John Lhotsky

Lhotsky unsuccessfully sought appointment as colonial zoologist in the museum in Sydney. In 1834 with government help he travelled to the Monaro district and explored its southern mountains. His A Journey from Sydney to the Australian Alps , incompletely published in Sydney in 1834-35, was his most important work. It introduced the Snowy River to geography and the prospect of a future city on the limestone 'Kembery' plains; he also envisaged rural development by artesian wells. Back in Sydney he exhibited his new specimens which were said to include gold, but his money was exhausted and his creditors began to press. He sold wood and vegetables for a living and with increasing vehemence kept on trying for a scientific post in the public service. Supported by Baron Bulow, the Prussian ambassador in London, he appealed to the Colonial Office in October 1835 for government help in another expedition to collect specimens for the royal museum at Berlin. When notified next April that this plea was rejected, he appealed again to be rewarded for his discoveries in the interior. Disgusted with Sydney he went to Hobart Town in October 1836 in the Francis Freeling . Next month he was recommended by the surveyor-general, George Frankland") , to be appointed colonial naturalist. The acting lieutenant-governor refused, but allowed Lhotsky rations and three assigned servants to collect specimens to be delivered into Frankland's keeping. In less than two months he had more than 100 mineral specimens and 300 plants 'arranged as in European collections'. After Lieutenant-Governor Sir John Franklin") arrived Lhotsky was appointed at 10s. a day to plan development of the coal-mines near Port Arthur by convict labour. He also made a complete geological map of Tasman Peninsula and at Hobart reported on a spring in the limekilns that Franklin wanted to use for improving the town's water supply. After three months Lhotsky applied for an increased wage but lost his job. He turned to lecturing and journalism, with some initiative interviewing William Buckley") and testing him on the geography of his travels and his knowledge of Aboriginal languages. He also applied for naturalization, but his debts continued to mount. He appealed to the government to buy his collection of natural history as the embryo of a national museum. Franklin was sympathetic but would not have it even at half-price; it was put up for private sale and the Legislative Council agreed to pay Lhotsky's remaining debts. In April 1838 he sailed for London in the Emu . Lhotsky's newspaper articles are too numerous to list. The Royal Society's Catalogue of Scientific Papers shows his contributions to the proceedings of English and other European scientific bodies. His first Australian article was probably the anonymous 'Australian sketches, no l' in the Sydney Gazette , 6 October 1832. Next year he conducted the natural history section of the New South Wales Magazine , and anonymously published Illustrations of the Present State and Future Prospects of the Colony of New South Wales (Sydney, 1835). His 'Song of the Women of the Menero Tribe' was 'the first specimen of Australian Music', and he also compiled an unpublished vocabulary of Tasmanian Aboriginals in 1836 and 1837 (Mitchell Library). Political and natural history articles appeared in the New South Wales Literary, Political and Commercial Advertiser and, from 1837, in Information for the People (Hobart). In London he continued to publish tracts and pamphlets: Hunger and Revolution (1843); On Cases of Death by Starvation (1844); Life of Moses … a Programme of European Democracy (n.d.); Era Victoriae Humanae (1847); Regeneration of Society the Only Corrective of Distress … (1844), 2nd ed (London, 1845); and Second Reformation (1844). Lhotsky was diligent in his scientific investigations; a genus of plants ( Lhotskia ) and another of fishes ( Lhotskya ) commemorate him. A volatile figure, he thought his years in Sydney came close