Explorer, born in Bengal, India. He went as an army captain to Australia, and headed three important expeditions (182845), discovering the Darling (1828) and the lower Murray Rivers (1830). Blinded by hardship and exposure, he received in 1851 a pension from the first South Australian parliament.
Captain Charles Napier Sturt (April 28, 1795 – June 16, 1869) was an English explorer of Australia, part of the European Exploration of Australia.
Early life
Sturt was born in British India and sent to England at the age of 5 to be educated.
Exploration
Sturt was keen to explore the Australian interior, especially its rivers. In 1828 the Governor of New South Wales, Ralph Darling sent Sturt and Hamilton Hume to explore the area of the Macquarie River in western New South Wales. This expedition proved that northern New South Wales was not an inland sea, but deepened the mystery of where the western-flowing rivers of New South Wales went to. Sturt proposed to travel down the Murrumbidgee River, whose upper reaches had been seen by the Hume and Hovell expedition. In January 1830 Sturt's party reached the confluence of the Murrumbidgee and a much larger river, which Sturt named the Murray River.
Sturt then proceeded down the Murray, until he reached the river's confluence with the Darling. Sturt had now proved that all the western-flowing rivers eventually flowed into the Murray. In February 1830, the party reached a large lake which Sturt called Lake Alexandrina.
The party then faced the ordeal of rowing back up the Murray and Murrumbidgee, against the current, in the heat of an Australian summer. Sturt sent two men overland in search of supplies and they returned in time to save the party from starvation, but Sturt went blind for some months and never fully recovered his health.
A break from exploring
Sturt briefly served as Commander on Norfolk Island. Sturt was briefly Registrar-General but he soon proposed a major expedition into the interior of Australia as a way of restoring his reputation in the colony and London.
Exploring from Adelaide
Sturt wanted to settle the debate as to whether there was an inland sea. In August 1844 Sturt and a party of 15 men, 200 sheep, six drays and a boat set out to explore north-western New South Wales and to advance into central Australia. When the rains eventually came Sturt pressed on into central Australia until they discovered the Simpson Desert, at which point they were unable to go further and turned back to Adelaide.
Sturt later undertook a second expedition to reach the centre of Australia, but his health broke down in the extreme conditions and he was forced to abandon the attempt.
In 1851 Sturt settled to England, where he died in 1869. He is commemorated by the City of Charles Sturt and suburb of Sturt in Adelaide, Charles Sturt University in regional New South Wales, and the Sturt Highway from Wagga Wagga to Adelaide as well as the Sturt's desert pea, the Sturt's Desert Rose and Sturt's Stony Desert.
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