AustLit

Nineteenth-Century Travel Writing

Thomas Livingstone Mitchell (1792-1855) was an explorer and surveyor-general of New South Wales. He worked as both Assistant Surveyor-General and later Surveyor-General of New South Wales from 1827-1855. Mitchell authored Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia, in Search of a Route from Sydney to the Gulf of Carpentaria (1848), in which Mitchell stated that the journey recorded a complete series of surveys of the interior of the colony, extending to the Gulf of Carpentaria. Mitchell's narrative was written in the diary form, and included detailed information such as the time, date, temperature, and location of each diary entry. Mitchell had previously authored Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia; With Descriptions of the Recently Explored Region of Australia Felix, and of the Present Colony of New South Wales (1838), and published Journal of an Expedition which is chiefly concerned with matters geographical.