grade dual carriage-way (two lanes or more both ways) all the way from Albury to Sydney. The Melbourne to Wodonga part of this work was finished a while ago and the plan is that the NSW side will all be finished by the end of 2009…its a huge project, but i can’t believe it has taken this long…

Of course in amongst all this “work stuff”, a long time buddy (from my 10 years in Sydney) and I are also planning to do a two-day 4wd expedition through the Kanangra-Boyd National Park and Blue Mountains National Park…it will probably follow a similar path to the one I did in September of 2002

The equipment is all packed and loaded into DSCVRY (my 2001 Land Rover Discovery) and an Expedition diary, photos and videos are all planned…now i just need to finish my keynote presentation so I can get my head into expedition mode :)

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..

I covered a huge area, driving around 14,000km in the 29 days and took a heap of photos including shots of the following (listed in alphabetical order): Aboriginal rock art, jumping crocodiles at the Adelaide River, Alice Springs, Arnhem Land from a plane, Ayers Rock / Uluru, Blyth, Boab trees including the Prison Tree, the Bungle Bungle Ranges, camels, the Cat Tree, the Chamberlain River, the Daly River, Darwin, lots of desert terrain, the Devils Marbles, Docker River, my dscvry, Dundee Beach, the East Alligator River, the Finke River, the Gibb River Road, Giles, Giles-Mulga Park Road, the Great Central Road, Grosse Bluff, the Gunbarrel Highway, Island Lagoon, the site of the Island Lagoon NASA tracking station, Kakadu National Park, the Karunjie Track, Kata Tjuta, Kulpi Tjuntinya, Kununurra, Lake Eyre, Lake Hart, Lasseters Cave, Len Beadell paintings, Len Beadells grader, Len Beadells grave site, Litchfield National Park, the Lost City, Nourlangie, Olga Gorge, Oodnadatta and the Oodnadatta Track, Palm Valley and its rare Red Cabbage Palms, the Petermann Ranges, Rum Jungle, the Tanami Desert, the Tanami Road, The Olgas, Tjukururu Road, Tjunti, the Ubirr art site, Warakurna, the West Arm, Wolfe Creek Meteorite Crater, Woomera, the Woomera Rocket Park and areas of the Woomera Rocket Range and Wyndham with its crocodile farm…like i said…I was gone for 29 days.

I’ve made a few trips out to this amazing part of Australia, and even though I’m more of a mountain person at heart, I love spending time in terrain that is so different from what I was surrounded by while i was growing up. Hopefully i can plan a trip out to the region again in the near future…but this time with my good 10 MegaPixel still camera and a video camera as well :)

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After a five hour drive I finally made it back to HQ. It was pretty uneventfull drive, though just as i was leaving The General at Mt Hotham a CFA ute and firetruck went screaming though the village heading west. I spoke to someone outside the CFA fire station and they told me that the truck was heading down to a possible fire on the Dargo High Plains.

It was pretty busy in the Ovens Valley and every caravan park or motel i drove past was full, so I made the dash for the Upper Yarra Valley and after seeing one kangaroo on the road between Seymour and Yea, here i am safe and sound at ExpeditionOz HQ.

The speedometer on DSCVRY is reading 119,254 km, so i managed to clock up 1,092 km of driving on this expedition…all in all it was a good expedition and on top of these logs, which i will enter into the blog on my return to connectivity, i’ll try and get around to doing some equipment reviews as quickly as possible…though…i do need to start planning the next expedition ;)

Check out this Windows Live map for locations.

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