Macquarie travelled extensively during his 12-year term, visiting settlements to assess conditions and prospects, and conducting eight lengthy trips. On one, an 1811 visit to Van Diemen’s Land, he stopped at Jervis Bay, which he described as a ‘noble Capacious Bay’. Arriving in Hobart in November 1811 he recorded in his diary, ‘After Divine Service I took a walk through the town with the view to lay down and frame a regular plan of it, none having ever been yet laid down for it’.

In 1818 Macquarie travelled to Newcastle and sailed up the Hunter to inspect farms that he had granted to ‘well behaved Convicts’. He wrote, ‘We then proceeded to view the rest of the Farms on both sides of this beautiful River – finding the soil of all of them very good – and much more ground cleared & cultivated than I had any idea of’.