Hamilton Hume

Hamilton Hume (19 June 1797 – 19 April 1873) was an early explorer of the present-day Australian states of New South Wales and Victoria. In 1824, along with William Hovell, Hume participated in an expedition that first took an overland route from Sydney to Port Phillip (near the site of present-day Melbourne). Along with Sturt in 1828, he was part of an expedition of the first Europeans to discover the Darling River.

On 19 June 1797 Hume was born at Seven Hills (his father's property) near Parramatta, a settlement close to (and now a suburb of) Sydney.

Hume was the eldest son of Andrew Hamilton Hume and his wife Elizabeth, née Kennedy. Andrew Hume got the appointment of Commissary-General for New South Wales, and came out to the colony in 1797. There were few opportunities for education in Australia during the first ten years of the nineteenth century, and Hamilton Hume received most of his education from his mother.

He was born on 19 June 1797. When only 17 years of age, Hume began exploring the country beyond Sydney with his younger brother John and an Aboriginal boy as far to the south-west as Berrima, and soon developed into a good bushman. In 1817, Hume went on a journey with James Meehan, the deputy surveyor-general, and Charles Throsby during which Lake Bathurst and the Goulburn Plains were discovered. Subsequently in 1818, he went with John Oxley and Meehan to Jervis Bay.

In 1822, he journeyed with Alexander Berry down the south coast of New South Wales. He travelled as far south as the Clyde River, and inland nearly as far as Braidwood. Berry came to settle in the Shoalhaven, and in June 1822 he left Hume and a party of convicts to cut a 209-yard canal between the Shoalhaven River and the Crookhaven River to allow passage of boats into the Shoalhaven. This canal was Australia's first navigable canal, and the work was completed in 12 days. The canal today forms the main water flow of the Shoalhaven River.

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