robe River. This addition of rich pastoral regions to
the already settled districts was altogether due to Angas McMillan's
energy, and is now known as Gippsland, being named officially after Sir
George Gipps, the Governor who had the amusing eccentricity of insisting
that all the towns laid out during his term of office should have no
public squares included within their boundaries, being convinced that
public squares encouraged the spread of democracy.

8.2. COUNT STRZELECKI.

Count Strzelecki's expedition through Gippsland with the discovery of
which district he is commonly and wrongly credited, was due to the
literary and geographical work he had undertaken, as he was gathering
material for his well-known work, The Physical Description of New South
Wales, Victoria, and Van Diemen's Land. He ascended the south-east
portion of the main dividing range, and named the highest peak thereof
Kosciusko, after a fancied resemblance in its outline to that Polish
patriot's tomb at Cracow.

On the 27th of March, 1840, he reached the cattle station on the Tambo
whither McMillan had just returned, and was directed by him on to his
newly-discovered country. Strzelecki pushed through to Western Port,
meeting with some scrubby and almost inaccessible country during the last
stages of his journey. His party had to abandon both horses and packs,
and fight its way through a dense undergrowth on a scanty ration of one
biscuit and a slice of bacon per day, varied with an occasional native
bear. It was here that the Count, who was an athletic man, found that his
hardy constitution stood the party in good stead. So weakened and
exhausted were his companions, that it was only by constant encouragement
that he urged them along at all. When forcing their way through the
matted growth of scrub, he often threw himself bodily upon it, breaking a
path for his weary followers by the mere weight of his body. It was in a
wretched condition that they at last reached Western Port.

8.3. PATRICK LESLIE.

In 1840 Patrick Leslie, who has always been considered the father of
settlement on the Darling Downs, started with stock from a New England
station, then the most northerly settled district in New South Wales, and
formed the first station on the Condamine River, actually before that
river had been identified as a tributary of the Darling. There was a
general impression that the Condamine flowed north and east, and finally
found its way through the m