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Video Retracing the steps of Ludwig Leichhardt

Alison Middleton

A group of artists relive the explorer's 1844-45 expedition through Queensland and the Northern Territory.


LOUISA REBGETZ, PRESENTER: He's been a source of fascination since he vanished in the outback more than 160 years ago. It's still a mystery what happened to the explorer, Ludwig Leichhardt, when he tried to cross Australia in 1848. But his earlier successful expedition through Queensland and the Northern Territory has also captured the public's imagination. Alison Middleton caught up with a group of artists retracing the Territory leg of that journey.

ALISON MIDDLETON, REPORTER: It's an outback journey. These three men are travelling the bumpy roads and dusty tracks of the Northern Territory. They're following in the footsteps of the famous explorer Ludwig Leichhardt.

ROD SCHLENCKER, SURVEYOR: It's part of our heritage, part of our history and it's got us to some places where the usual tourist wouldn't go.

BILL GANNON, ARTIST: We've got the easy run. He had cattle, he had horses, he had some food with him. Here we've got four wheel drive and we've got GPS and we just keep raising our hats to the work that they did to get through.

ALISON MIDDLETON: On top of Ubirr in Kakadu National Park, the men try to calculate where Ludwig Leichhardt camped, 170 years ago. This site marks the start of the home straight for the Prussian explorer. He and his party had come close to death on their 5,000 kilometre journey.

BILL GANNON, ARTIST: We're now only about 10 days from when he makes his final hurrah. He gets to the Coburg Peninsula to what was Darwin at the time - the Victoria settlement. So he's on the home stretch; you've got only one bullock left of 17, you've got green grasses, you've got water, you've got the thrill of getting home. So this site represents a lot of positives.

ALISON MIDDLETON: In 1844, Ludwig Leichhardt set off from the Darling Downs west of Brisbane with a party of nine. 15 months later, only seven of the men arrived at their destination, Port Essington, on the Coburg Peninsula north-east of Darwin.

ROD FENSHAM, QUEENSLAND HERBARIUM: He was the first European to traverse the north-eastern quarter of the continent, so that was no mean feat. And in so doing he discovered the rich pastoral lands of inland Queensland.

BILL GANNON, ARTIST: He says it's one of the most romantic countries we've seen.

ALISON MIDDLETON: Bill Gannon, an artist and town planner from Central Queensland, is leading this expedition. Using Leichhardt's journals and a GPS, the men are retracing one leg of the explorer's famous journey. As they travel from Borroloola in the Gulf country to Port Essington, the men are recording the landscape through art.

BILL GANNON, ARTIST: Some of the landscapes are next to no different. Some have got mines, some have got lakes, some are very different. Then look into the future, what would somebody who comes 170 years later as we've done, how would they find the land?

JASON BENJAMIN, ARTIST: I would hope that I will dig deep enough to find work that aren't postcards, and secondly that have something else that tells something about the experience rather than just topographical snapshots.

ALISON MIDDLETON: Sydney artist Jason Benjamin is well known for his portraits and landscapes. He hopes the expedition will provide fresh inspiration for his work. The waterfalls of Kakadu have been a highlight.

JASON BENJAMIN, ARTIST: Just to sit there in utter silence and feel the force of that water coming down, I don't know, it was like this vaulted cathedral - it was beyond all human endeavour you know.

ROD SCHLENCKER, SURVEYOR: There's areas of lakes and lagoons that you didn't know existed and there's rivers and creeks that you don't know exist either. So by getting off the beaten track if you like, you're learning a lot more about your own country, your geography and the history.

ALISON MIDDLETON: Rod Schlencker is a surveyor from Central Queensland and is the expedition's chief navigator. He's also a Leichhardt buff and hopes their trip will highlight the colourful explorer's achievements.

ROD SCHLENCKER, SURVEYOR: It will help modern day people relate a little bit more to Leichhardt and what Leichhardt went through.

ALISON MIDDLETON: After completing the expedition to Port Essington, Leichhardt was celebrated as a hero. But his subsequent life was marked by mystery and controversy. Three years later he disappeared trying to cross Australia from east to west.

DAN BASCHIERA, CHARLES DARWIN UNIVERSITY: We don't know what happened to him, we don't know where his sepulchre is, we don't know where his bones lie. What happened to Ludwig Leichhardt? How could a man so well experienced - he'd spent a lot of time in the bush - so well equipped just totally disappear? Nobody knows where he is.

ROD FENSHAM, QUEENSLAND HERBARIUM: The people who knew him you know either kind of revered him or you know reviled him. Some people have described him as just a complete no hoper, selfish, a sponger, and others appreciate him as a great Australian.

ALISON MIDDLETON: Next year marks the bicentenary of the explorer's birth. The artwork inspired by this trip will tour Queensland and the Northern Territory; encouraging Australians to reflect on Leichhardt's legacy.

BILL GANNON, ARTIST: Leichhardt is known for the person who got lost, but the science he collected, the notations he took - these are the things that make him almost the father of landscape ecology.

7.30 NT