Ludwig Leichhardt and the Gulf of Carpentaria rivers

The Leichhardt River at Mount Isa.

The rivers of Northern Queensland that empty into the Gulf of Carpentaria received their first European names from the Dutch who sailed these waters from the 17th century. The Gulf is named for Pieter de Carpentier, a Dutch East India Company administrator and its Governor-General from 1623 to 1627. Although the Dutch were the first Europeans to make contact with Aboriginal people, they found it too forbidding for a colony.

No European came to the Gulf via the land route until Ludwig Leichhardt’s successful first expedition of 1844-45. Leichhardt followed the Dutch naming convention of known rivers filling in the gaps where necessary. But Leichhardt was let down by poor maps in the maze of rivers and two he named were overlooked by those who followed. Upstream, one river flowed into what would eventually become Mount Isa and in a quirk of fate that river was named for Leichhardt, something he would never have done himself. The best explanation of how things went wrong is provided by Colin Roderick in his monumental “Leichhardt the Dauntless Explorer”.

Leichhardt was an excellent navigator, but his journey from west of Brisbane to the Cobourg Peninsula was reliant on the 1838 map of Australia produced by English cartographer John Arrowsmith. Much of the area his group travelled through was blank on Arrowsmith’s map though maritime surveys of Flinders (1802) and the Beagle (1841) had determined coastal features visible from the sea. The navigators had not seen the mouths of many rivers. The first half of Leichhardt’s journey log has disappeared but the second half in conjunction with his fieldbooks and rough maps enabled deputy-surveyor Samuel Perry to draw a map refined by Arrowsmith for the 1847 version of the book of Leichhardt’s travels: “Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia from Moreton Bay to Port Essington”.

Leichhardt took a circuitous route following the river systems of the Condamine and then north along rivers he named, the Dawson, McKenzie, Fitzroy, Burdekin, Lynd, and Mitchell. He finally found a Dutch-named river, the Staaten to break through the Gulf, though it was a fair way up Cape York and his party needed to go south-west before travelling west. As he reached the southern shores of the Gulf, his whereabouts were misunderstood by Perry based on incorrect assumptions from Arrowsmith’s earlier incomplete map.

The problems started in Cape York days after one of the party, naturalist John Gilbert, was killed by Aboriginal people as they camped overnight. On July 9, 1845 Leichhardt camped at what Arrowsmith’s map called the Van Diemen River. But it was the river now named for Gilbert. Leichhardt did name a river for Gilbert but that is a stream now called the Smithbourne River.

The confusion continued as he travelled south-west into the Gulf. On July 19, 1845 Leichhardt crossed a creek with a sandstone bed he did not name, now the Carron River. The Carron is a tributary of the Norman (which flows through Normanton and Karumba) which Leichhardt found later that day 15km from the coast. “A fine river,” he called it, “with salt water about 250 or 300 yards broad.” They camped on a lagoon that night feasting on ibis and duck they shot, carefully watched by the blacks so the whites were watchful too. The following morning natives invited Leichhardt to meet them. He presented nose rings to his hosts and they told him the stream was the Yappar. Leichhardt adopted that name for the river. While Yappar did not survive, a street in Karumba now bears that name. Leichhardt crossed the river at Glenore Crossing and recorded the river as at latitude 17 54 or 55, longitude 140 45. His latitudes were only a minute or two out but his longitudes were 40-50 minutes too far west due to a mechanical defect.

His mapmakers knew about the defect but failed to rectify it for the expedition book. The problem was another river, named the Maatsuyker by the Dutch and renamed the Flinders by John Lort Stokes on the Beagle in 1841 was at 141 40. Stokes had sailed up to Burial Reach and named Bynoe Inlet after his ship’s surgeon. Arrowsmith combined the two rivers for the 1847 book and gave it Stokes’ name in honour of Matthew Flinders. Under the name in brackets, Arrowsmith placed “Yappar” to mark its headwaters, robbing Leichhardt of his first river. It wasn’t until 1870, that the river was renamed the Norman for Commander William Henry Norman who carried supplies to the Albert River in 1861 for the Burke and Wills Expedition.

On July 22, 1845 the party crossed Stockyard Creek and Leichhardt’s black companion Charley who had scouted on ahead told them another large river blocked their path. They crossed the Bynoe effluent near its junction with the Flinders and according to Leichhardt camped at 17 49 35. Here Leichhardt lost his second river. Stokes had not only found the Flinders, he also found the Albert, which he followed for 70km into what he called the Plains of Promise at today’s Burketown. Leichhardt was unaware of this discovery and his task was complicated by the failure of Flinders and others to find the ghostly Dutch named Maatsuyker River. When on July 23 Leichhardt crossed this “fine broad river with a sandy bed, the banks with stunted mangroves , clayey salty water” he wrote next to it in his field book “Maete Suyker River?” and refrained from making the judgement. Roderick is convinced Leichhardt would have placed it as the Flinders had he known of Stokes’ map.

