Charles Sturt (1795-1869), British officer, explorer, and colonial public servant, led three major expeditions into the interior of eastern Australia.

Charles Sturt, the eldest son of an East India Company judge, was born in India on April 28, 1795, educated at Harrow, and became an ensign in 1813. After serving in the Peninsular War and the American War of 1812, he performed garrison duties in France and Ireland before acting as an escort in 1826 for convicts being transported to New South Wales.

The discovery of inland rivers west of the Great Dividing Range in New South Wales had excited speculation about the existence of an inland sea which Capt. Sturt, now military secretary to Governor Sir Ralph Darling, was determined to find. In 1828, under conditions of considerable hardship, he led an expedition which discovered the Darling River, 500 miles inland, and he unraveled the main features of the northern river system in New...