Mount Hopeless / Maiurru Mitha Vambata is in the
Flinders Ranges
The Flinders Ranges are the largest mountain ranges in South Australia, which starts about north of Adelaide. The ranges stretch for over from Port Pirie to Lake Callabonna.
The Adnyamathanha people are the Aboriginal group who have inhab ...
in
South Australia
South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a States and territories of Australia, state in the southern central part of Australia. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, which in ...
, south-west of
Lake Blanche. It is little more than a stony rise of 127 metres. It was over-named by the explorer
Edward Eyre
Edward John Eyre (5 August 181530 November 1901) was an English land explorer of the Australian continent, colonial administrator, Lieutenant-Governor of New Zealand's New Munster Province, New Munster province, and Governor of Jamaica.
Early ...
.
In June 1840, Eyre left Adelaide with the aim of leading an expedition to the ‘centre’ of the Australian continent – the first colonist to make such an attempt. But in early September he was in despair. The land was dry. Most of the water he encountered was salty and it seemed to him that Adelaide was cut off from the interior by a great horseshoe shaped salt lake. On 2 September that year he climbed a stony rise which he named ‘Mount Hopeless’. As he explained, ‘cheerless and hopeless indeed was the prospect before us.’ The great salt lake, he went on, ‘was now visible to the north and to the east; and I had at last ascertained, beyond all doubt, that its basin, commencing near the head of Spencer's Gulf, and following the course of Flinders range (bending round its northern extreme to the southward), constituted those hills the termination of the island of South Australia, for such I imagine it once to have been. This closed all my dreams as to the expedition...’ (Edward Eyre, ''Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central Australia'')
Robert O'Hara Burke
Robert O'Hara Burke (6 May 1821c. 28 June 1861) was an Irish soldier and police officer who achieved fame as an Australian explorer. He was the leader of the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition, which was the first expedition to cross Australi ...
tried several times to reach this outpost in 1861 when he became stranded with
William John Wills
William John Wills (5 January 1834 – ) was a British surveyor who also trained as a surgeon. He was the second-in-command of the Burke and Wills expedition, which was the first expedition to cross Australia from south to north, finding a ...
and
John King on Cooper Creek but he failed and returned to
Cooper Creek, where he and Wills died shortly after.
References
Hopeless
Hopeless
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