This they did much sooner than was expected, for at the end of the first day’s march their camp was set in the very midst of the reeds.  A halt for a couple of days was made, whilst Sturt prepared his despatches to the Governor.  On the 26th, the two messengers were sent off to Bathurst, and the progress of the party was resumed.  Before the day closed, they found themselves on a dreary expanse of flats and of desolate reed beds.  The progress of the main body was thus suddenly and completely checked, and Sturt decided to launch the boat and with two men endeavour to trace the course of the river, while Hume and two others endeavoured to find an opening to the northward.

The boat voyage soon terminated, for Sturt was as completely baffled as Oxley had been.  The channel ceased altogether, and the boat quietly grounded.  Sturt could do nothing but return to camp and await Hume’s report.  All search for the lost river proved vain.

Hume had found a serpentine sheet of water to the north which he was inclined to think was the continuation of the elusive Macquarie.  He had pushed on past it, but had been checked by another body of reed beds.  It was decided to shift camp to this lagoon and launch the boat once more; but without result, for the boat was hauled ashore again after having vainly followed the supposed channel in amongst reeds and shallows.  Again the leader and his second went forward on a scouting trip.  Each took with them two men; Sturt going to the north-west, and Hume to the north-east.  They left on the last day of December, 1828.

Sturt toiled on until after sunset he came to a northward-flowing creek, in which there was a fair supply of water.  Next day their course lay through plains intersected with belts of scrub, and they discovered another creek, inferior to the last one both in size and the quality of the water.  They camped for a few hours on its bank, and Sturt called it New Year’s Creek, but it is now known as the Bogan River.  They were about to pass that night without water on the edge of a dry plain, when one of the men had his attention drawn to the flight of a pigeon, and searching, found a puddle of rain water which barely satisfied them.  An isolated hill with perpendicular sides, which Sturt had noticed for some time, now attracted his attention, as being a lofty point of vantage from which to get an extensive view to the west.  They accordingly made for it, over more promising country.  They reached the hill which Sturt called Oxley’s Tableland, but from its summit he saw nothing but a stretch of monotonous plain, with no sign of the long-sought river.  That night they camped at a small swamp, and the next morning turned back, Sturt agreeing with Oxley, but without as much reason, that “the space I traversed is unlikely to become the haunt of civilised man.”  Hume did not return until the day after Sturt’s arrival.  He reported that the Castlereagh River must have suddenly turned