Narrative of an Expedition into Central Australia / Performed Under the Authority of Her Majesty's Government, During the Years 1844, 5, and 6, Together With A Notice of the Province of South Australia in 1847

by Charles Sturt

Piesse's Knob

It was, as has been found in South Australia, a surface deposit, protruding or cropping out of the ground in immense clean blocks. This ore was highly magnetic; the veins of the metal run north and south, the direction of the ranges, as did a similar crop on the plains at the S.E. base of the ranges. Generally speaking there was nothing bold or picturesque in the scenery of the Barrier Range, but the Rocky Glen and some few others of a similar description were exceptions. As the Barrier Range ran parallel to the coast ranges, so there were other ranges to the eastward of the Barrier Range, running parallel to it, and they were separated by broad plains, partly open and partly covered with brush. The general elevation of the ranges was about 1200 feet above the level of the sea, but some of the hills exceeded 1600. Mount Lyell was 2000; Mount Gipps 1500; Lewis's Hill 1000: but the general elevation of the range might be rather under than over what I have stated. It appears to me that the whole of the geological formation of this portion of the continent is the same, and that all the lines of ranges terminate in the same kind of way to the north, that is to say, in detached flat-topped hills of compact or indurated quartz shewing white and abrupt faces. So terminated the Coonbaralba Range, and so Mr. Eyre tells us did the Mount Serle Range, and so terminated the range we saw to the westward of Lake Torrens.

That they exhibit evidences of a past violent commotion of waters, I think any one who will follow my steps and view them, will be ready to admit.

That the range of hills I have called "Stanley's Barrier Range," and that all the mountain chains to the eastward and westward of it, were once so many islands I have not the slightest doubt, and that during the primeval period, a sea covered the deserts over which I wandered; but it is impossible for a writer, whatever powers of description he may have, to transfer to the minds of his readers the same vivid impressions his own may have received, on a view of any external object.

From the remarks into which I have thus been led, as well as those which have escaped me in the course of this narrative, it will be seen that the impressions I had received as to the past and present state of the continent were rather strengthened than diminished, on my further knowledge of its internal structure.

It is true, that I did not find an inland sea as I certainly expected to have done, but the country as a desert was what I had anticipated, although I could not have supposed it would have proved of such boundless extent.

Viewing the objects for which the Expedition was equipped, and its results, there can, I think, be no doubt, as to the non-existence of any mountain ranges in the interior of Australia, but, on the contrary, that its central regions are nearly if not quite on a sea level, and that the north coast is separated from the south as effectually as if seas rolled between them. I have stated my opinion that that portion of the desert which I tried to cross continues with undiminished breadth to the Great Australian Bight, and I agree with Captain Flinders, in supposing that if an inland sea exists any where, it exists underneath and behind that bank, (speaking from seaward). It would, I think, be unreasonable to suppose that such an immense tract of sandy desert, once undoubtedly a sea-bed, should immediately contract; considering, indeed, the sterile character of the country to the north of Gawler's Range, to the westward of Port Lincoln, and along the whole of the south coast of Australia, nearly to King George's Sound, I must confess I have no hope of any inland fertile country. I am aware it is the opinion of some of my friends that the Stony Desert may communicate with Lake Torrens. Such may have been and still may be the case--I will not argue the contrary, or answer for the changes in so extraordinary a region. I only state my own ideas from what I observed, strengthened by my view of the position I occupied, when at my farthest north; we will therefore refer to that position, and to the position of Lake Torrens, and see how far it is probable, that a large channel, such as I have described the Stony Dessert to be, should turn so abruptly, as it must do to connect itself with that basin; the evident fall of the interior, as far as that fact could be ascertained, being plainly from east to west.

The western shore of Lake Torrens, as laid down by Mr. Eyre, is in 137 degrees 40 minutes or thereabouts. Its eastern shore in 141 degrees of longitude. Its southern extremity being in lat. 28 1/2 degrees. My position was in 138 degrees of long. and 24 degrees 40 minutes of latitude. I was therefore within 20 miles as far to the westward of the westernmost part of Lake Torrens, and was also 250 geographical miles due north of it. To gain Lake Torrens, the Stony Desert must turn at a right angle from its known course, and in such case hills must exist to the westward of where I was, for hills alone could so change the direction of a current, but the whole aspect of the interior would argue against such a conclusion. I never lost sight of the probability of Lake Torrens being connected with some central feature, until my hopes were destroyed by the nature of the country I traversed, nor do I think it probable that in so level a region as that in which I left it, there is any likelihood of the Stony Desert changing its direction so much as to form any connection with the sandy basin to which I have alluded. Nevertheless it may do so. We naturally cling to the ideas we ourselves have adopted, and it is difficult to transfer them to the mind of another. In reference however to what I had previously stated, I would give the following quotation from Flinders. His impressions from what he observed while sailing along the coast, in a great measure correspond with mine when travelling inland, the only point we differ upon is as to the probable origin of the great sea-wall, which appeared to him to be of calcareous formation, and he therefore concluded that it had been a coral reef raised by some convulsion of nature. Had Capt. Flinders been able to examine the rock formation of the Great Australian Bight, he would have found that it was for the most part an oolitic limestone, with many shells imbedded in it, similar in substance and in formation to the fossil bed of the Murray, but differing from it in colour.