features is the patch at what Flinders called the head of the Great
Australian Bight; these sandhills rise to an elevation of several
hundred feet, the prevailing southerly winds causing them to slope
gradually from the south, while the northern face is precipitous. In
moonlight I have seen these sandhills, a few miles away, shining like
snowy mountains, being refracted to an unnatural altitude by the
bright moonlight. Fortunate indeed it was for Eyre that such relief
was afforded him; he was unable to penetrate at all into the interior,
and he brought back no information of the character and nature of the
country inland. I am the only traveller who has explored that part of
the interior, but of this more hereafter.

About this time Strezletki and McMillan, both from New South Wales,
explored the region now the easternmost part of the colony of
Victoria, which Strezletki called Gipp's Land. These two explorers
were rivals, and both, it seems, claimed to have been first in that
field.

Next on the list of explorers comes Ludwig Leichhardt, a surgeon, a
botanist, and an eager seeker after fame in the Australian field of
discovery, and whose memory all must revere. He successfully conducted
an expedition from Moreton Bay to the Port Essington of King--on the
northern coast--by which he made known the geographical features of a
great part of what is now Queensland, the capital being Brisbane at
Moreton Bay. A settlement had been established at Port Essington by
the Government of New South Wales, to which colony the whole territory
then belonged. At this settlement, as being the only point of relief
after eighteen months of travel, Leichhardt and his exhausted party
arrived. The settlement was a military and penal one, but was
ultimately abandoned. It is now a cattle station in the northern