Stuart, John
STUART, JOHN M'DOUALL (1818-1866), South Australian explorer, was born at Dysart in Fifeshire, Scotland, in 1818, and arrived in the colony about 1839. He accompanied Captain Sturt's 1844-1845 expedition as draughtsman, and between 1858 and 1862 he made six expeditions into the interior, the last of which brought him on the 25th of July to the shores of the Indian Ocean at Van Diemen's Gulf, at the mouth of the Adelaide River. Stuart was not the first to cross the island continent from south to north; that honour belongs to the Burke and Wills expedition, which reached the Gulf of Carpentaria on the 6th of February 1861. Stuart returned to Adelaide exhausted and broken, and never recovered from the effects of the great privations which he suffered. He returned to England, where he died on the 5th of June 1866. Stuart was rewarded with 3000 and a grant of 1000 sq. m. of grazing country in the interior rent free for seven years. His name is perpetuated by Central Mount Stuart.
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
