Exclusive report compiled from photographs and information supplied by adventurous Darwin agronomist Robert Wesley-Smith who at the weekend was a member of a party which went in search of relics in the Cape Hotham area , connected with the early ill- fated Escape Cliffs site , near the mouth of the Adelaide River, one of four failed attempts at permanent settlement in the Top End . It became a hellhole with dire consequences for local Aborigines .
The voyage was organised by Darwin resident Lloyd Browne , 86, a former fisheries enforcement officer, who in 2016 wrote a Ph.D. thesis on Escape Cliffs for Charles Darwin University .
Transported aboard the Kiahlua , below, the party of five, armed with metal detectors , hoped to find a brass plaque bearing the message "Moresby 1934" , but it seems to have disappeared or been swallowed up by the sand. HMAS Moresby surveyed the area.
Wesley-Smith noticed two of the largest Banyan trees he had ever seen on the foreshore .
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Exploring the surrounding terrain, a crocodile, about three metres long, below, was spotted..
Wesley-Smith took a series of photographs of the thick ,jungle-like vegetation . Metal finds included .303 shells , part of a shotgun cartridge , other fragments .
The above book was perused by Wesley-Smith for background information on the early efforts of European settlement in the Northern Territory, especially that of Escape Cliffs.
Interestingly, at a time when the French are currently furious with Australia over the cancellation of the submarine contract , due to concerns about the French , the British set up Port Essington in 1838, soon after described as about the most useless ,miserable , ill-managed hole in her Majesty's dominions. It was abandoned .
Escape Cliffs was later established , became another failure, many Aborigines shot .
The explorer John McKinlay, who led the original expedition to try and find Burke and Wills in 1861 ,called at Escape Cliffs and was not impressed .
He wrote ... A greater sense of waste and isolation could not be imagined. As a seaport and city this place is worthless . Not one settler in a hundred could build a homestead on the land being surveyed up the river without the almost positive certainty of being washed off in the floods .
The shooting of Aborigines, he added, brought a disgrace on the entire colony and the Northern Territory Government Resident ,Lieutenant -Colonel Boyle Travers Finniss.
NEXT: The extraordinary story behind an unusual find .
