AFter the First Fleet arrives in New South Wales, various parties set about filling in the gaps in the outline provided by Six Voyages.
Most were engaged in charting sections of the coast where shipping might encounter danger.
Ludwig Leichhardt and Edmund Kennedy led overland expeditions bound for Port Essington and Cape York.
Still, when Queensland separated from New South Wales in June 1859, European settlement was limited to an arc sweeping from Marlborough, north of Rockhampton, across the Port Curtis, Leichhardt and Maranoa pastoral districts.