y reached its lower
courses, the party struck eastward to the Culgoa, and reached that river
after a very distressing stage over dry country on which they lost six
horses from heat and thirst, whilst bringing the carts across it.

9.2. A TRAGIC EXPEDITION.

Kennedy's first experience of an independent exploring expedition in the
west was by no means a fitting prelude to the tragic journey he next
undertook. The same impulse that led to Mitchell's and Leichhardt's
northern journeys stimulated Kennedy to make his dangerous journey up the
eastern coast of the long peninsula that terminates in Cape York -- the
desire to find a road to the north coast, so that an easy chain of
communication should exist between the southern settlements and the far
north.

It was at the end of the month of May that Kennedy landed at Rockingham
Bay with his party of twelve men. He had started from Sydney in the
barque Tam o' Shanter, which was convoyed by Captain Owen Stanley in the
Alligator. This was in 1848, the same fateful year that witnessed
Leichhardt's disappearance. A schooner was to meet the party on the
north, at Port Albany, where it was proposed to form a settlement should
the features of the peninsula warrant such an enterprise. In actual point
of distance the task was not great, being a land traverse of from three
to four hundred miles, allowing for deviations. But never were men in
Australia so dogged by disaster and beset by danger as were Kennedy and
his followers. Opposed by country as yet unfamiliar to them, they found
their onward path hindered by many totally unforeseen conditions. Ranges
and ravines clothed with an almost impenetrable jungle, which was
infested with the venomous leaves of the stinging tree and the hooked
spikes of the lawyer vine, confronted them. The land was densely
populated with the most savage and relentless natives on the continent,
who resented the invasion from the outset. Death tracked them steadily
throughout, and claimed ten out of the thirteen of the devoted party as
his victims.

The country through which their course lay is now dotted with
mining-fields and townships, and fertile spaces of tilled tropical
plantations. The coast-line rich in harbours is the busy haunt of
steamers, and the narrow waterway between the mainland and the great
barrier reef the home of many lightships. But when Kennedy and his party
made their pioneer journey, the great desolation of the wilderness beset
them