On August 3 Leichhardt headed back towards the coast and that evening at camp Charley told them he had found another river barely 300 metres west away. This was the river later called the Leichhardt. The following day they kept to the right of the river and paused for a day to dry the beef they moistened after slaughtering a bullock. While they searched in vain for fresh water, they found a crossing at the site of the present Leichhardt Falls (about 77km from Burketown). After three parched days they found a waterhole. When they passed the Albert River (which goes through Burketown) on August 6, Leichhardt wrote in his printed journal: “The river, I am inclined to think, is the Albert of Captain Stokes, and the Maet Suyker of the Dutch navigators”. But the doubt remained. In a letter from Sydney in 1846 he added as a rider: “But I crossed another considerable saltwater river between both, which does not appear to have any connection with either.” His hunch was correct – this was the Leichhardt. The confusion is no surprise, the Albert and the Leichhardt meet the sea within kilometres of each other and the constantly curving streams, brooks, creeks and anabranches were too hard to trace with so far still to go.

On August 18 they found a small river with palm trees and importantly, fresh water. This was at the present junction of the Albert and Barclay Rivers. The following day they moved north west and found “a fine brook, whose pure limpid waters flowed rapidly in its deep but rather narrow channel, over a bed of rich green long-leaved water plants. Leichhardt named it Beames’s Brook after Walter Beames, a Sydney grocer who had donated stores to the expedition. Beames’s Brook appears today on the map as a tributary of the Albert though initially the mapmakers thought it belonged to another river which Leichhardt found 3km north-west of it. That was the Nicholson (which flows through Doomadgee) which Leichhardt named for the English companion of his student years in Europe. Leichhardt crossed the Nicholson below its junction with the Gregory River which he never saw.

By August 29 Leichardt’s party crossed into what is now the Northern Territory. Leichhardt named more rivers including the Calvert and Roper for members of his party. On December 17 the bedraggled party made their way to Victoria, the British army settlement at Port Essington. They were among the last to visit it. It is possible Leichhardt may have tried to visit it again in 1849 as he and his party mysteriously vanished without trace on their planned trip to the Western Australian Swan River Colony. If they did they would have been bitterly disappointed as the British abandoned the settlement that year.

Many explorers looked for Leichhardt and his party. Among them in 1856 was Augustus Charles Gregory (the Gregory River was named for him by later traveller William Landsborough, who in turn got a highway). Gregory crossed one of the lost rivers of the Gulf when looking for the missing Leichhardt and by a happy choice he named it the Leichhardt. Residents of Mount Isa, Roderick concluded, should be gratified to know the river was found in 1845 by the man whose name it bears.

The end of the economists’ hour

New York Times writer Binyamin Appelbaum begins his book The Economists’ Hour with an anecdote from stockbroker and 1950s US Federal Reserve chair William McChesney. McChesney told a visitor they had 50 “econometricians” working at the Fed and all of them were in the basement. They were in the building because they asked good questions, he said, but they were relegated to the bottom floor because “they don’t know their own limitations and they have a far greater sense of their confidence in their own analyses than warranted”. McChesney was expressing a common government view at the time that economics was an esoteric field that did not resolve specific problems.

What economics there was in the post-war period was Keynsian (though John Maynard Keynes was distrusted by politicians) with government intervention when necessary. Within 20 years economists had moved from the basement to the penthouse, and politicians and advisers were ready to listen to their advice. Under the critical influence of Milton Friedman’s mantra to trust the markets not the bureaucrats, there began a period called “The Economists’ Hour” a phrase Appelbaum borrows from historian Thomas McCraw that describes the period between the 1970s and the financial crash of 2008. In that time economies across the world opened up to the power of the markets, but as the GFC crash showed, its unfettered power went too far.

McChesney died in 1998. He probably watched in resignation as Alan Greenspan became head of the Fed 11 years earlier, as economists stamped their authority on the economy. Greenspan was even more extreme than Friedman about free market discipline, under the influence of libertarian writer Ayn Rand. His view was a “laissez-faire economy was the only moral and practical form of economic organisation.” Greenspan made his money in economic consultancy and went into politics in 1968 analysing data for the Richard Nixon presidential campaign. But he resisted government appointments until 1974 when he chaired the president’s Council of Economic Advisers. Within days Watergate forced Nixon out and new president Gerald Ford made Greenspan his chief economist. Greenspan got on well with Ford and encouraged him to oppose a bailout of New York City (leading to the immortal Daily News headline: Ford to City: Drop Dead”.

