Return To Australia
Sturt returned to Australia in mid-1835 to begin farming on his own 5,000 acres (20 km2) of land granted to him by the New South Wales government on the lower reaches of Ginninderra Creek, near present-day Canberra. (Sturt named the property ' Belconnen', a name now applied to the nearby population centre.) In 1838 he, with Giles Strangways, a Mr McLeod and Captain John Finnis, herded cattle overland from Sydney to Adelaide, on the way proving that the Hume and the Murray were the same river. In September 1838 he led an expedition to the Murray Mouth which settled all dispute as to the suitability of Adelaide for the colony's capital. After returning to NSW to settle his affairs, Sturt then settled at Grange South Australia in early 1839 and was appointed Surveyor-General until the London-appointed Surveyor-General Edward Frome unexpectedly arrived. In the meantime, in December 1839, Sturt and his wife accompanied George Gawler, Julia Gawler, and Henry Inman on a Murray River expedition, discovering Mount Bryan. Julia Gawler, Charlotte Sturt, and Charlotte's maidservant thereby became the first white women to travel the Murray. 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.
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Famous quotes containing the words return and/or australia:
“Then came the Lord Chamberlain with his white staff,
And all the people began to laugh;
And then the Queen began to speak,
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