The Explorers of Australia and their Life-workFavenc, Ernest
History
The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work
Favenc, Ernest
Australia -- Discovery and exploration; Explorers
He was accorded a generous public welcome on his return to Adelaide, and
was subsequently appointed Police Magistrate on the Murray, where his
inland experience and knowledge of native character were of great
service. When Sturt started on his memorable trip to the centre of
Australia, Eyre accompanied his old friend some distance. But his
activities were exercised in other fields than those of Australian
exploration during his after life. He was Lieutenant-Governor of the
Province of New Munster in New Zealand under Sir George Grey from 1848 to
1853, when that colony was divided into two provinces. He was afterwards
Governor-General of Jamaica, where the active and energetic measures he
took to crush the insurrection of 1865 incited a storm of opposition
against him in certain quarters, and he played a leading part in the
great constitutional cases of Philips v. Eyre, and The Queen v. Eyre. He
died at Steeple Aston, in Oxfordshire, in 1906.
CHAPTER 12. ATTEMPTS TO REACH THE CENTRE.
[Map (Diagram). Supposed Extent and Formation of Lake Torrens in 1846.]
12.1. LAKE TORRENS PIONEERS AND HORROCKS.
It will be remembered that Eyre, in 1840, reached, after much labour, an
elevation to the north-east, at the termination of the range which he had
followed, and had named it Mount Hopeless. From the outlook from its
summit he came to the conclusion that the lake was of the shape shown in
the diagram, completely surrounding the northern portion of the new
colony of South Australia. In fact, he formed a theory that the colony in
far distant times had been an island, the low-lying flats to the east
joining the plains west of the Darling. It was in 1843 that the
Surveyor-General of South Australia, Captain Frome, undertook an
expedition to determine the dimensions of this mysterious lake. He
reached Mount Serle, and found the dry bed of a great lake to the
eastward, as Eyre had described, but discovered that Eyre had made an
error of thirty miles in longitude, placing it too far to the east. He
got no further north. He thus confirmed the existence of a lake eastward
of Lake Torrens (now Lake Frome), but achieved nothing to prove or
disprove Eyre's theory of their continuity. Prior to this the pioneers
had spread settlement both east and west of Eyre's track from Adelaide to
the head of Spencer's Gulf. Amongst these early leaders of civilisation
in the central state are to be found the names of Hawker, Hughes,
Campbell, Robinson, and Heywood. But unfortunately the details of their
expeditions in search of grazing country have not been preserved.
[Illustration. John Ainsworth Horrocks.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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