There must be a basic concept idea that I'm missing here but why can't I just see the volume at /dev/hda1 ?
The filename /dev/hda1 refers to a device driver that knows how to access your hardware.
It doesn't know anything else - specifically it doesn't know or care what sort of filesystem organisation you have chosen (i.e. fat, ntfs, ext2, and so on)
"mount"ing the disk provides that part of the equation - it basically provides the filesystem access code.
The basic concept idea is the separation of responsibilities between the hardware access code, and the filesystem organisation code.
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