Ernest Giles

Born in England in 1835, Ernest Giles moved to Australia as a boy and grew up in South Australia. He worked in the bush before becoming one of the nineteenth century’s major inland explorers, leading expeditions across central and western Australia.

Giles is especially remembered for a series of difficult journeys in the 1870s, including crossings of the deserts between South Australia and Western Australia. Along the way he named landmarks such as Kata Tjuta, which he called Mount Olga, and wrote about the landscapes, dangers, and people he encountered.

He later turned his travels into books, including Australia Twice Traversed, which helped make his adventures known to a wider public. Giles died in 1897, but he remains an important figure in the history of Australian exploration and travel writing.