After Carter won in 1976 Greenspan left to complete his doctorate and re-emerged in 1980 endorsing Ronald Reagan’s plan to cut taxes and spending. Again he initially resisted a role with the White House. But in 1987 he met the Bakers, Treasury secretary James Baker and presidential chief of staff Howard Baker who convinced him to take the job at the Fed replacing Paul Volcker, a man of similar ideas. Volcker had served 10 years under Carter and Reagan and his biggest success was stamping out inflation which dogged both presidents. Volcker succeeded by making interest rates high and sending unemployment soaring above 10pc. He moved power from labour to capital, a process Greenspan accelerated.

Greenspan was determined to end federal regulation, particularly around Wall St and the ring-fenced savings and loans industry. He agreed with the White House that reduced restrictions would help American banks compete with foreign rivals. Over 10 years Greenspan became celebrated as his tenure coincided with low unemployment and low inflation. His signature triumph, Appelbaum said, consisted of doing nothing when he resisted pressure to raise interest rates in the mid 90s correctly judging technology was increasing American productivity even as globalisation was suppressing prices and workers’ bargaining power.

Greenspan’s greatest failure also consisted of doing nothing. American savings and loans companies, known as thrifts, were subject to serious financial fraud. The failure of Lincoln Saving and Loan in 1989 cost the taxpayer $2 billion and Greenspan, who had spruiked for them, declared himself embarrassed by the failure. Using language strikingly familiar to 2008 he was “very distressed” by market indiscipline. But he proposed no action. Similarly in 1994 when credit derivatives were wiped out, Greenspan merely saw it as “educational” and those that survived would be stronger.

More warning bells sounded which Greenspan ignored. In the mid 90s banks enthusiastically turned to new customers,people who did not qualify for loans at the best rates. The banks created unregulated subsidiaries to offer loans to “sub prime” customers. These new lending arms charged exorbitant fees concentrated in lower income groups. Many customers could have qualified for prime loans but black borrowers ended up with subprime loans more often than white borrowers with similar profiles.

Consumer advocates wanted these subsidiaries regulated like the banks but the Fed refused in 1998, despite Clinton White House criticism. Buoyed by the Fed the banks doubled down on sub-prime loans and by 2004 around 12pc of all loans were from unregulated companies. When Chicago economist Raghuram Rajan suggested financial innovation was making the world a riskier place he was dismissed as a Luddite. Some said even suggesting such scenarios was “disruptive”.

It was a wild west marketplace. In 2007 former Fed govenor Edward Gramlich said the mortgage marketplace was “like a city with a murder law but with no cops on the beat”. Greenspan, the cop who could have changed everything stepped down from the Fed in 2006 but remained sanguine about the future. In his 2007 memoirs, Greenspan said adding more government regulation wouldn’t help. “We have no sensible choice other than to let markets work,” he wrote. When they didn’t work a year later, Greenspan was “distressed” once more.

Appelbaum says the idea of a marketplace regulated by its participants is fundamentally flawed. Markets run on information and insiders usually have more information. Lower income borrowers have less income and lead more stressful lives due to their poverty. This leads to more debilitating decision making, egged on by unscrupulous lenders. Greenspan said the job of a central banker was to see the future and get ready for it. But he did not foresee the collapse of the housing market in 2008. He did not understand the Wall St banks had become housing-finance companies. They were conduits carrying foreign investment into mortgages as the reservoirs of American trading partner savings pumped back into US house and financial markets.

After the GFC, new head of the Fed Ben Bernanke pumped more money into the financial system until the banks got back on their feet. The Economists’ Hour was over. Just like in the 1930s Great Depression when Keynes’ ideas took hold, only foolhardy purists insisted markets should be left to their own devices. Obama pushed through a Keynesian stimulus plan in 2009 though he abandoned this approach in favour of austerity measures a year later, a move also adopted by the EU. Only China continued spending and its growth dwarfed the rest of the world in the following decade.

While over 350 bankers were The convicted of crimes related to the global financial crisis, almost all were small fry. There was no money for borrowers as there was for bankers. Economic considerations trumped justice. The US justice department would consider “collateral consequences” before filing charges against corporations for fear of making thousands unemployed. Most financial gains have ended up in the pockets of an unrepentant plutocratic minority. The biggest damage has been to erode trust in governments and other institutions. The victories of Brexit, Trump and Bolsonaro are all rejections of the Economists’ Hour.

