Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/MacMillan, Angus
MACMILLAN, ANGUS (1810–1865), discoverer of Gippsland, Australia, born in Glenbrittle, Skye, in 1810, started at the age of nineteen for Australia to find work. After working on several sheep stations, the chief of which belonged to one McFarlane, he took employment under Lachlan McAlister in 1838.
Early in the following year he started, at McAlister's request, to look out for fresh stations, and after careful inquiry determined to explore to the south-west of Sydney. The natives had a tradition that a fine country lay there. In February 1839 he arrived at Curawang, a village of the Maneroo tribe of natives; and in May he provided himself with arms and provisions for four weeks, and set out with a black chief for companion. Four days later he reached the hill now known as the Haystack, from the top of which he had a bird's-eye view of the country which he wished to explore. His comrades, however, threatened his life, and he turned back without making any decisive discovery. But McAlister encouraged him to persevere, and in December 1839 he started again, and got further into the country; he was encamped on the Tambo river when Count Strzelecki's more regular exploring party came up with him on 7 March 1840. Subsequently on 9 Feb. 1841 he commenced a final effort to discover a road to the sea at Corner Inlet, in which he partly succeeded.
During the greater part of these two years, MacMillan endured much privation, and his sole aids to exploration were a pocket compass and a chart of the coast. He called the new country Caledonia Australis, but this name, like others which he gave, was superseded by the appellation Gippsland, given by Strzelecki. MacMillan's claim to public notice was recognised by a dinner given to him at Port Albert in March 1866. Eventually he settled down on a sheep-run of his own on the Avon, where he died in May 1865.
[McCombie's History of the Colony of Victoria, 1858, pp. 79, 80; Mennell's Dictionary of Australasian Biography.]