European contact with the area first came in June 1859 with the northern explorations of John McDouall Stuart. Probing for a way into the centre of the continent Stuart wrote, “At four miles and a half struck a large broad valley in which there are the largest springs I have yet seen. The flow of water from them is immense coming in numerous streams and the country around is beautiful. I have named these ‘The Freeling Springs’ after the honourable Major Freeling M.L.C.”

After a number of attempts Stuart did eventually find a way through the Centre of the continent and on to the north coast of Australia, establishing in the process a transport and communication corridor that would become of national importance.

Prior to construction of the Overland Telegraph Repeater Station, the site had been used as a base for pastoral activities in the region and several of the buildings in the complex date from the mid to late 1860s. Pastoral activities had initially been located on Umbum Waterhole south east of the Peake, but were removed to Freeling Springs after the drought of 1864-65 had decimated the livestock belonging to Philip Levi, first pastoral lessee in the area. Levi was bankrupted by the drought and his affairs managed for some years by a group of trustees including H Ayers, EM Bagot and E Kempe.

Control then passed to S Kidman & E Kempe, with S Kidman assuming sole control when Kempe died in 1908. The Kidman Company has held the Peake pastoral lease since that time, although the Peake has mostly operated as an outstation of the much larger Anna Creek to the south. Late in Kempe’s time operations were moved to the Wood Duck locality and later still to the present station homestead site east of the old Warrina Railway Siding.

Less than a decade after Stuart’s successful crossing, the South Australian Government had committed itself to the construction of an overland telegraph along his route, an immensely important technological development which would revolutionize business and social communication between Australia and the rest of the world. Before its construction all news travelled by sea, taking from three to four months and making timely personal and business decisions almost impossible. With the completion of the 3178 km line in 1872 telegraphic signals could travel between Australia and Great Britain in a matter of hours.

The Peake was one of 11 repeater stations constructed along the line, the technology of the day requiring a repeat of the Morse code signal at approximately three hundred kilometre intervals.

Like other Overland Telegraph stations, the Peake became an important settlement in its own right, acting as a springboard for much of the last wave of European exploration in central and north western Australia.

It was closed only when the opening of the narrow gauge railway to Oodnadatta in 1891 resulted in a rationalization of telegraphic infrastructure in the area.

Indigenous people continued to live around the complex until the 1930s, but with little passing traffic (the main Oodnadatta Track having been re-routed to the west of the Peake and Denison Range) it gradually died away. Rarely visited from that time until the rise of outback tourism from the 1970s onwards, the complex now receives a steady flow of cool-season visitors making the side-trip from the Oodnadatta Track.

The ruins were stabilized by the South Australian Government in the late 1980s and in cooperation with S Kidman & Co. and the South Australian Government the community group Friends of Mound Springs carried out further on-ground works from 2009-11.

The mound springs which give the site its name are located along a fault line on the eastern margins of the Peak and Denison Range. The water-bearing aquifers of the Great Artesian Basin to the east abut the impervious basement rocks of the Range and faulting allows the pressurised ground water to escape to the surface as small seeps and mound springs. As for mound springs throughout the Basin, pressure decline following the sinking of artesian bores has resulted in a decline of spring flows, but enough water still emerges at the Peake to support small, but attractive wetland communities of plants and animals.

Extensive beds of tall reeds (Phragmites) mark the wetland areas while shallow tails of overflow water and small ponds support much shorter sedges (Cyperus). The normally dry watercourse east of the ruins is dominated by gidgee trees (Acacia cambagei) with occasional small red gums (Eucalyptus camaldulensis), the latter indicating the presence of water at shallow depth in the sands and gravels. On the rocky creek-line approach to the old mine smelter there is a fine coolabah (Eucalyptus coolabah). The stony slopes and ridges above the smelter usually support only small hardy shrubs such as Acacias and Eremophilas, but after good rains they can be clothed with many species of native grasses and short-lived flowering plants.

In spite of the reduced flows, the springs support many small aquatic animals and the invertebrates are particularly important, with a number of species that are found nowhere else, they are endemic to the Freeling Springs. The most likely invertebrate to be seen is an Isopod, a grey slater-like crustacean that crawls around in shallow water, sometimes in large numbers. The use of a hand lens will help in the inspection of numerous freshwater snails (hydrobiids), at least one species of which is endemic to Freeling Springs. Three species of small native fish are present, but the introduced mosquito fish (Gambusia) is also present, a species widely regarded as a threat to many of Australia’s small inland native fish species.