Captain Charles
Sturt
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Early Life
Sturt was born in British India, the
second son of Thomas Lenox Napier Sturt, who became a judge in Bengal under the British East India
Company. Charles Sturt was sent to England at
the age of 5 to be educated and after going to a preparatory school was sent to Harrow in
1810 and in 1812 went to read with a Mr Preston near Cambridge. But it was difficult for
his father to find the money to give him a profession. An aunt made an appeal to one of
the royal princes, probably the Prince Regent,
and on 9 September 1813 Sturt
was gazetted an ensign in the 39th (Dorsetshire)
Regiment of Foot in the British Army
seeing action with the Duke of Wellington
in Spain, Canada and
at Waterloo,
rising to the rank of Captain in December 1825. With his regiment he escorted convicts to New South Wales
and arrived in 1827.
Sturt sailed with some prejudice against
the colony but found the conditions and climate so much better than he expected that his
feelings completely changed, and he developed a great interest in the country. Governor of New South
Wales Sir Ralph Darling
formed a high opinion of him and appointed him major of brigade and military secretary.
Sturt became friendly with John
Oxley, Allan Cunningham,
Hamilton Hume
and other explorers. He was keen to explore the Australian interior, especially its
rivers. In 1828 Governor Darling
sent Sturt and Hume to explore the area of the Macquarie River
in western New South Wales. It was not, however, until 10 November that the party started.
It consisted of Sturt, his servant, Joseph Harris, two soldiers and eight convicts and on
27 November he was joined by Hamilton Hume as his first assistant. Hume's experience and
resourcefulness proved very useful to his leader. A week was spent at Wellington Valley
breaking in the oxen and horses, and on 7 December the real start into comparatively
little known country was made. It was a drought year and the greatest difficulty was found
in getting sufficient water. The party returned to Wellington Valley on 21 April 1829. The
courses of the Macquarie, Bogan and Castlereagh rivers had been followed, and though its
importance was scarcely sufficiently realised, the Darling River
had been discovered. This expedition proved that northern New South Wales was not an
inland sea, but deepened the mystery of where the western-flowing rivers of New South
Wales went.
In 1829
Governor Darling approved an expedition to solve this mystery. Sturt proposed to travel
down the Murrumbidgee River,
whose upper reaches had been seen by the Hume and Hovell
expedition. In place of Hume, who was unable to join the party, George MacLeay
went "as a companion rather than as an assistant". A whaleboat built in sections
was carried with them which was put together, and on 7 January 1830 the
eventful voyage down the Murrumbidgee was begun. In January 1830 Sturt's party reached the
confluence of the Murrumbidgee and a much larger river, which Sturt named the Murray River.
It was in fact the same river which Hume and Hovell had crossed further upstream and named
the Hume. Several times the party was in danger from the aborigines but Sturt always
succeeded in propitiating them.
Sturt then proceeded down the Murray,
until he reached the river's confluence with the Darling. Sturt had now proved that all
the western-flowing rivers eventually flowed into the Murray. In February 1830, the party
reached a large lake which Sturt called Lake Alexandrina.
A few days later, they reached the sea. There they made the disappointing discovery that
the mouth of the Murray
was a maze of lagoons and sandbars, impassable to shipping.
The party then faced the ordeal of rowing
back up the Murray and Murrumbidgee, against the current, in the heat of an Australian
summer. Their supplies ran out and when they reached the site of Narrandera
in April they were unable to go any further. Sturt sent two men overland in search of
supplies and they returned in time to save the party from starvation, but Sturt went blind
for some months and never fully recovered his health. By the time they arrived back in Sydney
they had rowed and sailed nearly 2,900 kilometres of the river system.
A break from exploring
Sturt briefly served as Commander on Norfolk Island
where mutiny was brewing among the convicts, but in 1832 he was obliged to go to England
on sick leave and arrived there almost completely blind. In 1833 he published his Two
Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia during the years 1828, 1829, 1830
and 1831, of which a second edition appeared in 1834. For the first time the public in
England realized how great was Sturt's work, for Governor Darling's somewhat tardy but
appreciative dispatch of 14 April 1831, and his request for Sturt's promotion, had had no
result, and nothing came of the request by Sir Richard Bourke
who had succeeded Darling that Viscount Goderich should give "this deserving officer
your Lordship's protection and support". Though it seems to have been impossible to
persuade the colonial office of the value of Sturt's work his book had one important
effect. It was read by Edward Gibbon
Wakefield, and led to the choice of South Australia for the new settlement then
in contemplation. In May 1834, in view of his services, Sturt applied for a grant of land
intending to settle on it in Australia, and in July instructions were given that he was to
receive a grant of 5,000 acres (20 km²), Sturt on his part agreeing to give up
his pension rights. In September he was married to Charlotte Green and almost immediately
sailed for Australia.
