Mount Lesueur is a near-circular, flat-topped

mesa A mesa is an isolated, flat-topped elevation, ridge, or hill, bounded from all sides by steep escarpments and standing distinctly above a surrounding plain. Mesas consist of flat-lying soft sedimentary rocks, such as shales, capped by a ...

located from Jurien Bay in

Western Australia Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Aust ...

. It rises above the surrounding lateritic plain of

Lesueur National Park Lesueur National Park is a national park straddling the boundary between the Wheatbelt and Mid West regions of Western Australia, 211 km north of Perth. The park was gazetted in 1992. It includes two mesas known as Mount Lesueur and Moun ...

which has eroded away around it. Mount Lesueur was first sighted and named by Europeans as the French ship the ''Naturaliste'' sailed past Jurien Bay on its voyage up the Western Australian coast. It was named in honour of Charles Alexander Lesueur, a natural history artist on board the ship. The next recorded sighting was by Captain

George Grey Sir George Grey, KCB (14 April 1812 – 19 September 1898) was a British soldier, explorer, colonial administrator and writer. He served in a succession of governing positions: Governor of South Australia, twice Governor of New Zealand, Gov ...

, who led a small party through the area in 1839 after they were shipwrecked near Kalbarri. In 1849 a party led by A.C. Gregory ascended Mount Lesueur. They were followed the next year by botanical collector James Drummond on the first of his many visits to the area. A reserve (No.24275) was created around Mount Lesueur for "educational purposes" in the 1950s. A more extensive area was gazetted as a national park in 1992. Mount Lesueur has an extremely high level of plant biodiversity, making it of immense research and conservation importance to botanists. It has been identified with coal geology.

References

Lesueur Wheatbelt (Western Australia) {{WesternAustralia-geo-stub