Landscape and Navigation

Landscape and Navigation 

Hovell ends most daily entries in his journal with descriptions of the country’s flora, fauna and sometimes activities, like sighting a snake, the catching of game for an evening meal or that the dogs went missing overnight. The landscape was mentioned as broken or sterile, the vegetation as forest, woodland or a grassy meadow.

The travelling speed of the expedition seemed to be 2 to 3 miles per hour although this could be slower in steep terrain. Hovell gave indications of speed many times, like ‘broke camp by 8 and travelled 4 miles before breakfast about 10’. Their daily distance did vary and the following table shows the estimates, in miles, as best interpreted from the journal and these roughly match the calculation of speed by hours walked in a day.

Maps have been made of their journey with the earliest interpretation by Skene in 1902. Hansford’s (the Lands Department Victoria ) map of 1924 shows rivers and creeks as well as positions of their nightly camps. (See previous page - Route of the Explorers.) Even today there is still conjecture about their route. The crossing of the Beechworth / Stanley plateau, the passage over the Strathbogies and the course around Melbourne to reach the termination by the sea at Port Phillip are three sections of the route that require more investigation.

In planning the route for the Explorers Bike Ride 2024 there were some places where there was a difference between the explorers's route and a line joining the monuments. So, in designing the bike route, I favoured the roads that more closely followed the line of the monuments. In Stage 5 there is a good match between the monuments route and the explorers' route along the Growlers Gully Road.

At the end of any day, Hovell gave a description of the campsite generally beside a watercourse, sometimes the latitude was noted but rarely the longitude, it seemed that Hovell's sextant was faulty. The bearing and distance of the day's travel were noted, but little was written in his journal about the actual method of navigation. Did they travel always in the Roman style of directly following the compass bearing or did they follow the land features, like up and down ridges in the hilly country to avoid the thick gullies or did they attempt to lessen the climbs by weaving their way around the hills? 

For example, on Dec 7 their first attempt at climbing Mt Disappointment Ranges to gain views of the following country which Hume suggested would lead them to the sea, mention is made that there were no connecting ridges. They were forced to descend the west side of the first ridge and then ascend the second ridge. This was a disappointing, disheartening and tiring experience and lead to a forced camp that night in the middle of the bush.

Another example is the following clip showing two monuments of Tatong and Samaria in an area below Benalla (30km) on Stage 4. These monuments have inscriptions that state the explorers camped here and so the pink line connects these two sites as their direction of travel following the SW course. The Route A & B purple lines indicate possible bushmanlike routes following the easiest line of travel that lead to the summit prior to the descent into Samaria.

The blue line is the bike route that follows made roads, again a path of easiest gradient. Hovell described Samaria as a small meadow with a notable conical hill just to the North. Using that description the campsite might have been possibly 1 km NW of the monument and closer to the School House Rd.

On the ride, spare a thought for the explorers and consider how they made their journey over the hills.

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