een
discovered--in 1813--and the beautiful pasture land round Bathurst had
been opened up to the enterprise of the squatters, it was natural that
the colonists should desire to know something of the nature and
capabilities of the land which stretched away to the west. In 1817 they
sent Mr. Oxley, the Surveyor-General, to explore the country towards the
interior, directing him to follow the course of the Lachlan and discover
the ultimate "fate," as they called it, of its waters. Taking with him a
small party, he set out from the settled districts on the Macquarie, and
for many days walked along the banks of the Lachlan, through undulating
districts of woodland and rich meadow. But, after a time, the explorers
could perceive that they were gradually entering upon a region of
totally different aspect; the ground was growing less and less hilly;
the tall mountain trees were giving place to stunted shrubs; and the
fresh green of the grassy slopes was disappearing. At length they
emerged on a great plain, filled with dreary swamps, which stretched as
far as the eye could reach, like one vast dismal sea of waving reeds.
Into this forbidding region they penetrated, forcing their way through
the tangled reeds and over weary miles of oozy mud, into which they sank
almost to the knees at every step. Ere long they had to abandon this
effort to follow the Lachlan throughout its course; they therefore
retraced their steps, and, striking to the south, succeeded in going
round the great swamp which had opposed their progress. Again they
followed the course of the river for some distance, entering, as they
journeyed, into regions of still greater desolation; but again they were
forced to desist by a second swamp of the same kind. The Lachlan here
seemed to lose itself in interminable marshes, and as no trace could be
found of its further course, Oxley concluded that they had reached the
end of the river. As he looked around on the dreary expanse, he
pronounced the country to be "for ever uninhabitable"; and, on his
return to Bathurst, he reported that, in this direction at least, there
was no opening for enterprise. The Lachlan, he said, flows into an
extensive region of swamps, which are perhaps only the margin of a great
inland sea.

Oxley was afterwards sent to explore the course of the Macquarie River,
but was as little successful in this as in his former effort. The river
flowed into a wide marsh, some thirty or forty miles long, a