Imagined interior

Thomas John Maslen was a retired East India Company officer who had an active interest in promoting the exploration of Australia's vast interior, reading everything he could about the continent and gathering information from fellow officers before he retired. In 1830, the year his map was published in his book The Friend of Australia, little was known of districts away from the coast. The north-west coast was poorly charted, giving leeway for a 'great river' to emerge on the coast. While Charles Sturt and Thomas Mitchell had discovered the Murray-Darling River system between 1828-1830, solving the riddle of New South Wales' westward flowing rivers, news of this had not reached England at the time that Maslen's book went to press.

The book contained his theories for Australian exploration, including the use of camels to explore the interior, many years before the first camels were imported into Australia for that purpose. He also proposed that explorers should take a boat with them into the interior, using horses to transport it, rather than the heavy dray favoured by Sturt on his 1844-46 expedition.

It was a popular belief at that time that a continent the size of Australia must hold a major river system, vast mountain ranges and even an inland sea, just as the other continents did. The theory of an inland sea would hold its place for many years, luring Sturt into the interior in search of it. Only the cross-continental expeditions of John McDouall Stuart between 1860-1862 would finally push this theory right off the map.

By 1836 when a second edition of his book was published, with little success, Maslen had turned his research to town planning and decimal currency.

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