Ludwig Leichhardt

Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Leichhardt
Portrait of Ludwig Leichhardt
Born	23 October 1813(1813-10-23) Sabrodt, Germany
Disappeared	April 3, 1848 (aged 34) Darling Downs, Australia
Occupation	Explorer

Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Leichhardt, known as Ludwig Leichhardt, (23 October 1813 - c.1848) was a Prussian explorer and naturalist, most famous for his exploration of northern and central Australia.

Biography

Early life

Leichhardt was born in Trebatsch, Germany, the fourth son and sixth of the eight children of Christian Hieronymus Matthias Leichhardt, farmer and royal inspector and his wife Charlotte Sophie, née Strählow. Between 1831 and 1836 Leichhardt studied philosophy, language, and natural sciences at the Universities of Göttingen and Berlin but never received a university degree. He moved to England in 1837 where he continued his study of natural sciences at various places, including the British Museum, London and the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, and undertook field work in several European countries including France, Italy and Switzerland.

Explorer

On 14 February 1842 Leichhardt arrived in Sydney, Australia. His aim was to explore inland Australia and he was hopeful of a government appointment in his fields of interest. In September 1842, Leichhardt went to the Hunter River valley north of Sydney to study the geology, flora and fauna of the region and to observe farming methods. He then set out on his own on a specimen collecting journey which took him from Newcastle, New South Wales, to Moreton Bay in Queensland.

The first expedition of Leichhardt

After returning to Sydney early in 1844, Leichhardt hoped to take part in a proposed government-sponsored expedition from Moreton Bay to Port Essington (300 km north of Darwin, Northern Territory). When plans for this expedition fell through, Leichhardt decided to mount the expedition himself with private funding and accompanied by volunteers. The party left Sydney in August 1844 to sail to Moreton Bay where four more joined the group. The expedition departed on 1 October 1844 from Jimbour, the farthest outpost of settlement on the Queensland Darling Downs.

After a nearly 4,800 km (3,000 mi) overland journey, and having long been given up for dead, Leichhardt arrived in Port Essington on 17 December 1845. He returned to Sydney by boat, arriving on 25 March 1846 to a hero's welcome. The Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia, from Moreton Bay to Port Essington, a Distance of Upwards of 3000 Miles, During the Years 1844-1845 by Leichhardt describes this expedition.

Leichhardt's second expedition, now with the assistance of a government grant and substantial private subscriptions, started in December 1846 and was supposed to take him from the Darling Downs to the west coast of Australia and ultimately to the Swan River and Perth. After covering only 800km the expedition team was forced to return in June 1847 due to heavy rain, malarial fever and famine. After recovering, Leichhardt spent six weeks in 1847 examining the course of the Condamine River, southern Queensland, and the country between the route of another expedition led by Sir Thomas Mitchell in 1846 and his own route, covering nearly 1000km.

In April 1847 Leichhardt shared the annual prize of the Paris Geographical Society, for the most important geographic discovery with French explorer Rochet d'Héricourt. Soon afterward, on 24 May, the Royal Geographical Society, London, awarded Leichhardt its Patron's Medal as recognition of 'the increased knowledge of the great continent of Australia' gained by his Moreton Bay-Port Essington journey.

In 1848 Leichhardt again set out from the Condamine River to reach the Swan River. He was last seen on 3 April 1848 at McPherson's Station, Coogoon on the Darling Downs. His disappearance after moving inland, although investigated by many, remains a mystery. The expedition had been expected to take two to three years, but after no sign or word from Leichhardt, it was gradually assumed the party had died. The latest evidence suggests his expedition may have perished somewhere in the Great Sandy Desert of the Australian interior.

Searches for Leichhardt

Portrait of Ludwig Leichhardt

Four years after Leichhardt's disappearance, the Government of New South Wales sent out a search expedition under Hovenden Hely. The expedition found nothing but a single campsite with a tree marked "L" over "XVA". In 1858, another search expedition was sent out, this time under Augustus Gregory. This expedition found only a couple of trees marked "L".

In 1864, Duncan McIntyre discovered two trees marked with "L" on the Flinders River near the Gulf of Carpentaria. On his return to Victoria, McIntyre telegraphed the Royal Society on 15 December 1864 that he had found "two trees marked L about 15 years old", and was subsequently appointed leader of a search expedition. This expedition found no further trace of Leichhardt.

In 1869, the Government of Western Australia heard rumours of a place where the remains of horses and men killed by indigenous Australians could be seen. A search expedition was sent out under John Forrest, but nothing was found, and it was decided that the story might refer to the bones of horses left for dead at Poison Rock during Robert Austin's expedition of 1854.

