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Allan Cunningham
Explorer and Botanist
Where it all began.
Allan Cunningham (age 27), an explorer and Botanist, explored the North West District of NSW, firstly with John Oxley (age 34), and discovered rich fertile areas, which resulted in many Pioneer Settlers arriving in later years.
Like the Baldwin and Hall families in the Manilla district in the 1820s.
In 1827 Allan went on to explore further North West and discovered the Darling Downs.
At first, the colonists were too busy surviving to consider trying to cross the mountains. However, by the time Governor Lachlan Macquarie arrived in 1810, a combination of drought, insect plagues and exhaustion of the soil around Sydney made finding fresh lands imperative.
In April 1817 he was attached as botanist to the exploring expedition beyond the Blue Mountains led by John Oxley, and shared in the privations of the 1200 miles journey. He was able to collect specimens of about 450 species in the Lachlan River marshes and gained valuable experience as an explorer. They left Parramatta in April 1817 and returned in September. The last four months of 1817 were spent preparing these specimens for dispatch to Kew, with more collecting around Parramatta.
A little about the Importance of Botanists
before continuing with more Exploration Information from Allan.
Botanists make significant contributions to the medicine field. Painkillers, anti-inflammatory agents, cancer treatments, treating diseases, and new therapies are all derived from plants.
Botanists are important in society. They are seen in industries, agriculture, horticulture, genetic engineering and health care. The study of plants in health care contributes to development of new medicines and treatments for major diseases. Botanists work in agriculture helps farmers use optimum planting and cultivation techniques to improves efficiency and effectiveness when growing crops. Agriculture and farming in Australia is worth upwards of $70 billion.
Botanists also enhance our quality of life – physical and psychological – through the study of plants. For example: Many plant species, as well as marine organisms and fungi have been and continue to be used in various traditional healing systems around the world to treat tuberculosis.
The surgeons of the First Fleet sought new herbal remedies that were awaiting discovery in the Australian bush. Within days of the foundation of the Colony at Sydney Cove in 1788, therapeutic experiments with wild currants, Eucalyptus kino (Botany Bay kino), and local 'greens' were being undertaken. Scurvy and dysentery - part of the nation's foundation - prompted both a hunter-gatherer approach to new herbal remedies, and an empiricism (all concepts originate in experience) which has continued to the present day.
Scurvy had been largely eradicated by a healthy diet yet this is again appearing due to societies fixation with pleasure food rather than healthy plant type (nutritional) food. If left untreated, the disease can be fatal.
Our livelihood today was achieved by Allan Cunningham and other explorers to the Manilla District, which was followed by our Pioneer Settlers. Allan’s Botanist expertise made it possible for you to be treated by your doctor supplying the medicine for your physical and mental well-being. Allan Cunningham was an important contributor to people’s lives into the future.
Allan Cunningham Explorations Continued:
Later in the year of 1823, with five horses and five men, Allan travelled from Bathurst to Liverpool Plains. (Liverpool plains are south west of Manilla about 1+ hour away. Walking – just over one day. It is around Werris Creek and Quirindi)
On reaching the Goulburn River he turned east and eventually reached the main range, but for five days searched in vain for an opening. On returning to the Goulburn River, he took a different course but ran into exceedingly difficult country.
He, however, persevered with great courage and on 7 June discovered a pass which he named "Pandora's Pass", and made a way to the Liverpool Plains. Cunningham being the original discoverer of this pass into the Liverpool Plains.
He reached Parramatta again on 21 July 1823. Pandora’s Pass is south west of Manilla and forms part of the Great Dividing Range. It is located east of the New England Highway, north east of Coolah towards the north and crosses the Namoi River.
Once this gap was found it was another opening for easier transportation of goods via stagecoach, bullock teams and teamsters, to the Manilla NSW District, making the transformation of the Manilla District to what it is today.
Allan discovered many new plants and returned to Bathurst for further analysis.
In 1827 he sailed from Sydney, on another exploration, to Newcastle and with rations for 14 weeks and well-constructed measuring instruments, together with 11 horses and boats, six men, and several dogs, a Schmalcalder's pocket compass, a chronometer, barometer and an odometer as a distance gauge and arrived at Scone (see below)
His friend Peter Macintyre, manager of Segenhoe (Scone) guided him up a steep pass over the Liverpool Range, out at the head of Dartbrook Creek. Once onto the Liverpool Plains, the party was proceeding north when, from a hill near Currabubula, the sight of the rugged Moonbi mountains ahead caused Cunningham to deviate westward before continuing on the northerly course.
There were no attacks from natives on Cunningham's expedition but conditions were arduous. In crossing the ranges, the way was so steep that pack saddles were taken from the horses and carried on the men's shoulders. They camped high on the ranges where the Liverpool Plains could be seen away to the horizon. Until this time the expedition had been guided by Peter McIntyre.
Cunningham wrote, “I had no sooner reached its right bank, than my attention was arrested by the appearance of smoke, which was rising from the forest ground on the opposite bank and immediately I perceived four natives and a child, who having previously observed me were standing for the moment in a state of extreme surprise and alarm.”
