First view of the salt desert - called Lake Torrens

In 1843 Edward Charles Frome led an expedition to the Mid-North of South Australia, where he produced this watercolour of a seemingly endless stretch of salt desert. The work depicts a lone figure on horseback looking out to a large lake to the east of the Northern Flinders Ranges of South Australia. Given the name Lake Frome by colonists, the lake is on the land of the Adnyamathanha people of the Flinders Ranges and its Aboriginal name is Mudna, which in its English translation loosely means trap. The name refers to both the possibility of being caught in the muddy grounds below the shallow water and the shape of the lake itself.

Frome produced some of the most accurate early colonial landscapes of South Australia in his role as the colony’s third surveyor-general (1839–1849). Born in Gibraltar on 7 January 1802, Frome spent his early years in London, before travelling to Adelaide with his family on 19 September 1839 aboard the Recovery, where he replaced Charles Sturt as surveyor-general. Sturt had been temporarily filling the position following the death of William Light just a few weeks earlier.

Elle Freak, Associate Curator of Australian Paintings and Sculpture