Person

Mitchell, Thomas Livingstone (1792 - 1855)

Born
15 May 1792
Grangemouth, Lanark, Scotland
Died
5 October 1855
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Occupation
Explorer and Surveyor

Summary

Thomas Mitchell was Surveyor General of New South Wales from 1828 to 1855, during which time he greatly expanded knowledge of the colony's geography. He joined the British army in 1808, serving in the Peninsula War where he was mainly engaged in obtaining topographical intelligence and producing plans of battlefields. On arrival in New South Wales in 1827 he found the Survey department poorly equipped, some surveyors not competent, and surveys being conducted on too small a scale to be useful. As Surveyor General Mitchell greatly improved the quality and accuracy of surveys, and started a general survey and program of improving existing roads. During the 1830s Mitchell made several expeditions to explore the rivers New South Wales. The first (1831-2) investigated the Namoi and Gwydr Rivers and surrounding areas. In 1835 he set off attempting to trace the Darling River from where Charles Sturt had left it in 1828, to its junction with the Murray River. On this expedition he was accompanied by botanist Richard Cunningham who died in March. Mitchell's third expedition of 1836 followed the Lachlan River and the Murray to the Darling. He then went south through what became the western parts of Victoria, and what he called Australia Felix. Granville Stapylton was his second-in-command on this expedition. Mitchell's last expedition was to explore the Darling, Maranoa and Barcoo Rivers. On this trip his second-in-command was Edmund Kennedy. Throughout his term as Surveyor General Mitchell had an uneasy relationship with his political superiors. He is commemorated in the Mitchell River (Queensland) and Major Mitchell's cockatoo (Cacatua leadbeateri).

Skip to

Details

Chronology

1808
Military service - Joined the British Army
1826
Military service - Promoted to Major
1827 - 1828
Career position - Assistant Surveyor General, Colony New South Wales
1828 - 1855
Career position - Surveyor-General, Colony of New South Wales
November 1831 - February 1832
Career event - Expedition in region of the Namoi and Gwydr Rivers, New South Wales
March 1835 - September 1835
Career event - Expedition to trace the Darling River
March 1836 - November 1836
Career event - Australia Felix expedition, exploring the Lachlan, Murray and Darling Rivers, and south through Victoria
April 1844 - August 1844
Career position - Member of the Legislative Council
December 1845 - December 1846
Career event - Expedition to the Darling, Maranoa and Barcoo Rivers
1848
Taxonomy event - Collector of the type Eucalyptus citriodora Hook.
1850
Career position - Member of Council, Australian Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Science, Commerce and Agriculture
1919
Taxonomy event - Eucalyptus mitchelliana Cambage was named in Mitchell's honour
1934
Taxonomy event - Collector of the type Eucalyptus camaldulensis Dehnh. var. acuminata (Hook.) Blakely

Colleague

Related People

Archival resources

Adolph Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science

  • Australian Botanists - Biographies, MS 064; Adolph Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science. Details

Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales

  • Mitchell Family - Records, 1824 - 1855, ML MSS 731; Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales. Details
  • Thomas Livingstone Mitchell - Records, 1808 - 1830, A7130; Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales. Details
  • Thomas Livingstone Mitchell - Records, 1829 - 1855; Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales. Details
  • Thomas Livingstone Mitchell - Records, 1822 - 1855, A7131; Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales. Details
  • Thomas Livingstone Mitchell - Records, 1846 - 1938, ML MSS 1118; Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales. Details
  • Thomas Livingstone Mitchell - Records, 1836 - 1853, ML MSS 1009; Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales. Details
  • Thomas Livingstone Mitchell - Records, 1848 - 1854, ML MSS 823; Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales. Details
  • Thomas Livingstone Mitchell - Records, 1830 - 1880, A5357; Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales. Details
  • Thomas Livingstone Mitchell - Records, 1841, ML DOC 1156; Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales. Details
  • Thomas Livingstone Mitchell - Records, 1811 - 1855; Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales. Details

