Edward John Eyre: The Hero as Murderer

Exploration of Australia; Protector of Aborigines at Moorundie; contact with Aborigines in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. 416p. ; 18cm. #0921
Edward John Eyre (5 August 1815 – 30 November 1901) was an English land explorer of the Australian continent, colonial administrator, and a controversial Governor of Jamaica.
In December 1837, Eyre started droving 1,000 sheep and 600 cattle overland from Monaro, New South Wales, to Adelaide, South Australia. Eyre, with his livestock and eight stockmen, arrived in Adelaide in July 1838.[4] In Adelaide, Eyre sold the livestock for a large profit.

Expeditions of Eyre
With the money from the sale, Eyre set out to explore the interior of South Australia. In 1839, Eyre went on two separate expeditions: north to the Flinders Ranges and west to beyond Ceduna. The northernmost point of the first expedition was Mount Eyre; it was named by Governor Gawler on 11 July 1839.[5] On the second expedition, he spotted what was later named Lake Torrens.[6]

In 1840, Eyre went on a third expedition, reaching a lake that was later named Lake Eyre, in his honour.[6] Eyre, together with his Aboriginal companion Wylie, was the first European to traverse the coastline of the Great Australian Bight and the Nullarbor Plain by land in 1840–1841, on an almost 3,200-kilometre (2,000 mi) trip to Albany, Western Australia. He had originally led the expedition with John Baxter and three aborigines.

On 29 April 1841, two of the aborigines killed Baxter and left with most of the supplies. Eyre and Wylie were only able to survive because they chanced to encounter, at a bay near Esperance, Western Australia, a French whaling ship Mississippi, under the command of an Englishman, Captain Thomas Rossiter, for whom Eyre named the location Rossiter Bay. In 1845 he returned to England on board the Symmetry, leaving Port Adelaide on 16 December 1844,[7] and sailing via Cape Town, under Captain Elder.
Upon reaching England, the Symmetry called first at Deal, Kent on 11 May 1845, before anchoring at London on 12 May.[8] He brought with him two Aboriginal boys, one of whom was Warrulan.[7][9]

Once in England, he published a narrative of his travels.[10] A statue of Eyre is in Victoria Square in Adelaide as well as Rumbalara Reserve in Springfield NSW on the Mouat Walk. In 1970, an Australia Post (then Postmaster-General’s Department) postage stamp bore his portrait.[18]

South Australia’s Lake Eyre, Eyre Peninsula, Eyre Creek, Eyre Highway (the main highway from South Australia to Western Australia), Edward John Eyre High School, the Eyre Hotel in Whyalla, and the electoral district of Eyre in Western Australia, are named in his honour. So too are the villages of Eyreton and West Eyreton, and Eyrewell Forest, in Canterbury and the Eyre Mountains and Eyre Creek in Southland, New Zealand.