From the year 1856 a very active spirit of exploration seized on the public of South Australia. In this year Augustus Gregory was making the great Australian expedition; in Western Australia the spirit of exploration was actively afloat, and South Australia could not lag behind. The gold discoveries of the other colonies, especially of the bordering one, Victoria, made it most important that South Australia should have all possible inducements for keeping her working population at home. It was equally desirable to extend the space over which the squatters could spread their flocks and herds, and speculative enterprise was turning in that direction; but the first attempt was to open up a gold and a coal field.

For this purpose Mr. Benjamin Herschell Babbage, the geologist of the colony, was sent out, in consequence of a memorial to the Governor, signed by nearly the whole of the commercial houses in Adelaide. Mr. Babbage examined the country to some distance north and east of Adelaide, about Tanunda and Angaston, the Kaiser Stuhl and Jacob's Creek, the Gawler river, and the basin of the North Rhine, Evan Dale, Flaxman's Valley, the Barossa Range, Mount Crawford, etc., returning by the South Rhine and Mount Torrens to Adelaide. In this tour Mr. Babbage collected 300 specimens of stones generally found in gold districts, felspar, trap, basalt, soapstone, conglomerates, horneblende, opal, chalcedony, etc., without coming on the gold itself.