Previously to our reaching the Hutt our boats had all been wrecked; I had therefore no opportunity of examining whether the estuary of this river was navigable or not; from its size however I should be inclined to the affirmative.  The other principal streams which drain this district are the Buller, and the Murchison.

One remarkable feature in the province of Victoria is that the carboniferous series is here developed throughout a tract of Western Australia extending in latitude from the bottom of Geographe Bay to near Cape Cuvier, and which I have carefully examined.  The tract above alluded to is the only one in which I have yet found the rocks belonging to this series:  this circumstance therefore imparts a very high degree of interest to the district in question.

Within a few weeks after my return from the province of Victoria applications from settlers were made to the Government of Western Australia to permit them to occupy a district which had been so highly spoken of; this application was however unsuccessful, but an expedition was subsequently sent there to ascertain if there was a navigable entrance to the Hutt River.  In this object the expedition was unsuccessful, but the vessel touched at the Abrolhos Islands and at some parts of the adjacent coast, including Port Grey.*

(Footnote.  See above. [The coast to the eastward of the Abrolhos has been since examined by H.M.’s surveying vessel the Beagle, Captain Wickham, R.N., and while these sheets were passing through the press an account of the survey of Port Grey, under the appellation of Champion Bay, appeared in the Nautical Magazine for July 1841 page 443, from which periodical it has been copied into Appendix B at the end of this volume.  ED.])

Mr. Moore’s journal.  Mr. Moore’s voyage to Houtman’s Abrolhos and port grey.

An account of some of the places visited was subsequently published in the Perth Gazette, being contained in extracts from the journal of G.F.  Moore, Esquire, the Queen’s Advocate at Perth, who sailed with the expedition; and as Mr. Moore’s description contains several points of novelty and interest these extracts are again transcribed below.

Expedition to the northward.

After Captain Grey had the misfortune to have his boats wrecked in Gantheaume Bay, having started thence with his party and walked to Perth, he reported that he had passed over extensive tracts of fertile country in the neighbourhood of Moresby’s Flat-topped Range, where there are several rivers, one of which (the largest) he had called the Hutt River, after His Excellency the Governor.  His Excellency having directed the Champion schooner to proceed to explore the coast with a view to ascertain whether there was any practicable entrance to the river, and whether there was any harbour, shelter, or anchorage in that