Through Hitherto Impassable Ranges. Exploring the heart of the Kimberley 1884-1906.
Ned Overton.
ISBN 978-1-875778-34-8, (New, 2024), 160 x 220, Case bound, 852 pages, illustrated – colour & B&W, maps, 2.2kg, $280.00
The second volume of Kimberley exploration. Only 100 copies of this casebound edition have been printed.
The rugged King Leopolds and adjoining ranges encircle WA’s northern Kimberley district. When Alex Forrest traversed from near Geikie Gorge to Collier Bay in 1879, he found the ranges impenetrable.
Following Forrest, pastoralists and government surveyors confined themselves to the southern plains, although pastoral leases covered the entire district. Beginning in 1883, explorers began to find narrow gaps penetrating this barrier, worn by water to plain level; some of them were accessible, bypassing a dangerous climb.
Soon after the northern pastures had been initially explored the discovery of gold to the south-east gave lightly-equipped prospectors high incentive to find more gaps, opening access northwards. Shunning publicity, they made only rudimentary maps. When in 1887 Dr Thomas Lovegrove announced an expedition to investigate a new road through the “hitherto considered impassable Leopold Ranges”, he failed to appreciate the wide extent of recent traverses across the northern Kimberley – mostly initiated through, rather than over, otherwise impassable ranges.
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Ned Overton spent his first two decades in Sydney, where he gained a BSc Hons in geology from Sydney University. His career in hardrock mineral exploration began in nickel-boom Kalgoorlie, later extending to much of Australia, including the Kimberley. He has managed a gold mine start-up in NSW, helped float several exploration companies and undertaken feasibility studies and project evaluations here and in Canada, the Philippines and Fiji.
Around our Bicentennial, Ned learnt of his relationship to a First Fleeter, which piqued an interest in genealogy and the wartime exploits of several relatives, leading, post retirement, to preparing Australian history books online. He joined WAEDP’s Kimberley project almost ten years ago. The present Volume II follows Closing in on the Kimberley, 1819–1884 (2022). In addition to a third Kimberley volume, he is co-authoring a biography of Harry Stockdale.