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Darling River, Historic Tree The Sydney Morning
Herald 8 June 1915 |
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Historic
Tree. Link With The Past. Search Party.
Somewhere
on the banks of the Darling River in the vicinity of its junction with the Warrogo 86 years ago Hamilton Hume the first of our long
list of native born Australian explorers cut his initials on a giant river
gum. It
marked the termination of The
year 1829 was a drought year one of the worst on record and the party, who were poorly equipped, had a trying time. The
discovery of the great waterway of the Darling resulted. About
six years later Major Mitchell attempted to complete the exploration of the
river but turned back from the vicinity of where Menindie
township now stands. His
initials are recorded in his jounal as having been
cut on the same tree as Hume's. It will be rememberod
that Mitchell built the Fort Bourke stockade on this trip and also lost his
botanist Richard Cunningham, who was killed by the Bogan
blacks on what is now known as Burdenda, the
property of Hunt Brothers. Mr.
Milne Railway Superintendent, of Orange who is an ardent student of
Australian history, has organised a party to search
for this interesting and valuable link with the past. It
will include Mr. T.S. Crawford. M.L.A., Mr. M'Wiliams
of Gundabooka, Mr. D. Hatton of Bourke, the
well-known Darling River pioneer, and others. The
following is taken from Major Mitchell's account of his Journey:- "March 30 (1836) I ascertained accidentally
this morning that we were abreast of the spot where Mr. Oxley left the
Lachlan and proceeded southward. This I learnt from a marked tree which a
native pointed out to me distant about 250 yards south from our camp across
the arm of the River. On this tree were still legible the
initials of Mr. Oxley and Mr. Evans, and although the inscription had been
there 19 years, the tree seemed still in full vigour;
nor would its girth have altered much judging from the letters which were
still as sharp is when first cut only the bark having overgrown part of them
had been recently cut away a little as if to render the letters more legible.
I endeavoured to preserve still longer
an inscription which had withstood the fires of the bush mil the tomahawks of
the natives for such a length of time by making a drawing of it as it then
appeared."* The
sketch of the tree has been preserved, and this together with other data
which Mitchell has left may lead to the discovery of the old historic
landmark. *Just exactly why this extract from Mitchell's
journal is included in this newspaper article is not clear - because the tree
is obviously not the tree the 1915 expedition was attempting to find. tumuthistory.com |