Appelbaum argues globalisation had inherently good qualities that didn’t have to be so painful. The service economy is where today’s jobs are, especially nursing the aging population though most of these jobs are physically demanding, emotionally draining, poorly paid and with little security or benefits. Inequality is at levels not seen since the 1920s and social mobility is ossifying as education paths become more difficult for the poor. One lesson is the need for a strong social net within a strong economy. Unemployment is a lack of purpose and opportunity as well as money. The markets must be “seasoned with mercy” as mid 20th century economist Frank Knight said. Markets remain an excellent invention and a powerful machine for wealth creation, but there are times when it is right to do without one.

North Stradbroke Island by bike

We booked a four day stay at Point Lookout on North Stradbroke Island and decided to get there by public transport. That meant a train to Cleveland station, cycle to the ferry terminal, ferry to Dunwich and then cycle to Point Lookout, 19km away on the surf side of the island. I had done this trip before, but it was 20 years ago so I was overdue some “Straddie” love.

Pulling out into the broad expanse of Moreton Bay we passed Peel Island to the north. Peel’s Jandai name is Teerk Roo Ra meaning “place of many shells”. Aboriginal groups used Peel Island as a feasting and ceremonial site. Midden sites and a bora ring remain. Europeans first used it in 1874 as an immigration quarantine station for ships to keep contagious diseases out. Authorities gazetted the island’s north-west corner in 1906 and built a lazaret a year later to forcibly hold people from across Queensland with Hansen’s Disease (leprosy). It held 500 people in poor conditions over the years. Though drugs cured leprosy in the 1940s, the lazaret stayed open until 1959.

After a 25 minute water taxi journey we approach Dunwich. Like Peel Island, Dunwich was established as a quarantine station after the closure of Brisbane’s penal colony in 1849. We landed at One Mile Jetty where fishers were enjoying low tide access to the bay. The good news for cyclists is the jetty is 2km closer to Point Lookout than the car ferry terminal, further south.

Nearby is Dunwich cemetery. Overlooking the bay, it is possibly the second oldest cemetery in Queensland. These unusual stones mark the graves of inmates of the Dunwich Benevolent Asylum. The grave markers varied in design depending on the period when the inmates were buried. The Asylum was established as the quarantine station closed in 1865. Peel opened two years later.

A couple of kilometres into the ride we visited Myora Springs Conservation Area at Capembah Creek. A freshwater spring feeds the creek and a boardwalk sign says it pours 2.4 million litres of crystal clear water into Moreton Bay every day. This was a Quandamooka camping spot for millennia and remains a special place. The area’s wildlife includes freshwater prawns in the creek and koalas in the eucalypts and swamp mahoganies above.

The East Coast road is hilly and we were glad to settle in to our accommodation for the evening enjoying the sunset over Cylinder Beach. The beach gets its name from the gas cylinders used to power Point Lookout lighthouse which were brought ashore on the beach.

The following morning we walk down to Point Lookout. The point was named by Lt James Cook as the Endeavour passed on May 17, 1770. Cook wrote in his journal that at sunset “the Northermost land in sight bore North by West, the breakers North-West by West, distant 4 Miles, and the Northermost land set at Noon, which form’d a Point, I named Point Lookout, bore West, distant 5 or 6 Miles (Latitude 27 degrees 6 minutes)”. Cook’s latitude is wrong as it should be 27 degrees 26 minutes. He continued: “On the North side of this point the shore forms a wide open bay, which I have named Morton’s Bay”. Cook named it for James, Earl of Morton, President of the Royal Society in 1764, and one of the Commissioners of Longitude. Over the years the name of the bay was corrupted to Moreton. This view looks south to the beach down the east of the island.

The surf was strong and surfers enjoyed the big waves. The swells are often large at Main Beach, which is popular for its left hand point breaks. We kept an eye out for whales heading north. In summer humpback whales feed in the polar waters of Antarctica, and in winter migrate to tropical or subtropical waters of Fiji and Australia to breed and give birth. Thousands of humpbacks swim past Australia’s east coast between late May and early November each year.

Nearby is the North Gorge Walk. Normally you can take the beautiful 1.2km loop track around the headland but storm damage in the middle means it is only open for short segments at either end. The heavy waves crashing into gorge were a spectacular sight.

