Acknowledgements: © State Library of New South Wales; Equinity in the Picture Gallery; Free Exhibition from 8 October 2007 to 13 January 2008.

Featured Image: The start of the Burke & Wills exploring expedition from Royal Park, Melbourne, August 20, 1860, 1861. William Strutt

Horsemanship was the key to successful land exploration for much of the nineteenth century. Horses were employed in this field from as early as 1802, when George Caley explored the region west of Sydney, although exploration parties were not usually fully mounted until the late 1840s. Horses participating in expeditions ranged from Timor ponies to the colonial saddle horse the Waler, named after its place of origin, New South Wales. By the 1870s camels were replacing horses to explore the arid inland.