Peter Monteath and James Anderson - Transcription, 2006, of the diary of Ernest Favenc [B 879], in the Northern Territory, from Powell's Creek to Daly Waters, May 28 to July 15 1883

MLMSS 7721

fonds

1883, transcribed 2006

456421

Microfilm : CY 2581, frames 119-156

Textual Records - (computer printouts) - 1 folder - 0.01 Meters

Ernest Favenc (1845-1908), explorer, journalist and historian, was born on 21 October 1845 at Walworth, Surrey, England. Educated at the Werderscher Gymnasium in Berlin and at Temple College, Cowley, Oxfordshire, he arrived in Sydney in 1864 where he worked on stations in North Queensland and occasionally wrote for the Queenslander. In 1877 Favenc was selected as a leader, when the Queenslander's proprietors planned an expedition to prove the practicability of a transcontinental railway to Darwin. The publication of his reports won him repute and soon afterwards he settled in Sydney where on 15 November 1880 he married Elizabeth Jane Matthews. He successfully offered the South Australian government a report on the country watered by the Macarthur River. On his return to Sydney Favenc's failure to win a magistracy in the Northern Territory and the approaching centenary of New South Wales inspired him to undertake his first major work `His History of Australian Exploration 1788-1888' -- ADB, Volume 4, Melbourne University Press, 1972, p. 160

`The following transcription is of a diary kept by the explorer Ernest Favenc during his explorations to the east of the Overland Telegraph Line over some seven weeks in the middle of 1883. It is based on the original diary held in the Mitchell Library. The diary records a kind of expedition-within-an-expedition. The larger expedition commenced from Gregory Downs Station in northern Queensland on 14 April 1883. Led by Favenc, its other members were Lindsay Crawford and the recently married couple Emily Caroline Creaghe and Harry Creaghe'. The diary transcribed was not designed for public or official consumption. It is valuable for the insights it gives into the rigours of outback exploration in territory which provided a range of challenges' -- From introd. by P. Monteath & J. Anderson

Transcript available online - acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/_transcript/2007/D00007/b879_Favenc.pdf

The original diary is held in the Mitchell Library, at B 879