Meeting Gorge - WA

The Rudall River was named by Frank Hann after the surveyor and explorer William Frederick Rudall The first European explorations of the Rudall River area itself came in 1896-97, when surveyor William Frederick Rudall led a party of men in search of George Jones and Charles Wells, the missing men from the Calvert Expedition. Rudall made three trips through the present park area, during which he named several of its features -- including Mt Connaughton, after one of the members of the search party, and Hanging Rock-or recorded their Aboriginal names. At that time, Rudall noted that there was good gold-bearing land, but that the remoteness and sheer inhospitality of the area made it uneconomical to investigate further. He crossed the river several times and in his account of the search, written a few years later, he commented that:

"The Rudall River is a series of deep gulches 8-10 feet between banks and altogether is about 200 yards wide. There must be large quantities of water run down it in a rainy season."

Someone else who was in the area at about the same time was Frank H Hann. Hann was a versatile and wide-ranging prospector, surveyor and explorer who was investigating the area for stock grazing. Hann, then about 60 years old, entered the Broadhurst Range, just north of the park, on 31 May, 1897. He continued south to the river, then north-east to Lake Misery (later renamed Lake Dora by Rudall after his fiancee Dora Miller). He tried his hand prospecting for gold near Mt Eva before heading south to the McKay Range and then westwards. As he approached the area near Hanging Rock, and was running short of water, he saw smoke in the distance. He followed the smoke and 'bumped into' Rudall and his search party in a place later named Meeting Gorge. Rudall described him as, "a hardy old bushman".

Meeting gorge is a shallow gorge wedged between sand dunes to the south and low rocky hills to the north. It is punctuated by shallow ephemeral pools and the odd white trunked gum. It is situated approximately half way between Hanging Rock and Tchukardine Pool.