Explorer of the North-West, and discoverer of a stock route between South Australia and Western Australia.

Photo: Mathewson, Brisbane.] The isolation of that remote corner of the continent in which Grey had made his maiden effort at exploration, added to the discouraging and forbidding report brought back by Alexander Forrest of his repulse by the King Leopold Range, had deterred further exploration there.

Frank H.
Hann, who had been a Queensland pioneer, came over to Derby, and, after one or two tentative excursions into the desert country to the south, had his attention drawn to the unknown country to the north of the King Leopold Range.

Hann crossed the range with difficulty; but after examining the country to the north and east on the coast side of the range, he was so well satisfied with its pastoral capabilities that he returned to Derby and applied for a pastoral lease.
Wishing to make a closer examination of the locality, he returned accompanied by Sub-Inspector Ord.

Some of the tributaries of the Fitzroy were traced and named, and an extensive river, which Hann called the Phillips, was afterwards re-named the Hann by the Surveyor-General of Western Australia.