Warialda Visitor Information Centre presents:
Cunningham's Track 1897
His journey through the Gwydir and Inverell Shires
CUNNINGHAM, ALLAN (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 conveyance’s office in Lincoln's Inn, but the law was not to his liking and in 1808 he accepted a position at the herbarium at Kew as clerk to the curator of the Royal Gardens, William T. Aiton (1766-1849), then completing work on the second edition of his father's Hortus Kewensis. 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’ recommendation was appointed a botanical collector to the Royal Gardens. On 29 October 1814 Cunningham sailed with James Bowie in H.M.S. Duncan for Rio de Janeiro to collect specimens in Brazil, where they remained for two years. Bowie was then ordered to the Cape of Good Hope and Cunningham to New South Wales.
Cunningham arrived at Sydney Cove in the Surry on 20 December 1816. He was received kindly by Governor Lachlan Macquarie who suggested that he join John Oxley's projected expedition into the country west of the Blue Mountains: this was arranged and while awaiting departure Cunningham rented a cottage at Parramatta and botanized in the surrounding district. He left Parramatta in April 1817 and returned in September having accompanied Oxley to the Lachlan River marshes and collected specimens of about 450 plant species.
CUNNINGHAM, ALLAN (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 conveyance’s office in Lincoln's Inn, but the law was not to his liking and in 1808 he accepted a position at the herbarium at Kew as clerk to the curator of the Royal Gardens, William T. Aiton (1766-1849), then completing work on the second edition of his father's Hortus Kewensis. 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’ recommendation was appointed a botanical collector to the Royal Gardens. On 29 October 1814 Cunningham sailed with James Bowie in H.M.S. Duncan for Rio de Janeiro to collect specimens in Brazil, where they remained for two years. Bowie was then ordered to the Cape of Good Hope and Cunningham to New South Wales.
Cunningham arrived at Sydney Cove in the Surry on 20 December 1816. He was received kindly by Governor Lachlan Macquarie who suggested that he join John Oxley's projected expedition into the country west of the Blue Mountains: this was arranged and while awaiting departure Cunningham rented a cottage at Parramatta and botanized in the surrounding district. He left Parramatta in April 1817 and returned in September having accompanied Oxley to the Lachlan River marshes and collected specimens of about 450 plant species.
After this Cunningham completed several other voyages including:
Phillip Parker King's voyage to the north and north-west coasts of Australia in the cutter Mermaid, which sailed from Sydney on 21 December 1817 and anchored back in Sydney Cove on 29 July 1818. During this voyage Cunningham collected specimens of about 300 species, including many new ones from Arnhem Land.
Early in 1819 he visited Van Diemen's Land with King in the Mermaid, and on 8 May they sailed again for the north-west coast by the time the Mermaid quitted Cape Voltaire Cunningham had collected specimens of more than 400 species and was delighted to have obtained some that would replace the 'imperfect' ones collected on the east coast by Banks in 1770.
The Mermaid returned to Sydney in January 1820 and in July departed on her third voyage to the north-west coast. Arriving back in Sydney on 9 December 1820 Cunningham was distressed to hear of the death of 'an excellent and invaluable friend', Sir Joseph Banks.
On 26 May 1821 Cunningham accompanied King on his fourth voyage to the north-west coast, this time in the Bathurst. The expedition returned to Sydney on 25 April 1822. Cunningham contributed a chapter, 'A Few General Remarks on the Vegetation of Certain Coasts of Terra Australis' to King's Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australa..
Cunningham now turned his attention to the botany of New South Wales. Between September 1822 and January 1823 he spent his time botanizing in the area between Bathurst and the Cudgegong River and exploring the area east of the Cudgegong. This journey whetted his appetite for land exploration: Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane offered support and Cunningham wrote to Kew, 'I find I can blend discovery with botanical research tolerably well', and outlined a plan 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. Late in March 1823 he set out for Bathurst and then travelling to Lawson's Goulburn River, he turned east into the headwaters of the Hunter where he made a wide circuit without seeing any possible opening in the Liverpool Range to the north. He returned to the Goulburn River, then travelled north into the foothills of the range; from a peak he saw a little farther west 'a very considerable depression in the low back of the main ridge' and through it the open plains to the north of the range. He had discovered the passage he sought, 'the great route of communication between Bathurst and Hunter River and the Liverpool Plains'. He returned to Bathurst late in June. His accounts of these two journeys from Bathurst, 'A Specimen of the Indigenous Botany … between Port Jackson and Bathurst', and a 'Journal of a Route from Bathurst to Liverpool Plains', were published in Geographical Memoirs on New South Wales; by Various Hands (London, 1825), edited by Barron Field.
Cunningham's longest, and perhaps most important, journey lasted from 20 January to late August 1827: from the Hunter valley he travelled northward crossing the Peel and Dumaresq Rivers and discovered the Darling Downs before returning to the Hunter valley and Bathurst. While exploring the Darling Downs he found a gap in the ranges, now called Spicers Gap, which he thought would give access from Moreton Bay to the downs, whose fine grazing country he regarded as his major discovery. In July and August 1828 he returned to Moreton Bay by sea and explored the country southward to the Logan River and Macpherson Ranges and found another gap, now known as Cunningham's Gap, and in May 1829 explored the upper part of the Brisbane River valley. Between these visits to Moreton Bay he made trips to Bathurst and Illawarra, and between May and September 1830 visited Norfolk Island.
In 1828 Cunningham had requested permission to return to Britain. This was granted in November 1830 and, after quick visits to Illawarra and Cox's River, he sailed from Sydney in the Forth on 25 February 1831 and arrived in England in July. On the death of Charles Frazer in 1832 Cunningham was offered the position of colonial botanist in New South Wales but declined it in favour of his younger brother, Richard, who had joined Aiton's staff at Kew about the same time as Allan, and was already familiar with his brother's collection of plants. Richard arrived in Sydney in February 1833 and was killed by Aboriginals in April 1835. When news of Richard's death reached England the position was again offered to Allan Cunningham, who accepted it and returned to Sydney in the Norfolk, arriving in February 1837. He found the duties of colonial botanist uncongenial, objected to superintending 'the Government Cabbage Garden' where among other things he was expected to grow vegetables for the governor's table, and resigned after a few months, despite Governor Sir George Gipps's attempts to retain his services, to resume the 'more legitimate occupation' of collecting. In April 1838 he sailed for New Zealand on the L’Héroïne, returning to Sydney in October seriously ill. While his health became steadily worse he continued collecting and made plans to accompany Captain John Wickham in the Beagle to continue the survey of the north-west coast, but he was so ill that the Beagle had to sail without him and, on 27 June 1839, he died in Sydney of consumption.
Cunningham is most frequently remembered as an explorer and particularly for his discovery of Pandora's Pass, the Darling Downs and Cunningham's Gap, but exploration was to him a secondary interest that could be pursued in conjunction with his real purpose, the study of botany. Fellow botanists have honoured the Cunningham brothers' work by giving their name to a number of Australia's trees: 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. The president of the Linnean Society in London, reporting his death to the society, commented: 'He was distinguished for his moral worth, singleness of heart, and enthusiastic zeal in the pursuit of science'.
