RELICS DISCOVERED

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 228, 25 August 1938, Page 11

RELICS DISCOVERED

LINK WITH LEICHARDT? / EXPEDITION’S REPORT. SIGNIFICANT FEATURES. (United Press Association.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) Received August 25, 11.15 a.m. SIDNEY, Aug. 25. A message from Oodnadatta (Central Australia) says a small expedition has found old coins and other relics after excavation on the site where the members of the Leichardt expedition are thought to have perished. The coins were a threepenny piece, dated 1841, and a George 111 halfsovereign, dated 1817. A much corroded iron pack-saddle ring, an iron tent peg, the remains of a fire, and the crown of a human tooth were also unearthed. {

On August 2 it was reported that the remains of eight human beings, found in Central Australia, were believed to be those of Leichardt’s exploring expedition of 1848. This announcement was made by Sir George Ritchie (Chief Secretary), in the Legislative Assembly at Adelaide. Sir George Ritchie said that a stationowner on the border of the Northern Territory had declared that when mustering cattle, he had come upon the bones of seven apparently white human beings and another skeleton two miles farther away. That about comprised the personnel of the expedition led by Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Leichardt, who left Brisbane in 1848 to cross Australia from east to west and was never heard of again. Leichardt, who was born in Prussia in 1813, went to Australia in 1841 and conducted important geological investigations.