Edward John Eyre

Edward John Eyre arrived in Australia from England as a young man, seeking fortune in sheep. But it was the continent's vast, unmapped interior that captured his ambition. His early expeditions were grueling lessons in survival, culminating in his most famous and terrible journey in 1841. With his Aboriginal companion Wylie and two other Indigenous men, he attempted to cross the Nullarbor Plain from Adelaide to Albany. The trek became a nightmare of thirst and starvation; the two other Aboriginal guides died, and Eyre and Wylie survived only through desperate resourcefulness. The feat made him famous, but his later career as a colonial administrator in New Zealand and Jamaica was marred by conflict. In Jamaica, his harsh suppression of the Morant Bay rebellion in 1865, resulting in hundreds of executions, led to his recall and a fierce national debate in Britain about justice and colonial violence.