author
Ludwig Leichhardt
1813–1848
Drawn to science, travel, and the unknown, he became one of the great early explorers of Australia. His long overland journeys and unexplained disappearance gave his life the shape of a real adventure story.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born in Prussia in 1813, Ludwig Leichhardt trained broadly in the natural sciences before arriving in Australia in 1842. He built a reputation as both an explorer and a careful observer of the natural world, with interests that included botany, zoology, and geology.
He is best known for leading a major overland expedition from Queensland to Port Essington in the mid-1840s, a journey that made him famous in Australia and Europe. Accounts of his travels helped shape his reputation as a determined, knowledgeable, and sometimes controversial figure of nineteenth-century exploration.
Leichhardt set out again in 1848 on an expedition intended to cross the continent from east to west, but he and his party vanished without a confirmed trace. That mystery, along with his scientific curiosity and endurance in the field, has kept his story alive ever since.