Edward John Eyre was an early colonial explorer of the interior of Australia. In early 1840, he took sheep and cattle by sea from Adelaide to King George Sound in Western Australia, after which he drove them overland to the Swan River Settlement (now Perth). Returning to Adelaide in May, he persuaded the colony to undertake expeditions to the north to find out more about the interior of Australia. Eyre then spent the next year leading an expedition with the intention to explore the 850 miles between Adelaide and King George Sound.
After a dramatic journey, during which one of the party, John Baxter, was killed, Eyre reached the Sound on 7 July 1841. According to Eyre, this murder was carried out by two Indigenous Australians that accompanied the party, accusing them of escaping with firearms and supplies. However, according to the oral history of the local Ngadju people who had observed the expedition, it was Eyre who killed Baxter in a fit of rage after the latter was discovered to have been drunk. The two Indigenous men did flee but were killed by a group of Ngadju.
This is the published account of the expedition, prepared by Eyre while on a voyage to Britain in the winter of 1844.