The discretionary instructions with which your excellency was pleased to furnish me, leaving me at liberty as to the course to be pursued by the expedition on its return to Port Jackson, I determined to attempt making the sea-coast on an easterly course, first proceeding along the base of the high range before mentioned, which I still indulged hopes might lead me to the margin of these, or any other interior waters which this portion of New South Wales might contain; and embracing a low line of coast on which many small openings remained unexamined, at the same time that the knowledge obtained of the country to be encircled, might materially tend to the advantage of the colony, in the event of any communication with the interior being discovered.

We quitted this station on the 30th of July, being in latitude 31. 18.  S., and longitude 147. 31.  E. on our route for the coast; and on the 8th of August arrived at the lofty range of mountains to which our course had been directed.  From the highest point of this range we had the most extended prospect.  From south by the west to north, it was one vast level, resembling the ocean in extent, but yet without water being discerned, the range of high land extending to the north-east by north, elevated points of which were distinguished upwards of one hundred and twenty miles.

From this point, in conformity to the resolution I had made on quitting the Macquarie River, I pursued a north-east course; but after encountering numerous difficulties from the country being an entire marsh, interspersed with quicksands, until the 20th of August, and finding I was surrounded by bogs, I was reluctantly compelled to take a more easterly course, having practically proved that the country could not be traversed on any point deviating from the main range of hills which bound the interior; although partial dry portions of level alluvial land extend from their base westerly to a distance which I estimate to exceed one hundred and fifty miles, before it is gradually lost in the waters which I am clearly convinced cover the interior.  The alteration in our course more easterly, soon brought us into a very different description of country, forming a remarkable contrast to that which had so long occupied us.  Numerous fine streams, running northerly, watered a rich and beautiful country, through which we passed until the 7th of September, when we crossed the meridian of Sydney, as also the most elevated known land in New South Wales, being, then in latitude 31.  S. We were afterwards considerably embarrassed and impeded by very lofty mountains.  On the 20th of September, we gained the summit of the most elevated mountain in this extensive range, and from it we were gratified with a view of the ocean, at a distance of fifty miles; the country beneath us being formed into an immense triangular valley, the base of which extended along the coast from the Three Brothers on the south, to the high land north of Smoky Cape.  We had the farther gratification to find that we were near the source of a large stream running to the sea.  On descending the mountain, we followed the course of this river, increased by many accessions, until the 8th of October, when we arrived on the beach near the entrance of the port which received it; having passed over, since the 18th of July, a tract of country near five hundred miles in extent from west to east.