The Explorer Who Named Lake Eyre – and What He Actually Found
Most people who visit Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre know the lake by both names now — the traditional Arabana name alongside the European one given by the explorer John Edward Eyre in 1840. But fewer people know much about Eyre himself, or the circumstances under which he reached the lake.
It’s an interesting story. Not quite the triumphant discovery narrative that often gets attached to these moments.
Who Was John Edward Eyre?
Eyre was a British-born explorer and colonial administrator who arrived in Australia in 1833, aged 18. Before his famous expedition, he had already made significant overland journeys in New South Wales and South Australia, driving stock and developing a reputation as someone willing to travel further into the interior than most of his contemporaries.
By the time he set out on the expedition that would lead him to the lake, he was 25. He had a specific goal: to find an overland route from Adelaide to the northwest of the continent. The lake was not the objective. It turned up in the way.
The 1840 Expedition
Eyre departed Adelaide in June 1840 with a party including Wylie, a young Noongar man who would prove essential to the expedition’s survival. They moved north through the Flinders Ranges into country that was increasingly arid and difficult. Water was the central preoccupation — how to find it, how to carry enough of it, how far the next reliable source might be.
It was August 1840 when Eyre’s party first reached the lake. What they found was not a vast inland sea but a gleaming, blinding expanse of white salt. The lake was dry. Or nearly so — in some areas a thin film of brine sat over the surface.
Eyre described the experience as deeply discouraging. He had hoped the interior of Australia might contain a large freshwater lake or river system — a discovery that would have had enormous practical implications for settlement. What he found instead was evidence that the interior was not what he had hoped.
What He Made of It
Eyre named the lake after himself — as was the convention of the time — and continued west rather than returning immediately to Adelaide. His subsequent journey along the Great Australian Bight with Wylie is one of the most remarkable survival stories in Australian exploration, involving the murder of most of his expedition party by disaffected companions and a months-long ordeal to reach Albany in Western Australia.
The lake, sitting somewhat quietly in the account of a larger ordeal, ended up with his name. The Arabana people, who had known it for tens of thousands of years before Eyre arrived, called it Kati Thanda.
The Dual Name Today
In 2012, the South Australian government officially adopted the dual name: Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre. The Arabana name comes first. It’s a small acknowledgment of a very long history — the lake’s European name is less than 200 years old, while the Arabana connection to the country goes back 50,000 years or more.
When our guides talk about the lake on tour, we use both names. It feels like the right thing to do. The full history of the place — the Arabana relationship to it, the story of Eyre’s arrival, the science of how it floods and dries — is part of what makes a visit to the lake genuinely worthwhile rather than just a tick on a bucket list.
