Pronounced ‘Strike.
On Wednesday 23 September 1891 during the Elder Scientific Exploring Expedition, David Lindsay left the overnight camp and travelled 5.5 kilometres to this high sand ridge. An extract from his journal reads:
“I went to the “conspicuous white sandhill,” three and a half miles distant, on bearing 197. Low sandhills, and then a gentle slope with quartzite outcropping; then a bare white sandridge at the foot of the hill, which was very steep and of pure white sand, like the sand of the seashore, above which it was elevated 1,150ft. From the top an extensive view was obtained. To the south, over a level-looking black scrubby country, with an occasional glimpse of reddish sand, the horizon appearing perfectly level and distant twenty miles; to the north the horizon is more irregular, as the long rounded tops of sandhills can be seen; to the east long black ridges with hollows between, distant, say, twenty miles; to the west distant, say eight or ten miles, is a long level black scrubby hill, with white sandhills lying between us which extend northerly but apparently not southerly. There are three pine trees on the summit of this hill, and as it is very conspicuous and visible, towering above its fellows, for some distance it should be an important landmark and guide for future travellers to Queen Victoria’s Spring; white gumtrees in the deep narrow hollows on either side.”
Exactly when the descriptor ‘Streich Mound’ was applied to the ‘conspicuous white sandhill’ is unclear as two days later he still referred to it as the “conspicuous white sandhill” and no further mention is made in the text of his journal. The name Streich Mound appears on the accompanying map.
Streich’s Monument – a cement post with a plaque attached – is on the top of the sand ridge at 30o27’53” 123o41’4”. It commemorates geologist Victor Streich’s contribution to the 1891 Elder Scientific Exploration Expedition.
Today, a track leads partway up the Mound and to within 100 metres of the Monument.
Victor Streich, F.R.G.S., Lond., F.G.S., Lond., was a well-respected geologist. He discovered a belt of auriferous country about 250 kilometres north-east of Queen Victoria Springs, and claimed the Government reward of £1,000. He was the geologist on the Elder Scientific Exploration Expedition. He died in Coolgardie in 1905 at the age of 40 years.
Reference:
Lindsay, David, Journal of the Elder Scientific Exploring Expedition, 1891-2, C.E. Bristow S.A. Government Printer, Adelaide, 1893, Facsimile Edition Hesperian Press with the Western Australian Explorers Diaries Project, 2018, pp106-07.