The horses were weakened by the journey and lack of pasture and half the original rations had been consumed by the end of May.
He bypassed the New England Tablelands, almost the entire area from Bendemeer to Tenterfield being discovered by the first settlers. and ventured up to the Peel River near Tamworth, followed the Manilla River through Barraba, Bingara and Warialda, and ventured further north west into the Darling Downs and QLD, returning via Boggabri and Gunnedah.
This crossing of the Manilla River was in the vicinity of present-day Taylor’s reserve on the way out to Hawkin’s Creek on the Trevallyn Road, six kilometres from Barraba. There is now a Cunningham memorial to mark the crossing.
The Barraba Plaque
Cunningham's journal describes his day-to-day progress through the upper north-west slopes: “Our dogs caught an emu on the flats and our anglers had scarcely cast their hooks into the river than their success commenced. Several fish of the cod of all the western rivers were caught in the course of the evening, of which one weighed 15 lbs.” Cunningham remarked on the number of natives in the Warialda area. There were several small bark huts of natives in the neighbourhood.
Kamilaroi Tribe
Cunningham and his party camped near present-day Bingara, where they saw signs of cattle, and near Warialda found a structure clearly built by white men, whom they assumed to be escaped convict named Clarke who absconded from Singleton early in 1826 and crossed into the Kamilaroi country on the western side of the Great Dividing Range in the vain hope of walking to Ireland. Clarke was captured and adopted by tribesmen and spent the next five years living with the Kamilaroi. Evidence suggests that Clarke travelled extensively over the North West.
Schmalcalder - Chronometer - Barometer
They camped about 11 km south of Bingara, where the grass was "fresh and luxuriant" and where a "small limpid stream, running through the centre of the vale, murmurs over the stony bed of its channel". He named the vale Stoddarts Valley. It was here that he found "faeces, two or three days old, of horned cattle, and the trodden grass showed where 8 to 10 animals had rested" - 250 km north of the nearest stock stations! Cunningham concluded that "Europeans had been wandering through that part of the Interior".
Conditions were very tough and difficult for explorers. Expeditions had to deal with marshes, hot weather, bad storms, rough terrain, climbing through rugged bushland that almost destroyed their clothing, snake bites, shortage of water, hunger and exhaustion - at times the men cut up their clothing and used the cloth to protect their feet – as well as constructing bark canoes to cross rivers.
Food was sparse so eating kangaroo brains and roast wombat or emu were considered favourable as well as echidna. While others learned about edible bush plants from the aborigines, trusting the aboriginal guides to find food.
Much of western and northern NSW owes its white settlement to these explorations.
Five years after Allan’s exploration, the Hall family established a property called Cuerindi Run in 1832. Cuerindi is a few kilometres north east of Manilla NSW.
Thomas Hall (1808-1870), led this party to Manilla, across the Liverpool Ranges, onto the Liverpool Plains, and followed a path previously explored by Allan Cunningham. They reached the Junction of the Namoi and Manilla Rivers, where Thomas chose to explore upstream along the Namoi, discovering the rich Upper Namoi Valley. This is where Thomas established Cuerindi Run (a nest in the hills). By 1860 the property covered 51000 acres, carrying 2000 cattle. 50,000 acres is equivalent to 400,000 blocks of land, for building a home in a residential area - or 200 square kilometres.
Thomas Simpson Hall
The Importance of Explorers, Botanists and Pioneers
Our livelihood today was achieved by Allan Cunningham and John Oxley exploring the Manilla District, which were followed by our Pioneer Settlers. Allan’s Botanist expertise made it possible for you to be treated by your doctor supplying the medicine for your physical and mental well-being. Allan Cunningham is acknowledged as being the most prolific Australian plant collector of the early nineteenth century, as referenced by Anthony Orchard. His publications included seven major papers and 57 shorter papers on subjects including taxonomy, geology, physical geography and zoology.
Plants names after Allan Cunningham
Araucaria cunninghamii (hoop pine), Archontophoenix cunninghamiana (Bangalow palm), Casuarina cunninghamiana (river sheoak), Diplogottis cunninghamii (native tamarind now D. australis), Ficus cunninghamii (white fig, now F. infectoria), Medicosma cunninghamii (bone wood), Nothofagus cunninghamii (myrtle tree, Tasmania), Pennantia cunninghamii (brown beech), and Polyosma cunninghamii.
Also, a species of Australian lizard, Egernia cunninghami, is named in honour of Allan Cunningham, while the Australian federal seat of Cunningham, which stretches from Port Kembla in the south of Wollongong to Heathcote in southern Sydney, was named after him in honour of his being the first European explorer to visit the Illawarra region. The locality of Allan, Queensland was named after him also.
Egernia Cunninghami
The Life of Allan Cunningham
Allan Cunningham (1791-1839), botanist and explorer, was born on 13 July 1791 at Wimbledon, Surrey, England, elder son of Allan Cunningham of Renfrewshire, Scotland, and an English mother, née Dickin. He was educated at a private school in Putney and worked for a time in a conveyancer's office in Lincoln's Inn, and in 1808 he accepted a position at the herbarium at Kew as clerk to the curator of the Royal Gardens. At Kew Cunningham met Robert Brown, who had been botanist in the Investigator with Matthew Flinders and then librarian to Sir Joseph Banks, and on Banks's recommendation was appointed a botanical collector to the Royal Gardens.
