Overland to Port Philip

The Colonist

19 January 1837

Port Philip. - It is with no ordinary degree of pleasure and gratification that we are enabled to state that our friends, Captain John Hepburn, late of of the Ceres, and John Gardner, Esq., have returned to Sydney, having safely and satisfactorily accomplished the journey overland to Port Philip, accompanied by Joseph Hawdon and George Hitchcock, Esqrs.

From what we have gleaned from these enterprising travellers, the "spec." has not turned out quite so profitable as was expected, a circumstance we are by no means sorry for, inasmuch as too great success is almost certain to carry us, or rather our ideas, too much into a sublunary sphere of action, and thereby causing us to neglect, the more important duties of religion and piety.

That these gentlemen will be paid from the proceeds of their stock we have doubts; that is to say, if they have brought back their consciences as well as themselves. A more detailed account of the peregrinations of this adventurous little band, shall be given in our next.