Tuggeranong Suburbs - OXLEY
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Number 14 in this series.....
A good, safe parking spot is in Gosman Close - the co-ords are listed below. From the parking area you will have a walk of just over 100 metres. DON'T try and park on the side of the busy road.............
No pen for this one, so please bring your own.
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The suburb of Oxley is the smallest suburb in Canberra and is named after the explorer John Joseph William Molesworth Oxley. It was gazetted on 22 March 1982. and first settled in 1985. Streets are named after social reformers.
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John Joseph William Molesworth Oxley (1783/1785? – 26 May 1828) was an explorer and surveyor of Australia in the early period of English colonisation.
Oxley entered the Royal Navy when he was aged eleven. He travelled to Africa in October 1802 as master’s mate of the naval-vessel Boo, which carried out coastal surveying. In 1805 Oxley was promoted to second lieutenant. In 1806 he commanded the Estramina on a trip to Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania). He returned to England in 1807 and was appointed first lieutenant in charge of HMS Porpoise, joining her in 1808. In 1809 HMS Porpoise visited Van Diemen's Land, carrying as a passenger Governor William Bligh who had been deposed in the Rum Rebellion.
In March 1817 John Oxley was instructed to take charge of an expedition to explore and survey the course of the Lachlan River. He left Sydney on 6 April with George Evans as second-in-command, and Allan Cunningham as botanist. Oxley’s party reached Bathurst after a week, where they were briefly detained by bad weather. They reached the Lachlan River on 25 April 1817 and commenced to follow its course, with part of the stores being conveyed in boats. By the end of May the party found themselves in a dry scrubby country. Shortage of water and the death of two horses forced Oxley’s return to the Lachlan. On 23 June the Lachlan River was reached: “we suddenly came upon the banks of the river… which we had quitted nearly five weeks before”. They followed the course of the Lachlan River for a fortnight. The party encountered much flooded country, and on 7 July Oxley recorded that "it was with infinite regret and pain that I was forced to come to the conclusion, that the interior of this vast country is a marsh and uninhabitable". Oxley resolved to turn back and after resting for two days Oxley’s party began to retrace their steps along the Lachlan River. They left the Lachlan up-stream of the present site of Lake Cargelligo and crossed to the Bogan River and then across to the upper waters of the Macquarie, which they followed back to Bathurst arriving on 29 August 1817.
Oxley’s next expedition saw his party travel to Dubbo in June 1818. He wrote that he had passed that day 'over a very beautiful country, thinly wooded and apparently safe from the highest floods...'
Later in 1818 Oxley and his men explored the Macquarie River at length before turning east. On 26 August 1818 they climbed a hill and saw before them rich, fertile land (of Peel River), near the present site of Tamworth. Continuing further east they crossed the Great Dividing Range passing by the Apsley Falls on 13 September 1818 which he named the Bathurst Falls. He described it as “one of the most magnificent waterfalls we have seen”. He discovered and named the Arbuthnot Range, since renamed the Warrumbungle Range. Upon reaching the Hastings River they followed it to its mouth, discovering that it flowed into the sea at a spot which they named Port Macquarie.
In 1823, as Surveyor General, Oxley made a close examination of the Tweed River and Port Curtis.
Captain Phillip Parker King had previously surveyed that portion of the coast in the proximity of Point Danger, although adverse weather conditions prevented his examining that portion too closely. His observations, as recorded on May 22, 1819, stated - “May 22, Mount Warning was seen from the deck, although we were at least seventy-eight miles from it. 23 On the 23d at noon, our latitude was 28°9' when the Mount bore S 58° W (Magnetic). At sunset the wind died away; and, from the land in the vicinity of the mountain indicating every appearance of the existence of either a large sheet of water or an opening of consequence, I was induced to remain two days to examine the beach more narrowly; but, after beating about with a strong south-easterly current which prevented my tracing the beach to the northward of the Mount, and having only seen an inconsiderable opening that communicates by a shoal channel with a small lagoon at the back of the beach, I gave up the search; still without satisfying myself of the non-existence of an inlet, which, if there be one, probably communicates with the sea nearer to Point Danger.
Oxley discovered this to be the case, for he found a stream empting itself into the sea, by a bar harbour close to Point Danger and called it the Tweed. He noted that the Tweed “is a river communicating with the sea by a bar, on which there is twelve feet of water, it is situated about a mile and a half to the north of a small island off Point Danger, which lies in latitude 28° 8' ”
Oxley then sailed northwards from the Tweed Area in the Mermaid to explore Port Curtis (the site of Gladstone) and Moreton Bay. He continued to explore the region, which is now known as South East Queensland.
In 1824 Oxley, accompanied by Allan Cunningham, discovered the Brisbane River and Bremer River on Moreton Bay, which has since developed into the city of Brisbane.
Years earlier, Oxley had been granted, by Governor Macquarie, 600 acres (2.4 km2) near Camden in 1810, which he increased to 1,000 acres (4 km²) in 1815. He named this property Kirkham and raised and bred sheep. He was also briefly a director of the Bank of New South Wales.
He was one of five members of the original New South Wales Legislative Council in 1824, but was not reappointed when the council was reconstituted in 1825. Oxley had two sons with Emma Norton (1798-1885), whom he married in 1821 and earlier two daughters by Charlotte Thorpe and one by Elizabeth Marnon.
John Oxley suffered with illness throughout his service caused by the difficulties of his expeditions. He finally succumbed to his illness and died on 26 May 1828 at Kirkham.
In 1976 he was honoured on a postage stamp bearing his portrait issued by Australia Post.
****Norkmeister & Jmanjezza****
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Abg ohevrq