ifferent route. He wrote a
book, Spinifex and Sand, which contains a most interesting account of
this journey, as well as a graphic and picturesque description of the
physical features of the Great Sandy Desert.
Carnegie died before he had made more than this one contribution to
Australian geography. Like the ill-fated Horrocks, he had the explorer's
ardent spirit. His restless and adventurous soul ever leading him onward
to the frontiers of settlement and the outskirts of civilised life, he
fell beneath a shower of poisoned arrows at Lokojo in Nigeria, on the
west coast of Africa, on the 27th of November, 1900.
20.4. HANN AND BROCKMAN IN THE NORTH-WEST.
[Illustration. 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 la
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