National Library of Australia Manuscript Collection

  • Thomas Livingstone Mitchell - Records, 1839 - 1840, NK 5974; National Library of Australia Manuscript Collection. Details

State Library of Victoria, Australian Manuscripts Collection

  • Thomas Livingstone Mitchell - Records, 1837, 52/2; State Library of Victoria, Australian Manuscripts Collection. Details
  • Thomas Livingstone Mitchell - Records, 1837 - 1840, 46/2; State Library of Victoria, Australian Manuscripts Collection. Details
  • Thomas Livingstone Mitchell - Records, 1836, MS 5189; State Library of Victoria, Australian Manuscripts Collection. Details

Published resources

Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation Exhibitions

Books

  • Cumpston, J. H. L., Thomas Mitchell: Surveyor General and Explorer (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1954), 270 pp. Details
  • Eccleston, Gregory C., Major Mitchell's 1836 'Australia Felix' Expedition: a Re-evaluation (Clayton: Department of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University, 1992), 176 pp. Details
  • Eccleston, Gregory C., Granville Stapylton: Australia Felix 1836, second in command to Major Mitchell (Malvern, Vic.: Evandale Publishing, 2018), 250 pp. Details
  • Foster, William C., Sir Thomas Livingston Mitchell and his world 1792 - 1855 (Sydney: Institution of Surveyors, N.S.W., 1985), 594 pp. Details
  • Kass, Terry, Sails to Satellites: the Surveyors General of NSW (1786-2007) (Bathurst, N.S.W.: New South Wales Department of Lands, 2008), 484 pp. Details
  • MacInnis, Peter, Curious Minds: the Discoveries of Australian Naturalists (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2012), 213 pp. Pages 94-103. Details
  • Mitchell, T. L., Outlines of a system of surveying: for geographical and military purposes (London: Samuel Leigh, 1827), 96 pp. Details
  • Mitchell, T. L., Three expeditions into the interior of eastern Australia: with descriptions of the recently explored region of Australia Felix, and of the present colony of New South Wales, 2 vols (London: T. & W. Boone, 1838). Details
  • Mitchell, T. L., Journal of an expedition into the interior of tropical Australia, in search of a route from Sydney to the Gulf of Carpentaria Tropical Australia (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1848), 437 pp. Details
  • Mitchell, T. L., Australian geography, with the shores of the Pacific and those of the Indian Ocean: designed for the use of schools in New South Wales (Sydney: J. Moore, 1850), 268 pp. Details
  • Olsen, Penny, Upside Down World: Early European Impressions of Australia's Curious Animals (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2010), 258 pp. Details
  • Philbey, Glennis, Unmarked Lands: the Exploration of Unmarked Lands of Australia, 1830-1850, by Henry Stuart Russell, Ludwig Leichhardt, Sir Thomas Mitchell ([s. l.]: T. E. C. Print, 2006), 101 pp. Details
  • Victorian Department of Conservation, Forests and Lands, The Major Mitchell Trail: exploring Australia Felix (East Melbourne: National Parks and Wildlife Division, 1990), 127 pp. Details

Book Sections

  • Andrews, Alan E.J., 'Sir Thomas Livingston Mitchell, 1792-1855' in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Details
  • Baker, D. W. A., 'Mitchell, Sir Thomas Livingstone (1792-1855), surveyor-general' in Australian dictionary of biography, volume 2: 1788 - 1850 I-Z, Douglas Pike, ed. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1967), pp. 238-242. https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mitchell-sir-thomas-livingstone-2463. Details
  • Oldroyd, D., 'In the Footsteps of Thomas Livingstone Mitchell (1792-1855): Soldier, Surveyor, Explorer, Geologist, and Probably the First Person to Compile Geological Maps in Australia' in Four Centuries of Geological Travel: the Search for Knowledge on Foot, Bicycle, Sledge and Camel, Wyse-Jackson, P. N., ed. (London: Geological Society, 2007), pp. 343-373. Details

