© Charles Sturt. CHARLES STURT Charles Sturt was an army offi on the staff of the New South Wales Governor, Ralph Darling. He was chosen to lead an expedition to trace the course of the Macquarie River. Setting out in late 1828, Sturt traced the Macquarie until it ran into a larger river that he named the Darling, after the Governor. A year later, Sturt set out to trace the courses of the Lachlan and Murrumbidgee rivers. Using a prefabricated boat, he travelled down the Murrumbidgee until it ran into a much larger river. He named this river the Murray, after Sir George Murray, an English politician who was the Minister for Colonies. Sturt was surprised and delighted when the Murrumbidgee River pushed his boat onto what he described in his journals as a ‘broad and noble stream’. It was Jater realised that this the lower reaches of the river that Hume and Hovell had named the Hume. Sturt’s name for the river, the Murray River, was kept. iver was Like Oxley, Sturt became convinced from his expeditions that Australia contained a large inland sea. He thought that the rivers he had discovered all ran inland, rather than being part of a river system whose waters eventually ran to the coast along the Murray River © Governor Ralph Darling.