.

[Map (Diagram). Supposed Extent and Formation of Lake Torrens in 1846.]

12.1. LAKE TORRENS PIONEERS AND HORROCKS.

It will be remembered that Eyre, in 1840, reached, after much labour, an
elevation to the north-east, at the termination of the range which he had
followed, and had named it Mount Hopeless. From the outlook from its
summit he came to the conclusion that the lake was of the shape shown in
the diagram, completely surrounding the northern portion of the new
colony of South Australia. In fact, he formed a theory that the colony in
far distant times had been an island, the low-lying flats to the east
joining the plains west of the Darling. It was in 1843 that the
Surveyor-General of South Australia, Captain Frome, undertook an
expedition to determine the dimensions of this mysterious lake. He
reached Mount Serle, and found the dry bed of a great lake to the
eastward, as Eyre had described, but discovered that Eyre had made an
error of thirty miles in longitude, placing it too far to the east. He
got no further north. He thus confirmed the existence of a lake eastward
of Lake Torrens (now Lake Frome), but achieved nothing to prove or
disprove Eyre's theory of their continuity. Prior to this the pioneers
had spread settlement both east and west of Eyre's track from Adelaide to
the head of Spencer's Gulf. Amongst these early leaders of civilisation
in the central state are to be found the names of Hawker, Hughes,
Campbell, Robinson, and Heywood. But unfortunately the details of their
expeditions in search of grazing country have not been preserved.

[Illustration. John Ainsworth Horrocks.]

John Ainsworth Horrocks is one of those whose accidental death at the
very outset of his career plunged his name into oblivion. Had he lived to
climb to the summit of his ambition as an explorer, it would have been
written large in Australian history. That he had some premonition of the
conditions necessary to successful exploration to the west is shown by
his having been the first to employ the camel as an aid to exploration.
He took one with him on his last and fatal trip, and it is an example of
fate's cruel irony that the presence of this animal was inadvertently the
cause of his death.

Horrocks was born at Penwortham Hall, Lancashire, on March 22nd, 1818. He
was very much taken with the South Australian scheme of colonisation, and
left London for Adelaide, where he arrived in 1839. He at once took up
land, and