At the northern entrance to the gorge is this place marker. Designed by sculptor Delvene Cockatoo-Collins in 2019 the installation is called “eugaries”. An interpretative sign says the eugarie shells stand in a way often found in the shallow ocean, within the sand and on middens. Shell remnants have been found at Mulumba (the Quandamooka name for Point Lookout) showing evidence of a traditional gathering place and food camp. Mulumba means place of stone/rock in Jandai language. The eugaries symbolise people coming together while the patterns on the outer layer reflect their weathered nature.

I’ve written about Quandamooka native title but there is dissension over a proposed development next to the Gorge Walk called Yalingbila Bibula (Whale on the Hill). The development is an initiative of the Quandamooka Yoolooburrabee Aboriginal Corporation. An interpretive facility will house a 15-metre skeleton of humpback whale washed ashore in 2011 – one of the few complete humpback whale skeletons on public display in the world. The facility will also share Quandamooka stories, values and history. But many locals aren’t happy with the proposal and have set up a “Quandamooka Truth Embassy” on the northern side of the walk. They say the whale is not a totem of the Quandamooka and the remains should be returned to the sea not “hung in a whale coffin on the hill”.

They also say construction will impact kangaroos, koalas, possums and echidnas and it is a culturally significant area with a cave just below the site. It is a difficult problem to resolve as the island economy transitions from sand-mining which ended in 2019. The Minjerribah Futures Program wants to transition the island from an economic reliance on resources to cultural and eco-tourism but the local chamber of commerce says there is no funding for basic amenities like bike paths, disability access to the beach and showers.

We could have done with a bike lane on the narrow and dangerous East Coast road where not all vehicles adhere to the one and a half metre distance rule. We had a more relaxing ride on Saturday on this vehicle-free dirt track to Amity Point. We had a delightful 7km trip through the foliage with only the occasional mountain biker, birds and a hungry tree-climbing goanna for company.

Amity Point is the sleepiest of Stradbroke’s three settlements. Originally known as Pulan by the Nunukul people, Amity was home to an Aboriginal population of over 100. In 1824 John Oxley named the headland after the brig Amity he sailed in when establishing Moreton Bay penal colony. In 1825 the government established a pilot station to guide ships to the penal settlement. Hayles Cruises started a passenger ferry in 1935 and this was the main entry point to the island for many years.

Despite being a sand island, the forests surrounding Amity are subtropical rainforests with significant diversity in flora and fauna. Koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus) are common in the wild on Straddie, often in townships like this one in Amity. The Koala Action Group Queensland has documented dramatic decline of koalas on mainland South East Queensland with suggestions North Stradbroke Island should become an “island ark” for koalas. Sadly their study found that due to characteristics including low genetic diversity, Straddie koalas are unique, and the location and population should not be considered an island ark for the rest of SEQ, but conserved and managed as a separate entity.

After a coffee we found another route back to Point Lookout, a low tide cycle along beautiful Flinders Beach. Our company was white-bellied sea eagles and boaties in the channel to the north. There was a tricky section at the end of the beach where we had to dismount and carry our bikes in knee-height water across fallen trees but we were able to continue our ride home via, appropriately enough, Home Beach.

Still feeling energetic the following day, I risked the traffic and cycled the East Coast Road to Dunwich. My destination was the North Stradbroke Island museum on Minjerribah. There were displays on the Peel Island lazaret and the Dunwich Quarantine Station and Asylum. The Asylum was set up for destitute Queenslanders in 1865. It remained there until 1946 when it was moved to the vacated RAAF base at Sandgate, later renamed Eventide.

Back at Point Lookout I went for a run to the lighthouse, which is not on the sea, but on the top of a hill. The lighthouse was established in 1932 using automatic acetylene apparatus. It was painted red and white and when American supply ship Rufus King ran aground in 1942 on the South Passage Bar, its captain claimed he had mistaken the lighthouse for the one at Cape Moreton which was also painted red and white. To avoid confusion Cape Moreton was repainted in alternate red and white bands. In 1988 Point Lookout light was converted to a battery operated light float charged from electricity mains and the tower that housed the light prism was removed.

That evening we took the short walk to the North Stradbroke Beach Hotel for dinner with its lovely views of the sunset over Cylinder Beach. The hotel was opened in 1962 and was affectionately known by locals and visitors as the Straddie Pub. A total rebuild in 2006 has given it a more upmarket flavour. It’s a great place to unwind and for whale watching while having a beer or a bite to eat.

That left an early start the following morning for the 19km trip back to the ferry. There was plenty of time to enjoy the final views of Straddie and Moreton Bay as we motored back to Cleveland.