Wentworth, Blaxland, and Evans appear on the list as the very first explorers by land.

The chief object they had in view was to surmount the difficulties which opposed their attempting to cross the Blue Mountains, and Evans was the first who accomplished this.

The first efficient exploring expedition into the interior of New South Wales was conducted by John Oxley, the Surveyor-General of the colony, in 1817.

His principal discovery was that some of the Australian streams ran inland, towards the interior, and he traced both the Macquarie and the Lachlan, named by him after Governor Lachlan Macquarie, until he supposed they ended in vast swamps or marshes, and thereby founded the theory that in the centre of Australia there existed a great inland sea.

After Oxley came two explorers named respectively Hovell and Hume, who penetrated, in 1824, from the New South Wales settlements into what is now the colony of Victoria.