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Some people believe that the party
mutinied and killed Leichhardt and all were later killed by aborigines
except for one member of the party, Adolf Classen. It was thought that he
lived on among the aborigines. Other historians believe that Leichhardt's
party was caught and died in sudden floods in the channel country in
Queensland. Still others believe that he and his party may have died of
thirst or that bushfires may have killed the party. For whatever reason,
the expedition completely disappeared into the desert. His disappearance
still remains a mystery today.
In October 1844, he left the Darling
Downs with a party of nine men on an expedition to find a new
route to Port Essington, near Darwin. He took with him 17 horses, 16
bullocks, 550kilograms of flour, 90 kilograms of sugar, 40 kilograms of
tea and 10 kilograms of gelatine.
Leichhardt was a very poor bushman
and the party was always becoming lost. To add to their troubles,
food was always short. They ate all kinds of native animals, including
lizards and flying foxes. Once when they dropped a bag of flour on the
ground, they scraped it up with dried leaves and dust and made it into
porridge. Two members of the party turned back shortly after the
expedition started, and another, John Gilbert was killed by aborigines.
Seven exhausted men finally reached Port Essington after a journey of
5 000 kilometres. The journey had taken them 15 months. They had travelled
through good country, naming the Dawson, Mackenzie, Isaacs, Suttor and
Burdekin rivers, as well as Expedition Range and Peak Range. Further north
he named the Lynd and Mitchell rivers. Leichhardt followed the coastline
of the Gulf of Carpentaria, naming several rivers as he went. The party
then travelled home by sea.
In 1846, Leichhardt set out on his
first attempt to cross Australia from the Darling Downs in Queensland to
the Swan River in Western Australia, but was forced to turn back because
of the heat and drought.
In 1848, he tried once again to find
a route from Moreton Bay (Brisbane) to Perth, setting off with a party of
7 men including 2 aborigines. This expedition was badly equipped as
Leichhardt thought that they could live off the countryside. However, he
was not a good bushman. The expedition left the sheep station where they
were staying and simply vanished. It was typical of Leichhardt that he
took only 7 horses, one for each man. Presumably he never thought about
horses going lame, or escaping - even dying. Since then many other
expeditions have tried to solve the mystery. During the next 90 years,
nine major expeditions tried to solve the mystery of Leichhardt's
disappearance, and there were a number of smaller expeditions. Various
things such as skeletons, a coin, tomahawk and some bones were found, but
nothing to link them conclusively with Leichhardt's party.
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