Cunningham arrived at Sydney Cove in the Surry on 20 December 1816. Governor Lachlan Macquarie suggested that he join John Oxley's projected expedition into the country west of the Blue Mountains in 1817, where he collected specimens of about 450 plant species. He joined Phillip Parker King's voyage to the north and north-west coasts of Australia in the cutter Mermaid and collected specimens of about 300 species, including many new ones from Arnhem Land. This was followed by a journey to the north west coast of Australia.
Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane, in 1823, offered and outlined a plan for Cunningham, of a journey to seek a route from Bathurst to the upper Coal (Hunter) River and thence to the Liverpool Plains discovered by Oxley in 1818.
Cunningham's longest journey lasted from 20 January to late August 1827, from the Hunter valley he travelled northward crossing the Peel and Dumaresq Rivers and entered the Darling Downs before returning to the Hunter valley and Bathurst. He followed up with trips to Brisbane and south to the Illawarra.
On the death of Charles Frazer in 1832 Cunningham was offered the position of colonial botanist in NSW but declined it in favour of his younger brother, Richard. Richard arrived in Sydney in February 1833 and was killed by Aboriginals in April 1835. The position was again offered to Allan Cunningham, who accepted it and returned to Sydney in the Norfolk, arriving in February 1837.
In April 1838 he sailed for New Zealand in a French ship L'Héroïne, returning to Sydney in October seriously ill and on 27 June 1839. Allan, unfortunately, died at the young age of 48 from Consumption (Tuberculosis) (eventually the lungs of the sufferer become so damaged that respiratory failure occurs) He died calmly and without a sigh.
Allan was buried in the Devonshire Street Cemetery and the recent opening of his brick grave brought to light a piece of the skull about, four inches in diameter, a piece of the large bone of the arm, and some other fragments.
These were placed in a leaden casket, 10 inches long, five inches broad, and four inches deep, which was inserted in an excavation made in the upper portion of the obelisk, and the whole covered with a marble slab, which bears the following inscription in leaden lettering:
“The remains of Allan Cunningham were interred in the Devonshire Street Cemetery in July, 1839 from which they were reverently removed on the 25th May, 1901, and placed within this obelisk." His placing in the obelisk took place on 26th June.
Royal Botanical Gardens Sydney
Botanists are Very Important in our Society
They are seen in industries, agriculture, horticulture, genetic engineering and health care. The study of plants in health care contributes to development of new medicines and treatments for major diseases. Botanists work in agriculture helps farmers use optimum planting and cultivation techniques to improves efficiency and effectiveness when growing crops. Agriculture and farming in Australia is worth upwards of $70 billion.
Botanists also enhance our quality of life – physical and psychological – through the study of plants. For example: Many plant species, as well as marine organisms and fungi have been and continue to be used in various traditional healing systems around the world to treat tuberculosis.
The surgeons of the First Fleet sought new herbal remedies that were awaiting discovery in the Australian bush. Within days of the foundation of the Colony at Sydney Cove in 1788, therapeutic experiments with wild currants, Eucalyptus kino (Botany Bay kino), and local 'greens' were being undertaken.
Scurvy and dysentery - part of the nation's foundation - prompted both a hunter-gatherer approach to new herbal remedies, and an empiricism (all concepts originate in experience) which has continued to the present day.
Scurvy had been largely eradicated by a healthy diet yet this is appearing due to societies fixation with pleasure food rather than healthy plant type (nutritional) food. If left untreated, the disease can be fatal.
At least four of the 10 doctors of the First Fleet were keen botanists, and their endeavours established a precedent for medical 'botanizing' which has become a living tradition over the ensuing 200 years.
The First Fleet
Before the onset of the 20th century, some 50 doctors who had studied botany in Australia had had their names appended to the native flora of the new continent. The eponyms (a person after whom a discovery, invention is named) that are preserved in the taxonomy (a system for naming and organizing things, especially plants and animals, into groups that share similar qualities) of the country's flora of the living history of Australia.
In both theoretical (involving the theory of a subject or area of study) and practical medicine, the study of plants played a significant role in the early modern period.
As branches of medical knowledge, herbs, plants, and vegetal bodies were the subject of
(1) The fabrication of therapeutics (the treatment and care of a patient preventing and combating disease or alleviating pain or injury),
(2) the discipline of signatures (teaching that organize the fundamental ways in which future practitioners are educated for their new profession), involving key connectors in the body.
(3) the physiological study of living functions, such as growth, nutrition, and generation (scientific investigation of how living organisms, including animals and plants, function at various levels - organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules, and helps understand both normal and abnormal functioning in living creatures).
Drawing on ancient scholarly tradition, the work of early modern physicians reveals the medical importance of botany, which slowly attained an autonomous (having the freedom to govern itself) status in the seventeenth century (1600-1700).
Allan Cunningham assisted in the Development of your Well Being
