Frank Hann. Explorer of the North-West, and discoverer of a stock route between South Australia and Western Australia. Photo: Mathewson, Brisbane.
The isolation of that remote corner of the continent in which Grey had made his maiden effort at exploration, added to the discouraging and forbidding report brought back by Alexander Forrest of his repulse by the King Leopold Range, had deterred further exploration there. Frank H. Hann, who had been a Queensland pioneer, came over to Derby, and, after one or two tentative excursions into the desert country to the south, had his attention drawn to the unknown country to the north of the King Leopold Range. Hann crossed the range with difficulty; but after examining the country to the north and east on the coast side of the range, he was so well satisfied with its pastoral capabilities that he returned to Derby and applied for a pastoral lease.
Wishing to make a closer examination of the locality, he returned accompanied by Sub-Inspector Ord. Some of the tributaries of the Fitzroy were traced and named, and an extensive river, which Hann called the Phillips, was afterwards re-named the Hann by the Surveyor-General of Western Australia. One very rugged range could not be surmounted, and had to be skirted to the east, as the only apparent gap was an impassable gorge with precipitous sides, through which the Fitzroy River forced a passage. It was named the Sir John Range. After more good pastoral country was found, the party returned to Derby. Hann afterwards, in 1903, made the first of several trips from Laverton, Western Australia, to Oodnadatta in South Australia. He reported having found a practicable stock-route, of which he was chiefly in search, as far as the Warburton Ranges, and some pastoral land north and west of Elder Creek. Since then he made another journey with the same object in view, but encountered extremely dry weather and underwent many hardships. Hann was born in Wiltshire, in 1846, and came to Victoria with his parents at a very early age. He spent most of his life squatting in North Queensland, where he held several station properties.
In the first year of the present century the Western Australian Government followed up Hann's explorations north of the King Leopold Range, by a larger and better-equipped party instructed to make a thorough examination of the region. It was placed in charge of F.S. Brockman, a Government surveyor, who had with him C. Crossland as second, F. House as naturalist, and Gibbs Maitland as geologist.
Brockman was born in Western Australia in 1857, was educated at Bishop's College, and after a spell in the bush on his father's properties, he joined a Government Survey camp, as cadet. In 1879 he started as surveyor on his own account. From 1882 to 1897 he was employed by the Lands and Survey Department in many parts of Western Australia from Cambridge Gulf in the north to the Great Bight in the south. At the time when he was selected to lead the Kimberley expedition, he was Controller of the Field Survey Staff.
Brockman was most successful in securing full information of this long-secluded region; of its geographical, geological, and botanical details. Many interesting photographs were obtained of the different physical features and of the aborigines and their modes of life; amongst them being views of rock paintings similar to the mysterious scenes noticed by Grey during his first expedition to the Glenelg River.
