On the 14th of October, 1824, Hume and Hovell left Lake George.  Reaching the Murrumbidgee, they found that river flooded, and after waiting three days for the water to fall, they crossed it borne on the body of one of their carts, with the wheels detached, and with the aid of the tarpaulin, rigged like a punt.  South of the Murrumbidgee the country was broken and difficult to traverse, but it was well grassed and admirably adapted for grazing purposes.  As it became too rough for the passage of their carts, these were abandoned, and the baggage and rations were packed on the bullocks for the remainder of their journey.

After following the course of the Murrumbidgee for some days, the travellers turned from its bank and pursued a south-westerly direction, which led them through hills and valleys richly grassed and plenteously endowed with running streams.  On the 8th of November they beheld a sight rarely witnessed before by white men in Australia.  Ascending a range in order to obtain a view of the country ahead of them, they suddenly found themselves confronted with snow-capped mountains.  There, under the brilliant sun of an Australian summer’s day, rose the white crests of lofty peaks that might have found fitting surroundings amidst the chilling splendours of some far southern clime, robed as they were for nearly one-fourth of their height in glistening snow.

Skirting this range, which received the name of the Australian Alps, the explorers, after wandering for eight days across its many spurs, came upon a fine, flowing river, which Hume named after his father, the Hume.  This river was destined to be re-named the Murray, when its course was eventually followed to the ocean.*

[Footnote.] See Chapter 6.

There being no safe ford, a makeshift boat was constructed with the aid of the serviceable tarpaulin, and the Hume was crossed, close to the site of the present town of Albury.  Still passing through good pastoral land, watered by numerous creeks, they crossed a river which was named the Ovens, and on the 3rd of December they came to another, named by them the Hovell, but now called the Goulburn; and on the 16th of December they reached their goal, the shore of the Southern Ocean, at the spot where Geelong now stands.

This expedition had a great and immediate influence on the extension of Australian settlement.  Within a few years after the chief surveyor had characterised the western interior, beyond a certain limit, as unfitted for human habitation, and had expressed his opinion that the monotonous flats across which he vainly looked for any elevation extended to the sea-coast, snowy mountains, feeding the head tributaries of perennial rivers had been discovered to the southward of his track.