Various expeditions of discovery had, as we have seen, been sent to the westward side of the Australian continent of late years, and much progress made in a knowledge of it. It was now the turn of Eastern Australia to make another advance, and to carry the same spirit of inquiry northward and westward beyond the regions into which Oxley, Cunningham, Sturt, and Mitchell had penetrated. Dr. Ludvig Leichhardt had been for two years engaged in explorations to the north of Moreton Bay, and, on returning to Sydney in the autumn of 1844, found the public and the colonial government proposing to send an expedition overland from Moreton Bay to Port Essington. Sir Thomas Mitchell was the person on whom the attention of the public was fixed to conduct this expedition. Considerable delay, however, had occurred in the course of correspondence with the Secretary of State for the Colonies on the subject, and it was now understood that Captain Sturt was about to start from Adelaide on an expedition towards the same point. The people of New South Wales were naturally anxious not to be forestalled in the honour of the projected progress through the continent, and at this moment Dr. Leichhardt offered himself as willing to head such a party as could be fitted out by public subscription, and to start immediately.