Mount Hopeless
| Mount Hopeless | ||
|---|---|---|
| height | 127 m | |
| location | South Australia | |
| Mountains | Flinders Ranges | |
| Coordinates | 29 ° 41 ′ 0 ″ S , 139 ° 41 ′ 0 ″ E | |
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The Mount Hopeless located in the Flinders Ranges in South Australia , southwest of Lake Blanche , in the Cooper Creek opens. The mountain was so named by the explorer Charles Sturt in 1844 when he gave up the search for the fabled inland freshwater lake of Australia (hopeless), which was long suspected to be in the middle of the vast continent. The stony mountain is about 127 meters high.
When the Burke and Wills expedition took place in 1860, Blanchewater Station was about 40 kilometers from this mountain, an inhabited outpost in arid terrain in Australia, not far from Marree . It was a large cattle station, the ruins of which are now on the Strzelecki Track . At the time it was the northernmost cattle breeding station in South Australia. The desperate and weakened expedition group with Robert O'Hara Burke , William John Wills and John King tried to reach the place about 150 miles away from Cooper Creek because it was closer than Menindee . Menindee was where they left a deposit. They did not reach Mount Hopeless but returned to Cooper Creek. Wills and Burke died, only King survived and was found alive by the rescue group led by naturalist Alfred William Howitt because Aboriginal people had kept him alive.
In 1870, Australian cattle thief Harry Redford drove a herd of an estimated 600 to 1000 Queensland cattle on the Strzelecki Track past Mount Hopeless and sold them to the Blanchewater Cattle Station for £ 5000.