September 2024
I first came across Ludwig Leichhardt in High School where he was just one of the white explorers I studied in my Australian history class. I came across him again recently while researching for an article on surveys of edible native plants 1834 – 1934. My search turned up his Lecture II on the edible native plants he found during his 1844/45 expedition from Moreton Bay in Queensland to Port Essington in the Northern Territory. It set me wondering about food matters on expeditions like this – how they were provisioned, what if anything they ate of native flora and fauna, what difficulties there were in getting food and water. Leichhardt’s Journal of an Overland Expedition from Moreton Bay to Port Essington. A Distance of Upwards of 3000 miles during the Years 1844 – 1845 has descriptions of these food matters and that material is the content of this article. Lecture II describes more edible native plants experimented with during the expedition not recorded in the Journal and I have wherever possible identified them in the footnotes. I look at the expedition party’s food matters month by month.
