The Exploration of Cape York Peninsula by Robert Logan Jack

The exploration of the interior of the Peninsula was commenced by Dr. Ludwig Leichhardt, a Prussian naturalist who had had already, three years of Australian experience, and desired to emulate the exploits of Sir Thomas Mitchell. His confessed ambition was to earn a British knighthood, but this was denied him. He, however, obtained from the King of Prussia a free pardon for the offence of having evaded military service.

Leichhardt left the Darling Downs on October 1, 1844, with five white men and two aboriginals. He had seventeen horses and sixteen bullocks. Having travelled in what was evidently an unusually good season, by the Dawson, Comet, Mackenzie, Isaacs and Suttor, to the Burdekin Valley, he rises above our horizon on May 23, 1845, on the divide between the Pacific and the Gulf. He struck the head of the Lynd and ran the river down -- at first through rough country -- noting its geological and botanical features, until it fell into the larger river, the Mitchell. He then followed the Mitchell River down for eighty miles through pastoral country. The river then debouched on the plain which fringes the Gulf and is formed by the confluent deltas of many great rivers, and began to leak out into anabranches, which either rejoined the river or joined the branches or mouths of other rivers.