Return to Australia
Sturt returned to Australia in 1835 to
begin farming on land granted to him by the New South Wales government near Mittagong.
In 1838 he herded cattle overland from Sydney to Adelaide, on
the way proving that the Hume and the Murray were the same river. He then settled at Grange in South Australia
and was appointed Surveyor-General until the London-appointed Surveyor-General Edward Frome
unexpectedly arrived. Sturt was briefly Registrar-General but he soon proposed a major
expedition into the interior of Australia as a way of restoring his reputation in the
colony and London.
Exploring from Adelaide
Sturt leaving Adelaide in
1844
Sturt wanted to settle the debate as to
whether there was an inland sea. In August 1844 Sturt and a party of 15 men, 200 sheep,
six drays and a
boat set out to explore north-western New South Wales and to advance into central Australia.
Travelling along the Murray and Darling rivers before venturing to the Great Dividing Range
they passed the site of Broken Hill,
but were then stranded for months by the extreme summer conditions near the present site
of Milparinka.
When the rains eventually came Sturt pressed on into central Australia until they
discovered the Simpson Desert,
at which point they were unable to go further and turned back to Adelaide.
Sturt later undertook a second expedition
to reach the centre of Australia, but he contracted scurvy in the extreme conditions and
his health broke down. He was forced to abandon the attempt. John Harris Browne,
surgeon on the expedition, assisted Sturt, took over leadership of the party and after
travelling 3,000 miles (4,800 km) brought it back to safety.
Later life and legacy
Early in 1847 he went to England on leave.
He arrived in October and received the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society. He
prepared for publication, his Narrative of an Expedition into Central Australia, which,
however, was not published until early in 1849. He was suffering again with his eyesight,
but some relief was found. He returned to Adelaide with his family, arrived in August, and
was immediately appointed colonial secretary with a seat in the council. There was no lack
of work in the ensuing years. Roads were constructed, and navigation on the Murray was
encouraged. But Sturt had renewed trouble with his eyes.
On 30 December 1851 he
resigned his position and was given a pension of £600 a year and settled down on
500 acres (2.0 km²) of land close to Adelaide and the sea. But the gold
discoveries had increased the cost of living, and in March 1853 Sturt and his family
sailed for England. He lived at Cheltenham
and devoted himself to the education of his children.
In 1856 he applied for the position of Governor of Victoria.
However, his age, uncertain health, and comparatively small income were against him. In
1859 the settlers at Moreton Bay
requested that Sturt might be appointed the first Governor of Queensland,
but again a younger man was chosen. By 1860 Sturt's three sons were all in the army, and
the remainder of his family went to live at Dinan
to economise after the expenses of education and fitting out. Unfortunately the town was
unhealthy and in 1863 a return was made to Cheltenham. In 1864 Sturt suffered a great
grief in the death of one of his sons in India.
In March 1869 he attended the inaugural dinner of the Colonial Society, at which Lord
Granville mentioned that it was the intention of the government to extend the Order of St Michael
and St George to the colonies. Sturt allowed himself to be persuaded by his
friends to apply for this distinction, but afterwards regretted he had done so when he
heard there were innumerable applications.
His health had been very variable and on 16 June 1869 he
died suddenly. He was survived by his widow, two sons, Colonel Napier George Sturt, R.E.
and Major-general Charles Sheppey Sturt, and a daughter. Mrs Sturt was granted a civil
list pension of £80 a year, and the same title as if her husband's nomination to the
order of St Michael and St George had been gazetted. Reproductions of portraits by
Crossland and Koberwein will be found in Mrs N. G. Sturt's Life, which suggest the charm
and refinement of Sturt's character.
He is commemorated by the City of Charles Sturt
and suburb of Sturt in Adelaide, the
electoral Division of Sturt
in Adelaide's eastern suburbs, Charles Sturt
University in regional New South Wales,
and the Sturt Highway
from Wagga Wagga
to Adelaide as well as the Sturt's desert pea,
the Sturt's Desert Rose
and Sturt's Stony Desert.
His
home, known as "The Grange", in the Adelaide suburb of Grange is preserved as a
museum.
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