In The Path of Cunningham
                               Explorer-Botanist
The publication of this brochure was initialled by the Cunningham Celebrations Committee; a band of public-spirited Coolah citizens anxious to perpetuate the memory of the explorer and botanist, Alan Cunningham. When a pack-horse team, comprised of five hardy Coolah men left Bathurst on Friday 1st June 1973, and headed northwards. Australians time-clock was set back 150 years. 

These mounted men, each accompanied by a pack-horse
re-enacted one of the most important expeditions in early colonial history the discovery on 9th June 1823 of the Pandora Pass- access to the fertile Liverpool Plains. 
Commissioned at his own request Cunningham took his departure from Bathrust on
15th April, 1823 with provisions for ten weeks, purposing to explore the country north
of the Cudegong River and again search for an access to the Liverpool Plains. 

An abridged extract from the explorer’s diary using present place names would be;  
18th April reached Cudegong River 
19th April turned north-west from Rylstone Rylstone 
21st April encamped on branch of Lawson’s Creek 
28th April crossed Dividing Range near Cook’s Gap 
30th April reached Goulburn River near Ulan 
6th May turned north-east at Cassilis 
9th May camped 5 miles from Mount Moan 
16th May reached Scone and turned west 
1st June returned to Cassillis 

Just before the party reached its earlier camp near Cassilies one of the convicts became 
ill. More careful of his men’s health than of his own. Cunningham waited four days while the fever ran its course although his supplies were low and he knew that the delay might cost him the chance to fine the pass he so eagerly sought. When after the man becamestrong enough to travel, he decided to spend seven days searching north-west of the Goulburn River camp, he was aware that he ran a risk scarcely warranted by prudence, that if he exhausted the food he was already rationing carefully and then found himself cut off from the Cudgegong Stations by swollen streams he would be in serious danger.

But the glimpse of Oxley’s plains he had got from Mount Moan had made the careful 
botanist almost reckless. He turned north, recrossed the almost imperceptible main
watershed and tried to follow a narrow valley that of the Talbragar River into the 
east-west range. He was unable to penetrate more than a few miles and was one the pointof despair when he saw a way round a spur on the western side of the valley. A second valley led him up Turee Creek to near the present site of Arnott’s airstrip 16 milesfrom Coolah, where they sow the last ridge ( Pandoras Pass) open out into a saddleback,and saw beyond, stretching to the north the long-sought Liverpool Plains. 
Footsore and weary after weeks of fruitless searching, on the 9th June 1823, Cunningham and his party, pitched camp near the junction of Brennan Creek and the Coolaburragundy River. 

The next day he viewed the beauty of the Liverpool Plains from nearby Mount 
Direction Head. There they lay, seeing through the translucent light like a beautiful 
amphitheatre whose encompassing walls rose-grey, blue, purple, velvet-soft with the
mantle of distance; a thing of indescribable beauty. And so they seem today for the
passage of more than one hundred and fifty years has in no way changed them or wroughtupon their loveliness. Rejoiced in heart Cunningham wrote a message which he buried in a bottle beneath a tree, giving the location as latitude 32 degrees 15’ 19”S.,longitude (presumed) 149 degrees 30’E., and requesting that the message, if found, be carried to the settlement at Bathurst.