Anyone been to
Mount Hopeless in South Australia?
I've identified where I think is the right place. 126m ASL. South of Lake Blanch. West of Lake Callabonna. About 15 or 20 km off the Strzlecki Track.
Coordinates: 139.6746,-29.7018
Would I get out there in my 2wd tray back ute? Shouldn't be too much of a climb on foot at 126m. Is it worth the climb?
Looks like it's on station property on a station track. Permission needed?
Mount Hopeless, as many would know, is where Edward
John Eyre formulated his horseshoe lake theory that was accepted and held in exploration for quite a few years. Eyre thought
Lake Torrens stretched right around from near Port Agusta, around the north of the Flinders and south to
Lake Frome and maybe further.
From the journal of Edward
John Eyre:
"September 2.—At thirty–five
miles we reached the little elevation I had been steering for, and ascended
Mount Hopeless, and cheerless and hopeless indeed was the prospect before us. As I had anticipated, the view was both extensive and decisive. We were now past all the ranges; and for three quarters of the compass, extending from south, round by east and north, to west, the horizon was one unbroken level, except where the fragments of table land, or the ridge of the lake, interrupted its uniformity
The lake 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, and put an end to an undertaking from which so much was anticipated. I had now a view before me that would have damped the ardour of the most enthusiastic, or dissipated the doubts of the most seeptical. To the showers that fell on the evening of the 31st of August, we were solely indebted for having been able to travel thus far; had there been much more rain the country would have been impracticable for horses,—if less we could not have procured water to have enabled us to make such a push as we had done."
Thanks,
Laurie.