Austin now came to the upper tributaries of the Murchison only to find them waterless.  Even the deep cut channel of the Murchison itself was dry.  They crossed the river, but beyond it all their efforts to penetrate westward were in vain.  They had fought their way to within one hundred miles of Shark’s Bay, but they had then been so long without water that further advance meant certain death.  Even during the retreat to the Murchison, the lives of the horses were saved only by the accidental discovery of a small native well in a most improbable situation, namely, in the middle of a bare ironstone plain.  Their only course now was to fall back on the Murchison, hoping that they would find water at their crossing.  Austin pushed on ahead of the main body, and struck the river twenty-five miles below their previous crossing, to make the tantalising discovery that the pools of water on which they had fixed their hopes were hopelessly salt.

A desperate and vain search was made to the southward, during a day of fierce and terrible heat; but on the next day, having made for some small hills they had sighted, they providentially found both water and grass.  The whole party rested at this spot, which was gratefully named Mount Welcome.

Nothing daunted by the sufferings he had undergone, Austin now made another attempt to reach Shark’s Bay.  On the way to the Murchison, they had induced an old native to come with them to point out the watering-places of the blacks.  At first he was able to show them one or two that in all probability they would have missed, but after they had crossed the Murchison and proceeded some distance to the westward, the water the native had relied on was found to have disappeared, and it was only after the most acute sufferings from thirst and the loss of some more horses, that they managed to struggle back to Mount Welcome.

Austin’s conduct during these terrible marches seems to have bordered on the heroic.  Whilst his companions fell away one by one and lay down to die, and the one native of the wilds was cowering weeping under a bush, he toiled on and managed to reach a little well which the blackfellow had formerly shown him.  Without resting, he tramped back with water to revive his exhausted companions.

At Mount Welcome they found the water on the point of giving out, and weak and exhausted though they were, an immediate start had to be made to the Geraldine mine, a small settlement having been formed there to work the galena lode discovered by Gregory.  That they would ever reach the mine the explorers could not hope; they and their horses were in a state of extreme weakness, the distance to the mine was one hundred and sixty miles, and to the highest point on the Murchison, where Gregory had found water, their first stage was ninety miles.  They began their journey at midnight, and by means of forced marches, travelling day and night, they reached Gregory’s old camp on the river.  Fortunately they had found a small supply of water at one place on the way.  From this point the worst of their perils were passed.  They followed the river down, obtaining water from springs in the banks, and on the 27th of November arrived at the mine, where they were warmly entertained.  Thence they returned to Perth, some by sea and some overland.