Edward John Eyre (1815-1901) was born on 5 August 1815 at Whipsnade, Bedfordshire, England. At the age of 17, he had intended to enter the army, but at his father’s suggestion, he decided to emigrate to the Colony of New South Wales.
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 trip to Albany, in the Colony of Western Australia. He had originally led the expedition with John Baxter and three aboriginal people.
On 29 April 1841, two of the aboriginal people killed Baxter and left with most of the supplies. Eyre and Wylie survived only because they chanced to encounter at a bay near Esperance with the 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 with two aboriginal boys on board the Symmetry, leaving Port Adelaide on 16 December 1844. Once in England, he published a narrative of his travels.
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References
- Wikipedia: Edward John Eyre
- Australian Dictionary of Biography (1966) – Geoffrey Dutton