Horror Extreme Movie Catalog

Major Sir 'Thomas Livingstons Mitchell' (June 16, 1792-1855), surveyor and explorer of south-eastern Australia, was born at Grangemouth in Stirlingshire, Scotland. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh, but the poverty of his family following his father's death led him to join the Army in 1811. He saw service in Portugal, where Sir George Murray, later to be Colonial Secretary, was the Army's Quartermaster-General, and became Mitchell's most important connection. He learned surveying in the Army, and in 1817 he married Mary Blunt in Lisbon. When the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815 Mitchell returned to the dull routine of peacetime soldiering and in 1827 he was pleased to take up the position of Surveyor-General of New South Wales. In this post he did much to improve the quality and accuracy of surveying - a vital task in a colony where huge tracts of land were being opened up and sold to new settlers. One of the first roads surveyed under his leadership was the Great North Road, built by convict labour between 1826 and 1836 linking Sydney to the Hunter Valley. The Great South Road, also convict-built, linked Sydney and Goulburn. In 1834 he was commissioned to survey a map of the Nineteen Counties. The map he produced was done with such skill and accuracy that he was awarded a knighthood.