Charles Sturt
Captain Charles Napier Sturt (28 April 1795 – 16 June 1869) was an English explorer of Australia, part of the European Exploration of Australia. He led several expeditions into the interior of the continent, starting from both Sydney and later from Adelaide. His expeditions traced several of the westward-flowing rivers, establishing that they all merge into the Murray River. He was searching to determine if there was an "inland sea".
Early life
Sturt was born in British India, the second son of Thomas Lenox Napier Sturt, who became a judge in Bengal under the British East India Company. Charles Sturt was sent to England at the age of 5 to be educated and after going to a preparatory school was sent to Harrow in 1810 and in 1812 went to read with a Mr Preston near Cambridge. But it was difficult for his father to find the money to give him a profession. An aunt made an appeal to one of the royal princes, probably the prince regent, and on 9 September 1813 Sturt was gazetted an ensign in the 39th (Dorsetshire) Regiment of Foot in the British Army seeing action with the Duke of Wellington in Spain, Canada and at Waterloo, rising to the rank of Captain in December 1825. With his regiment he escorted convicts to New South Wales and arrived in 1827.
Australia and Exploration
Sturt sailed with some prejudice against the colony but found the conditions and climate so much better than he expected that his feelings completely changed, and he developed a great interest in the country. Governor Sir Ralph Darling formed a high opinion of him and appointed him major of brigade and military secretary. Sturt became friendly with John Oxley, Allan Cunningham, Hamilton Hume and other explorers. He was keen to explore the Australian interior, especially its rivers.
In 1828 the Governor of New South Wales, Ralph Darling sent Sturt and Hume to explore the area of the Macquarie River in western New South Wales. It was not, however, until 10 November that the party started. It consisted of Sturt, his servant, John Harris, two soldiers and eight convicts and on 27 November he was joined by Hamilton Hume as his first assistant. Hume's experience and resourcefulness proved very useful to his leader. A week was spent at Wellington Valley breaking in the oxen and horses, and on 7 December the real start into comparatively little known country was made. It was a drought year and the greatest difficulty was found in getting sufficient water. The party returned to Wellington Valley on 21 April 1829. The courses of the Macquarie, Bogan and Castlereagh rivers had been followed, and though its importance was scarcely sufficiently realized, the Darling River had been discovered. This expedition proved that northern New South Wales was not an inland sea, but deepened the mystery of where the western-flowing rivers of New South Wales went to.
In 1829 Governor Darling approved an expedition to solve this mystery. Sturt proposed to travel down the Murrumbidgee River, whose upper reaches had been seen by the Hume and Hovell expedition. In place of Hume, who was unable to join the party, George MacLeay went "as a companion rather than as an assistant". A whaleboat built in sections was carried with them which was put together, and on 7 January 1830 the eventful voyage down the Murrumbidgee was begun. In January 1830 Sturt's party reached the confluence of the Murrumbidgee and a much larger river, which Sturt named the Murray River. It was in fact the same river which Hume and Hovell had crossed further upstream and named the Hume. Several times the party was in danger from the aborigines but Sturt always succeeded in propitiating them.
Sturt then proceeded down the Murray, until he reached the river's confluence with the Darling. Sturt had now proved that all the western-flowing rivers eventually flowed into the Murray. In February 1830, the party reached a large lake which Sturt called Lake Alexandrina. A few days later, they reached the sea. There they made the disappointing discovery that the mouth of the Murray was a maze of lagoons and sandbars, impassable to shipping.
The party then faced the ordeal of rowing back up the Murray and Murrumbidgee, against the current, in the heat of an Australian summer. Their supplies ran out and when they reached the site of Narrandera in April they were unable to go any further. Sturt sent two men overland in search of supplies and they returned in time to save the party from starvation, but Sturt went blind for some months and never fully recovered his health. By the time they arrived back in Sydney they had rowed and sailed nearly 2,900 kilometres of the river system.
A break from exploring
Sturt briefly served as Commander on Norfolk Island where mutiny was brewing among the convicts, but in 1832 he was obliged to go to England on sick leave and arrived there almost completely blind. In 1833 he published his Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia during the years 1828, 1829, 1830 and 1831, of which a second edition appeared in 1834. For the first time the public in England realized how great was Sturt's work, for Governor Darling's somewhat tardy but appreciative dispatch of 14 April 1831, and his request for Sturt's promotion, had had no result, and nothing came of the request by Sir Richard Bourke who had succeeded Darling that Viscount Goderich should give "this deserving officer your Lordship's protection and support". Though it seems to have been impossible to persuade the colonial office of the value of Sturt's work his book had one important effect. It was read by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, and led to the choice of South Australia for the new settlement then in contemplation. In May 1834, in view of his services, Sturt applied for a grant of land intending to settle on it in Australia, and in July instructions were given that he was to receive a grant of 5000 acres, Sturt on his part agreeing to give up his pension rights. In September he was married to Charlotte Green and almost immediately sailed for Australia.
Return to Australia
Sturt returned to Australia in 1835 to begin farming on land granted to him by the New South Wales government near Mittagong. In 1838 he herded cattle overland from Sydney to Adelaide, on the way proving that the Hume and the Murray were the same river. He then settled at Grange in South Australia and was appointed Surveyor-General until the London-appointed Surveyor-General Edward Frome unexpectedly arrived. Sturt was briefly Registrar-General but he soon proposed a major expedition into the interior of Australia as a way of restoring his reputation in the colony and London.
Exploring from Adelaide
Sturt wanted to settle the debate as to whether there was an inland sea. In August 1844 Sturt and a party of 15 men, 200 sheep, six drays and a boat set out to explore north-western New South Wales and to advance into central Australia. Travelling along the Murray and Darling rivers before venturing to the Great Dividing Range they passed the site of Broken Hill, but were then stranded for months by the extreme summer conditions near the present site of Milparinka. When the rains eventually came Sturt pressed on into central Australia until they discovered the Simpson Desert, at which point they were unable to go further and turned back to Adelaide.
Sturt later undertook a second expedition to reach the centre of Australia, but his health broke down in the extreme conditions and he was forced to abandon the attempt. John Harris Browne, surgeon on the expedition, assisted Sturt, took over leadership of the party and brought it back to safety.
In 1851 Sturt settled to England, where he died in 1869. He is commemorated by the City of Charles Sturt and suburb of Sturt in Adelaide, the electoral Division of Sturt in Adelaide's eastern suburbs, Charles Sturt University in regional New South Wales, and the Sturt Highway from Wagga Wagga to Adelaide as well as the Sturt's desert pea, the Sturt's Desert Rose and Sturt's Stony Desert.
References
- Serle, Percival (1949). "Sturt, Charles". Dictionary of Australian Biography. Sydney: Angus & Robertson.
External links
- Portrait of Charles Sturt in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
- Works by Charles Sturt at Project Gutenberg
- Sturt, Charles (1795 - 1869) The Australian Dictionary of Biography, Online edition