Surveyor William Lawson is navigator for Blaxland’s expedition

Surveyor William Lawson is navigator for Blaxland’s expedition across the Blue Mountains. He builds on James Burns’ experience, ranging across the ridges like Aboriginal people. When Lawson comes into “Forest Land”, he finds “several Camps of Native Hutts”. Blaxland observes the European trail that comes up to these empty huts from the junction of the Grose and lower Nepean Rivers. It is possible that the people that occupied the nearby rock shelters at the foot of McCann’s Ridge were the same Aboriginal men that members of Louis de Freycinet’s expedition sketch six years later. (Ford 87) (see 1819)