Map - Mount Crawford (South Australia) (Mount Crawford)

Mount Crawford  (Mount Crawford)
Mount Crawford is a hill in the locality also named Mount Crawford in South Australia approximately 15 km north of Birdwood in the Mount Lofty Ranges.

The Indigenous name for Mount Crawford was Teetáka. The mount was given its present name in 1839 by Charles Sturt after James Coutts Crawford (1817–1889). Crawford had a Royal Navy background. He and his drovers arrived overland from NSW in April 1839 with 700 cattle, setting up a hut and cattle run at the base of the mount. Crawford soon moved on to be a pioneer of Wellington, New Zealand.

In February 1840 Crawford's hutkeeper, an old soldier, was bailed up by bushrangers Curran, Hughes, and Fox, who robbed him of his arms and rations. Curran and Hughes were executed by hanging at Adelaide on 16 March 1840 for an armed robbery committed earlier near Gawler.

* Geoff Manning, in his Place Names of South Australia, gives a different derivation: E.J.F. Crawford (later proprietor of Hindmarsh Brewery), the explorer J.F. Crawford, and T.G.T. Crawford, sons of Capt. Crawford, master of HMS Victorious ran sheep in the area.

Pioneer families during the first decades of closer settlement included surnames Coleman, Hammat, Rankine, Polden, Murray, Warren, and Whyte. The subsequent history was one of mining and pastoralism, until being largely replaced by forestry and recreation activities.

An alluvial goldrush occurred in the area in the late nineteenth century, and fossicking still goes on in the area today.

 
Map - Mount Crawford  (Mount Crawford)
Country - Australia
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Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of 7617930 km2, Australia is the largest country by area in Oceania and the world's sixth-largest country. Australia is the oldest, flattest, and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils. It is a megadiverse country, and its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes and climates, with deserts in the centre, tropical rainforests in the north-east, and mountain ranges in the south-east.

The ancestors of Aboriginal Australians began arriving from south east Asia approximately 65,000 years ago, during the last ice age. Arriving by sea, they settled the continent and had formed approximately 250 distinct language groups by the time of European settlement, maintaining some of the longest known continuing artistic and religious traditions in the world. Australia's written history commenced with the European maritime exploration of Australia. The Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon was the first known European to reach Australia, in 1606. In 1770, the British explorer James Cook mapped and claimed the east coast of Australia for Great Britain, and the First Fleet of British ships arrived at Sydney in 1788 to establish the penal colony of New South Wales. The European population grew in subsequent decades, and by the end of the 1850s gold rush, most of the continent had been explored by European settlers and an additional five self-governing British colonies established. Democratic parliaments were gradually established through the 19th century, culminating with a vote for the federation of the six colonies and foundation of the Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901. Australia has since maintained a stable liberal democratic political system and wealthy market economy.
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