Chinchilla Library Service

From Jimba to Dried Beef Creek: Leichhardt's travels in the Chinchilla District 1844-1848

The 100 page book is printed on quality gloss paper and includes colour and B&W photos, B&W drawings, maps, diagrams and plant and animal lists.

Available from: Chinchilla Library

PO Box 42, Chinchilla 4413

Price: $25 + $5 p&p

Leichhardt in the Chinchilla District

In his scant four years of exploration, Leichhardt contributed more to the scientific knowledge and understanding of Australia than any other inland explorer. His collections, together with those of Gilbert and Bunce, made many new species known, and if Leichhardt's own collection from Dried Beef Creek to Port Essington had survived, the flora of much of the inland north and north-east would have been identified a century earlier. In the Chinchilla area, a specimen of Grevillea singuliflora as collected by Leichhardt, was "re-discovered" just over 100 years later.

The explorer crossed the Chinchilla district six times on different expeditions. In 2004, Chinchilla Library published a book which collates the natural history of the area from Jimbour to Dried Beef Creek and tries to verify the campsites used by Leichhardt on his successive travels across the area. Dried Beef Creek is now known as the head of Dogwood Creek, rising on the southern side of the Great Dividing Range where it lies east-west.

We used not only what was written about in diaries and journals, but have also collated the sightings of animals and plants as recorded in the writings of those expedition members, and as registered in the botanical collection seen and checked by George Bentham (English Botanist at Kew Gardens and author of the seven volume Flora Australiensis), the birds collected by Gilbert and forwarded to Gould after Gilbert's death. Because the later expeditions traversed the same area at a different time of the year, the sightings and collections made during these travels by both Leichhardt and Bunce have been included. The area studied is restricted to the journey tracks from Jimbour, then through the Chinchilla Shire, the Murilla Shire and to Leichhardt's Dried Beef Creek.