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57.01.00b

Preferred Citation:

Ferdinand von Mueller to Charles La Trobe, 1857-01 [57.01.00b]. R.W. Home, Thomas A. Darragh, A.M. Lucas, Sara Maroske, D.M. Sinkora, J.H. Voigt and Monika Wells (eds), Correspondence of Ferdinand von Mueller, <https://vmcp.rbg.vic.gov.au/id//letters/1850-9/1857/57-01-00b-final.odt>, accessed June 9, 2026

1
Letter not found. The text given here is an extract quoted by Murchison (1857), pp. 457-8, in a passage where he is discussing the possibility of British settlement in northwest Australia, especially in the valley of the Victoria River. The extract is introduced : 'Let us hear what Dr Ferdinand Mueller, the botanist of the last expedition, says. This gentleman, who, by his Australian researches, has, according to Sir W. Hooker, placed himself in the first rank of botanists, … thus writes to his friend Mr . C. Latrobe, the former Lieut.-Governor of Victoria:— ' .
The letter is dated to January 1857 as M wrote reports of the expedition to other overseas correspondents soon after he returned to Sydney on 1 January or while he was in Melbourne for the later part of the month. January is the earliest it could have been written . A much later letter is unlikely to have been received by La Trobe and seen by Murchison in time for it to have been incorporated into the text of his address delivered to the Royal Geographical Society on 25 May.
M expressed similar views in a briefing memorandum , A. Greeves to M, January 1857 (in this edition as 57-01-00), used in a Victorian parliamentary debate on convict transportation on 22 January 1857 .
[North Australia, with the exception of the east coast, possesses a dry Australian , and not a moist Indian climate . Fevers do not therefore exist , and we escaped such jungles and swamps as those which Kennedy's party exhausted their strength.
2
In 1848 Edmund Kennedy lost his life when he led an expedition on the eastern side of Cape York Peninsula, became trapped in swamps and failed in his attempts to reach a supply ship; only three members of the party survived. Kennedy was speared and killed by local Aborigines when trapped in the Escape River swamps (ADB).
There is abundance of good country in North Australia, and, with access for vessels to the lower part of the Victoria, full scope for the formation of a new colony. But as a settlement can scarcely be formed in such a remote and certainly hot part of the globe without prison labour, and as, without great inducements, the squatters will find it for a long time unprofitable to migrate in this direction, I fear that the pastures of North Australia will yet be left flockless for a long time.]
3
Murchison continued : ' … it is possible that our Government may see that this prolific and healthy region … [is] a perfectly fit and proper receptacle for our convicts, whose labour there would completely repay their cost of maintenance ' .