In January, 1879, the thunderstorms set in, and the party reached Powell’s Creek telegraph station in safety.

This expedition opened up a good deal of fine pastoral country, which is now all stocked and settled.

Western Australia was still busy in the field of exploration.  In 1876 Adam Johns and Phillip Saunders started from Roebourne and crossed to the overland line in South Australia.  Ostensibly theirs was a prospecting expedition; but as the country to the eastward of the Fitzroy River was then unknown, it was an important exploration event.  They were unsuccessful in finding gold, but on their arrival at the line they reported having passed through good pastoral country.

There is no doubt that the east and west tracks of the Queensland explorers, and of Alexander Forrest,* did more to throw open that part of Australia to settlement than did the north and south journey of Stuart, more important as that one was from the purely geographical point of view.  Stuart led the way across the centre of the continent, but even after the telegraph line was constructed on his route, very little was known of the country to the east and the west.

[Footnote.] See Chapter 19.

The South Australian Government had several times made slight attempts to reach the Queensland border, but in 1878, they sent out H.V.  Barclay to make a trigonometrical survey of most of the untraversed country between the line and the Queensland boundary.  Barclay left Alice Springs, of which station he first fixed the exact geographical position by a series of telegraphic exchanges with the observatory in Adelaide.  Barclay had much dry country to contend against, but managed to reach a north point close to Scarr’s furthest south.  He did not, however, on that occasion, actually arrive at the Queensland border, but explored the territory on the South Australian side.  During the conduct of the survey he discovered and named the Jervois Ranges, the spurs of the eastern MacDonnell, and the following tributaries of Lake Eyre —­ the Hale, the Plenty, the Marshall, and the Arthur Rivers.

In 1883, Favenc, on a private expedition to report on pastoral country, traced the heads of several of the rivers of the Carpentarian Gulf, and in the following year left the north Newcastle Waters to examine and trace the Macarthur River.  The river was followed from its source to the sea, and a large extent of valuable pastoral country and several permanent springs found in its valley; a large tributary, the Kilgour, was also discovered and named.  These short excursions, and some exploratory trips made by MacPhee, east of Daly Waters, may be said to have concluded exploration between the line and the Queensland border.