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Updated: May 2, 2025
On a sheep station he met with a man named Wright, who made himself very agreeable; the two were soon great friends, and Burke, whose generosity was unchecked by any prudence, gave to this utterly unqualified person an important charge in the expedition. On leaving the Murrumbidgee they ascended the Darling, till they reached Menindie the place from which Sturt had set out sixteen years before.
Finally the river led them into the desert described by Sturt: "Plains gaping with fissures, grassless and waterless," and he turned back satisfied that the Victoria had not its outflow in the Gulf of Carpentaria, as hoped for by Sir Thomas Mitchell, but lost itself in Cooper's Creek. The loss of flour, through the natives, prevented Kennedy from extending his explorations towards the Gulf.
Among other presents I received a fine and valuable kangaroo-dog from my friend, Captain Sturt, and which had fortunately arrived safely, and in excellent condition. The bran and oats which I had applied for had been most liberally provided, so that by remaining in depot for a few weeks longer, we might again hope to get our horses into good condition.
The country, indeed, bore every resemblance to that around the marshes of the Macquarie, but I was too weary to make any further effort; indeed it was too late for one to undertake anything until the morning." The following day, accompanied by his friend, Sturt proceeded to examine the river.
As it was the dry time of the year, immediately preceding the setting in of the rains, it shows what a severe season must have been encountered by Sturt when on his last struggle north, as that explorer finally turned his-back in much the same locality.
He had found the upper tributaries of the second great river system of the interior, as Sturt -had found its lower outflow, and he had thrown open the wonderful western prairies, but he was as far from the Gulf as ever. Light-hearted and satisfied, the party rode on for days through the beautiful undulating downs country.
Had, however, the intervening country been of the same level as the lake, and flat instead of formed into high sand ridges and hills, there might have been a possibility of crossing a connecting creek of the same character as the Sturt without noticing it.
They camped that night at a small swamp, and next morning Sturt turned back, like Oxley, coming to the conclusion that: "Yet upon the whole, the space I traversed is unlikely to become the haunt of civilised man, or will become so in isolated spots, as a chain of connection to a more fertile country; if such a country exist to the westward."
He joined the party at Menindie, which, for the purpose of explanation, may be said to occupy the same position on the Darling as Laidley's Ponds, whence Sturt started for the interior.
We were now in nearly the same latitude as that in which Captain Sturt had discovered brine springs in the bed of the Darling, and which had rendered even that river so perfectly salt that his party could not make use of it. September 2.
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