[Australia Twice Traversed The Romance of Exploration by Ernest Giles]@TWC D-Link bookAustralia Twice Traversed The Romance of Exploration INTRODUCTION 19/50
The most peculiar of these features is the patch at what Flinders called the head of the Great Australian Bight; these sandhills rise to an elevation of several hundred feet, the prevailing southerly winds causing them to slope gradually from the south, while the northern face is precipitous.
In moonlight I have seen these sandhills, a few miles away, shining like snowy mountains, being refracted to an unnatural altitude by the bright moonlight.
Fortunate indeed it was for Eyre that such relief was afforded him; he was unable to penetrate at all into the interior, and he brought back no information of the character and nature of the country inland.
I am the only traveller who has explored that part of the interior, but of this more hereafter. About this time Strezletki and McMillan, both from New South Wales, explored the region now the easternmost part of the colony of Victoria, which Strezletki called Gipp's Land.
These two explorers were rivals, and both, it seems, claimed to have been first in that field. Next on the list of explorers comes Ludwig Leichhardt, a surgeon, a botanist, and an eager seeker after fame in the Australian field of discovery, and whose memory all must revere.
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