If you imagine you are going to read of model children, with
perhaps; a naughtily inclined one to point a moral, you had better lay
down the book immediately and betake yourself to ‘Sandford and Merton’
or similar standard juvenile works. Not one of the seven is really
good, for the very excellent reason that Australian children never are.
In England, and America, and Africa, and Asia, the little folks may
be paragons of virtue, I know little about them.
But in Australia a model child is–I say it not without
thankfulness–an unknown quantity.
It may be that the miasmas of naughtiness develop best in the
sunny brilliancy, of our atmosphere. It may be that the land and
the people are young-hearted together, and the children’s spirits not
crushed and saddened by the shadow of long years’ sorrowful
history.
There is a lurking sparkle of joyousness and rebellion and mischief
in nature here, and therefore in children.

CONTENTS
I     Chiefly Descriptive
II    Fowl for Dinner
III   Virtue Not Always Rewarded
IV   The General Sees Active Service
V   “Next Monday Morning”
VI   The Sweetness of Sweet Sixteen
VII  “What Say You to Falling in Love?”
VIII  A Catapult and a Catastrophe
IX    Consequences
X     Bunty in the Light of a Hero
XI    The Truant
XII    Swish, Swish!
XIII   Uninvited Guests
XIV   The Squatter’s Invitation
XV    Three Hundred Miles in the Train
XVI   Yarrahappini
XVII   Cattle-Drafting at Yarrahappini
XVIII  The Picnic at Krangi-Bahtoo
XIX    A Pale-Blue Hair Ribbon
XX     Little Judy
XXI    When the Sun Went Down
XXII    And Last

Sku: sevenlittleaustralians

On the 14th of May, 1858, Mr. Stuart started from Oratunga (the head
station of Mr. John Chambers), accompanied by Mr. Barker, with six
horses, and all that was requisite (with one important exception, as will
be seen hereafter), for an excursion to the north-west of Swinden’s
Country. They arrived at Aroona the same evening. On the following day
(the 15th) they made Morleeanna Creek, and reached Ootaina on the 16th,
about 7 p.m. Here they remained for a couple of days, as sufficient rain
had not fallen to enable them to proceed. On the afternoon of the 19th
they arrived at Mr. Sleep’s, who informed them that Mr. M. Campbell had
returned from the West, being hard pushed for water; very little rain
having fallen to the west. The next day (20th) Mr. Stuart arrived at Mr.
Louden’s, but, in consequence of some difficulties about the horses, he
returned to Ootaina. Various preparations, combined with want of rain,
compelled him to delay his start until the 10th of June.

Sku: explorationsaustralia02

Before entering upon the account of the expedition sent to explore the
interior of Australia, to which the following pages refer, it may perhaps
be as well to advert briefly to the circumstances which led to the
undertaking itself, that the public being fully in possession of the
motives and inducements which led me, at a very great sacrifice of my
private means, to engage in an exploration so hazardous and arduous, and
informed of the degree of confidence reposed in me by those interested in
the undertaking, and the sanguine hopes and high expectations that were
formed as to the result, may be better able to judge how far that
confidence was well placed, and how far my exertions were commensurate
with the magnitude of the responsibility I had undertaken.

Sku: centralaustralia01

The exploration of Northern Australia, which formed the object of my
first journey in 1831, has, consistently with the views I have always
entertained on the subject [* See London Geographical Journal, vol. vii.
part 2, p. 282.], been found equally essential in 1846 to the full
development of the geographical resources of New South Wales. The same
direction indicated on Mr. Arrowsmith’s map, published by the Royal
Geographical Society in 1837, was, in 1846, considered, by a committee of
the Legislative Council of New South Wales, the most desirable to pursue
at a time when every plan likely to relieve the colony from distress
found favour with the public.

Sku: interioroftropicalaustralia

It has appeared very strange to some very able judges of voyages, that
the Dutch should make so great account of the southern countries as to
cause the map of them to be laid down in the pavement of the Stadt House
at Amsterdam, and yet publish no descriptions of them. This mystery was
a good deal heightened by one of the ships that first touched on
Carpenter’s Land, bringing home a considerable quantity of gold, spices,
and other rich goods; in order to clear up which, it was said that these
were not the product of the country, but were fished out of the wreck of
a large ship that had been lost upon the coast. But this story did not
satisfy the inquisitive, because not attended with circumstances
necessary to establish its credit; and therefore they suggested that,
instead of taking away the obscurity by relating the truth, this story
was invented in order to hide it more effectually.

Sku: australianvoyages

Before narrating my own labours in opening out portions of the unknown
interior of Australia, it will be well that I should give a succinct
account of what others engaged in the same arduous enterprise around
the shores and on the face of the great Southern Continent, have
accomplished.

After the wondrous discoveries of Columbus had set the Old World into
a state of excitement, the finding of new lands appears to have become
the romance of that day, as the exploration by land of unknown regions
has been that of our time; and in less than fifty years after the
discovery of America navigators were searching every sea in hopes of
emulating the deeds of that great explorer; but nearly a hundred years
elapsed before it became known in Europe that a vast and misty land
existed in the south, whose northern and western shores had been met
in certain latitudes and longitudes, but whose general outline had not
been traced, nor was it even then visited with anything like a
systematic geographical object.

Sku: australiatwicetraversed