He was a broken and disappointed man, worn out by disease and frustrated hopes, and nearly blind.  During six months of his long absence, he had been shut up in his weary depot prison, debarred from attempting the completion of his work, and compelled to watch his friend and companion die a lingering death from scurvy.  And when the kindly rains released him, he was doomed to be repulsed by the ever-present desert wastes.  No wonder that he despaired of the country, and viewed all its prospects through the heated, treacherous haze of the desert plains.  Yet now, close to the ranges where Sturt spent the burning summer months of his detention, there has sprung up one of the inland townships of New South Wales, where men toil just as laboriously as in a more temperate zone.

[Map.  Sturt’s Route 1844, 1845 and 1846.]

But, though baffled and unable to win the goal he strove for, never did man better deserve success.  The instructions that he received from the Home Office were, to reach the centre of the continent, to discover whether mountains or sea existed there, and, if the former, to note the flow and direction of the northern waters, but on no account to follow them down to the north coast.  Sturt was instructed to proceed by Mount Arden, a route already tried, condemned, and abandoned by Eyre; and he elected to proceed by way of the Darling.  His plan was to follow that river up as far as the Williora, a small western tributary of the Darling, opposite the place whence Mitchell turned back in 1835, after his conflict with the natives, an episode which Sturt found that they bitterly remembered.  Poole, Sturt’s second in command, resembling Mitchell in figure and appearance, the Darling blacks addressed him as Major, and evinced marked hostility towards him.  From Williora, or Laidley’s Ponds, Sturt intended to strike north-west, hoping thus to avoid the gloomy environs of Lake Torrens, and the treacherous surface of its bed.  At Moorundi, on the Murray, where Eyre was then stationed as Resident Magistrate, the party was mustered and the start made.

In addition to Poole, Sturt was accompanied by Dr. Browne, a thorough bushman and an excellent surgeon, who went as a volunteer and personal friend.  With the party as surveyor’s draftsman, went McDouall Stuart, whose fame as explorer was afterwards destined nearly to equal that of his leader.  In addition there were twelve men, eleven horses, one spring-cart, three bullock-drays, thirty bullocks, one horse-dray, two hundred sheep, four kangaroo dogs, and two sheep dogs.

Eyre accompanied the expedition as far as Lake Victoria, which they reached on the 10th of September, 1844.  On the 11th of October they arrived at Laidley’s Ponds.  This was the place from which Sturt intended to leave the Darling for the interior, and where he expected to find, from the account given him by the natives, a fair-sized creek heading from a low range, visible at a distance to the north-west.  But he found the stream to be a mere surface channel, distributing the flood water of the Darling into some shallow lakes about seven or eight miles distant.  Sturt despatched Poole and Stuart to this range to see if they could obtain a glimpse of the country beyond to the north-west.