sketcher, naturalist and explorer, was born on 23 October 1813 at Trebatsch, Prussia, fourth son of the eight children of Christian Hieronymous Matthias Leichhardt, a farmer, and Charlotte Sophie, née Ströhlow. At the University of Göttingen in 1833 he became interested in medicine and the natural sciences and studied these in London, France, Italy and Switzerland, abandoning his earlier studies of philosophy and languages. He was never awarded any university degree, despite being known as 'Doctor’ in Australia—which he left England to explore in 1841, arriving in the Sir Edward Paget on 14 February 1842. The young John Murphy was a fellow passenger.
Leichhardt’s various expeditions from 1842 until his disappearance inland from Cogoon station on the Darling Downs, Queensland, on 3 April 1848 have been exceedingly well documented, his personality and the value of his explorations polarising historians today as much as they did his contemporaries. His journal of the great overland expedition he led in 1844-45 from Moreton Bay (Brisbane) to Port Essington in the Northern Territory (which made him a hero on his return to Sydney in 1846) was published in England in 1847, and most of his journals, papers and other records have since been printed. While the specimens he collected on this epic journey were of scientific value, as a sketcher Leichhardt was handicapped by poor eyesight and a general lack of interest in visual representations (according to his erstwhile second-in command, J.F. Mann). Known drawings are little more than rough records made to assist his scientific work. His papers (ML) include a few crude diagrammatic natural history sketches of shells, birds, annelids and land profiles, plus the occasional ethnographic subject. The major illustrations in his book appear to have been by Harden S. Melville, with one by Charles Rodius who also did his lithographed portrait (ML).
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
