Explorers of Australia: Hamilton Hume (1797- 1872) and William Hovell (1786-1875) Hamilton Hume was born in Parramatta,New South Wales on 18 June 1797. He had a good knowledge of bushcraft, and by the age of 17 was exploring, first to the Berrima district (between Sydney and Canberra), then with Surveyor Meehan to the Goulburn Plains and Lake Bathurst. Over the next few years he was a member of several exploring parties, to Yass Plains and the tablelands near Braidwood. He was the first Australian born explorer. In 1824, Governor Brisbane asked Hume to join forces with an English sea captain, William Hovell, to go from Lake George to the Spencer Gulf (in what is now South Australia). Hovell was older than Hume, with little bush experience, but he was a good navigator. They left Lake George on 17 October 1824, with a party of 6, enough supplies to last 16 weeks loaded onto bullock carts, horses and dogs (which they used to hunt kangaroos). The first two weeks of the journey was through areas that had already been explored. They reached the Murrumbidgee River to find it was in flood. They waited for three days before they could cross it, using one of the carts as a boat, and then found themselves in mountainous country. Some slopes were so steep that they had to zig zag their way up.They left the carts behind and loaded supplies onto the bullocks, and continued on. It took some time to find a pass through the ranges. However, when they reached the top, they gazed at a sight that no white man had seen: the Australian Alps. They had to travel to the west to avoid them. The weather became warmer, and they were pestered by flies, mosquitoes, ticks and leeches.
By 16 November they reached another river, which they named the Hume, but which was later renamed the Murray. They saw large numbers of water birds such as pelicans and swans feeding, and seafood was plentiful. The river was very wide and the water was clear and deep. In order to cross this river, they made a boat from some poles and tarpaulins, and pulled the animals across on ropes. Near the Murray, at the place that is now Albury, the explorers carved their names on a tree on 17 November 1824. The tree is still there, with a plaque duplicating the carved words. The tree is called the Hovell Tree. The Hovell
Tree right: A copy of the inscription that was carved in the tree on 17/11/1824
They continued on to the southwest, travelling through forest country. They saw a snowy peak to the east, and named it Mt Buffalo. Travelling through the Ovens Valley, Hovell wrote, 'there are fine hills and grassland...as pretty a spot and as valuable as any I have seen since leaving home.' Hume wrote, ' the honeysuckle and grass trees are growing here well - we find the land to be good.' The party crossed the Eastern Highlands, passed Mt Disappointment and Mt Macedon and crossed the Werribee River. At last they reached the sea: they were at Corio Bay in Port Phillip, the place that is now the city of Geelong. Because their instruments had been damaged, their calculations were incorrect, and they thought they were in Westernport when in fact they were at Port Phillip.
The Aboriginal people in the area called the bay 'Jillong' and the land 'Corio', or at least this is what Hume and Hovell understood from their attempted conversation. As supplies were running low, the expedition set off for home the next day. The journey home was easier. In summer, the flooded rivers had become shallow puddles. They collected their carts from where they had left them, but the ground was now too rough for the bullocks, which had to be abandoned in the bush. They arrived at Lake George on 18 January. The three month expedition had found much open land suitable for farming and grazing between Sydney and Port Phillip. In 1828 Hume joined Charles Sturt's expedition when he named the Darling River, but because of ill health, he retired to his properties in Yass and did no more exploring. William Hovell was born at Yarmouth, England, on 26 April 1786. He died on 9 November 1875, at Goulburn, New South Wales
HUME, HAMILTON (1797-1873), sometimes called Alexander Hamilton Hume, explorer, [ also refer to Hamilton HUME page at Project Gutenberg Australia]
was born at Parramatta on 18 June 1797. He was christened Hamilton Hume (Mitchell library, Sydney), and no evidence for the additional name could be found. He was the son of Andrew Hamilton Hume, who came to Australia in 1790 as a superintendent of convicts and soon afterwards became a free settler. He was the son of the Rev. James Hume and married Elizabeth Moore Kennedy, whose father was also a clergyman. There were few opportunities for education in Australia during the first 10 years of the nineteenth century, and Hamilton Hume received most of his education from his mother. When only 17 years of age he began exploring the country beyond Sydney as far to the south-west as Berrima, and soon developed into a good bushman. In March 1817 he went on a journey with James Meehan (q.v.), the deputy surveyor-general, during which Lake Bathurst and the Goulburn Plains were discovered. Subsequently he went with Oxley (q.v.) and Meehan to Jervis Bay, and in 1822 was with the party which sailed down the east coast in search of rivers. In 1824 he was seen by Governor Brisbane (q.v.) with reference to an expedition to Spencer Gulf. Brisbane was also in touch about this time with W. H. Hovell (q.v.) on the same subject, but it is not quite clear who was the first approached. Difficulties arose about the financing of the journey and eventually the two men decided to make the journey at their own expense, except for some packsaddles, arms, clothes and blankets, which were provided from government stores. Hume in a letter dated 24 January 1825, immediately after the return of the explorers, practically claimed to have been the leader of the party. He refers to "the expedition your Excellency was pleased to entrust to my care". But Brisbane did not accept this view of it, as in a letter to the secretary, Wilmot Horton, dated 24 March 1825 he mentions the "discovery of new and valuable country . . . by two young men Messrs Hovell and Hume . . . they were directed by me to try and
reach Spencer's Gulf". It may also be pointed out that in the letter to Brisbane of 28 July 1824, Hovell signed first. These facts are of interest in view of the controversy which broke out many years later. Each of the explorers brought three assigned servants with him and between them they had five bullocks, three horses and two carts. Nearly the whole of the journey was through heavy mountain country, and there were several rivers to be forded. The courage, resource and bushmanship of Hume were important factors in surmounting their many difficulties, and after a journey of 11 weeks they came to Corio Bay near the present site of Geelong. Here, possibly through faulty instruments, Hovell made a mistake of one degree in his observation, and they believed that they were on the shore of Western Port. The return journey for some time was made on a course more to the west, the country was more level, and they were back at their starting point less than five weeks later. Their provisions were finished just before the end of the journey, and the whole party was very near exhaustion. Hume and Hovell each received grants of 1200 acres of land, an inadequate reward for discoveries of great importance made by an expedition which, practically speaking, paid its own expenses. http://gutenberg.net.au/dictbiog/0-dict-biogHi-Hu.html#hume2 Hume, in November 1828, was with Charles Sturt (q.v.) in his first expedition into the interior, and was of great use to him. He was able to communicate with some aborigines they met early in their journey who consented to act as guides, and later, when the aborigines left them, Sturt speaks with appreciation of Hume's ability in tracking their animals which had strayed. Being a drought year, it was a constant struggle to find water, and only good bushmanship saved the party. Sturt would have liked Hume to go with him on his second expedition, which started at the end of 1829, but he had a harvest to get in and was unable to make arrangements. He had finished his work as an explorer, and spent his remaining days as a successful pastoralist. In December 1853 an imperfect report of a speech Hovell had made at Geelong was the cause of much feeling between the two men. Hume had always regarded himself as the real leader of their joint expedition, and his indignation lost all bounds at the thought of Hovell minimizing his share in the work. Fuller reports of the speech show that this was not the case, but the vehemency of Hume and his friends at the time, led to the work of Hovell being underrated for a long period. Hume published in 1855 A Brief Statement of Facts in Connection with an Overland Expedition from Lake George to Port Phillip in 1824, which went into three editions. Hovell published two pamphlets Reply to "A Brief Statement of Facts in Connection with an Overland Expedition from Lake George to Port Phillip in 1824", and an Answer to the Preface to the Second Edition of Mr Hamilton Hume's "A Brief Statement of Facts", (for a balanced discussion of the merits of the case see paper by professor Sir Ernest Scott in Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Australian Historical Society, vol. VII). Hume died at Yass on 19 April 1873. He married a Miss Dight who survived him without children. He is sometimes stated to have been the author of The Life of Edward John Eyre, but the Hamilton Hume who wrote this book lived in London. Hume was an excellent explorer, a first-rate bushman never lacking in courage and resource, whose work was not adequately appreciated or rewarded by the government of the time. He had a good knowledge of the blacks, was always able to avoid conflicts with them, and appears to have learnt something of their speech. He has an established and well-deserved reputation as a great Australian explorer.