The mystery of Leichhardt's fate remained in the minds of explorers for many years. During David Carnegie's 1896 expedition through the Gibson and Great Sandy Deserts, he encountered some Aborigines who had amongst their possessions an iron tent peg, the lid of a tin matchbox, and part of the ironwork of a saddle. Carnegie speculated that these were originally from Leichhardt's expedition. Until research in 2006 into a small brass plate bearing Leichhardt's name, 'no artefacts with corroborated provenance have been able to shed light on Leichhardt's final expedition'.

The Leichhardt nameplate

In 2006, Australian historians and scientists authenticated a tiny brass plate (15 cm x 2 cm) marked "LUDWIG LEICHHARDT 1848", originally discovered around 1900 by an Aboriginal stockman near Sturt Creek between the Tanami and Great Sandy deserts, just inside Western Australia from the Northern Territory border. When found, the plate was attached to a partially burnt shotgun slung in a boab tree which was engraved with the initial "L". The plate is now part of the National Museum of Australia collection.

Until authentication of the nameplate, historians could only speculate on the route Leichhardt had taken and how far he had journeyed before perishing. The location of the plate proved that he made it at least two-thirds of the way across the continent during his east-west crossing attempt. It also suggested that he was following a northern arc from Moreton Bay in Queensland to the Swan River in Western Australia, following the headwaters of rivers, rather than heading straight through the desert interior.

Legacy

Tagebuch einer Landreise in Australien, 1851

Leichhardt’s contribution to science, especially his successful expedition to Port Essington in 1845, has been officially recognised: in 1847, the Geographical Society, Paris, awarded its annual prize for geographic discovery equally to Leichhardt and a French explorer, Rochet d'Héricourt; also in 1847, the Royal Geographical Society in London awarded Leichhardt its Patron's Medal; and Prussia recognised his achievement by granting him a king's pardon for having failed to return to Prussia when due to serve a period of compulsory military training. The Port Essington expedition was one of the longest land exploration journeys in Australia, and a useful one in the discovery of excellent pastoral country.

Harsh criticism of Leichhardt’s character was published some time after his disappearance and his reputation suffered badly. The fairness of this criticism continues to be debated. Nevertheless, Leichhardt's accounts and collections were valued, and his observations considered accurate. He is remembered as one of the most authoritative early recorders of Australia’s environment and the best trained natural scientist to explore Australia to that time. Leichhardt left a record of his observations in Australia from 1842 to 1848 in diaries, letters, notebooks, sketch-books, maps, and in his published works.

Leichhardt’s failed attempt to make the first east–west crossing of the Australian continent may be compared with the tragic 1860-61 Burke and Wills expedition which succeeded in crossing from south to north, but failed to return. However, his success in making it to Port Essington in 1845 was a major achievement which ranks him with other successful European explorers of Australia.

Australia has commemorated Ludwig Leichhardt through use of his name. The Inner Western Sydney suburb of Leichhardt and the surrounding Municipality of Leichhardt are named for him, as is the Ipswich suburb of Leichhardt, the Leichhardt Highway and the Leichhardt River in Queensland, and the Division of Leichhardt in the Australian Parliament. A species of Eucalyptus tree bears Leichhardt's name and the Petasida ephippigera insect is commonly known as Leichardt's grasshopper.

Leichhardt's last expedition was the inspiration for the novel Voss by Patrick White and he inspired a range of "Lemurian" novels, named after George Firth Scott's 1898 book The Last Lemurian.

References

• Serle, Percival (1949). "Leichhardt, Ludwig". Dictionary of Australian Biography. Sydney: Angus and Robertson. http://gutenberg.net.au/dictbiog/0-dict-biogL.html#leichhardt1. Retrieved 2009-09-11. 
• Stephens, Matthew (October 2007). "From Lost Property to Explorer's Relics : The Rediscovery of the Personal Library of Ludwig Leichhardt". Historical records of Australian science 18 (2): 191–227. doi:10.1071/HR07008. ISSN 0727-3061. 
• Lewis, Darrell (2006). "The Fate of Leichhardt". Historical records of Australian science 17 (1): 1–30. doi:10.1071/HR05010. ISSN 0727-3061. 
• Colin Roderick: "Leichhardt, the dauntless explorer", North Ryde (Sydney): Angus & Robertson 1988, ISBN 0 207 15171 7
• Angus Nicholls, Discussion of Leichhardt's influence on Patrick White's novel Voss, ABC Radio National Book Show, 25 January 2011 [1]

External links

• Project Gutenberg e-text of Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia
• Entry for Ludwig Leichhardt in The Project Gutenberg Library of Australiana
• Works by Ludwig Leichhardt at Project Gutenberg
• Ludwig Leichhardt online collection - State Library of NSW
• Leichhardt plate at the National Museum of Australia
• Ludwig Leichhardt series, National Museum of Australia Audio on Demand: Papers presented to the Leichhardt symposium, National Museum of Australia, 15 June 2007
•  "Leichhardt, Ludwig". New International Encyclopedia. 1905.