Edited Books

  • Andrews, Alan E. J. ed., Stapylton with Major Mitchell's Australia Felix expedition, 1836, largely from the journal of Granville William Chetwynd Stapylton (Hobart: Blubber Head Press, 1986), 297 pp. Details

Journal Articles

  • Archbold, Neil, 'Major T.L. Mitchell and Australian Vertebrate Palaeontology', Bulletin of the Fossil Collectors' Association of Australasia, 30 (1990), 33-37. Details
  • Baker, D. W. A., 'Thomas Mitchell as Explorer', Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, 80 (1-2) (1994), 24-45. Details
  • Daley, Charles, 'Major T.L. Mitchell. Explorer and Naturalist', The Victorian naturalist, 53 (October) (1936), 113-119. Details
  • Dunkley, J., 'The 1830 cave diaries of Thomas Livingston Mitchell', Helictite, 42 (2016), 21-37. Details
  • Dunkley, John, 'John Henderson, Thomas Mitchell and the First Publications on Cave Science in Australia ', Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, 142 (2009), 5-15. Details
  • Flakelar, Danielle Carney; and O'Gorman, Emily, 'Wayilwan women caring for Country: dynamic knowledges, decolonising historical methodologies, and colonial explorer journals', Journal of Australian studies, 47 (1) (2023), 160-80, https://doi.org/10.1080/14443058.2022.2153378. Details
  • Forsyth, Ron, 'The bomerang (boomerang) propellor and Sir Thomas Mitchell', Maritime Heritage Association journal, 34 (1) (2020), 6-8. Details
  • Heckenberg, Kerry, 'Thomas Mitchell and the Wellington Caves: the Relationship among Science, Religion and Aesthetics in Early-Nineteenth-Century Australia', Victorian Literature and Culture, 33 (2005), 203-218. Details
  • Holland, Julian, 'Thomas Mitchell and the Origins of Australian Vertebrate Palaeontology', Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, 125 (1992), 103-106. Details
  • O'Connor, Maura, 'Re-assembling Mitchell's terrestrial sextant', National Library of Australia Gateways, 47 (October 2000) (2000), 22. Details
  • Powell, J. M., 'Thomas Livingstone Mitchell, 1792-1855', Geographers: Bibliographical Studies, 5 (1981), 83-87. Details

Resources

Resource Sections

Theses

  • Couch, B. V., 'The Administration of Thomas Mitchell 1826-37', MA thesis, University of Sydney, 1963. Details

See also

McCarthy, G.J. and Helen Cohn

Created: 20 October 1993, Last modified: 23 July 2026

EOAS ID: biogs/P000649b.htm

This Edition: 2026 May - New Office
Chunnup - Gariwerd calendar - Winter: late May to end of July - season of cockatoos
Reference: https://www.bom.gov.au/resources/indigenous-weather-knowledge/indigenous-seasonal-calendars/gariwerd-calendar#bom-anchor-list__item-chunnup-season-of-cockatoos

Publisher: Swinburne University of Technology.

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
What do we mean by this?

The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation uses the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), a relational data curation and web publication system developed by the eScholarship Research Centre and its predecessors at the University of Melbourne 1999-2020. The OHRM has been maintained by Gavan McCarthy since 2020.

Cite this page: https://www.eoas.info/biogs/P000649b.htm

For earlier editions see the Internet Archive at: https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.eoas.info

"... the rengitj, as a visible mark or imprint on the land, is characterised as a place of origin, the repository of all names, as well as a kind of mapped visual expression of the connection between people and places which is to be carried out in the temporal sequence of the journey." Fanca Tamisari (1998) 'Body, Vision and Movement: In the footprints of the ancestors'. Oceania 68(4) p260