Sturt's Depot Glen. The Glen, eroded in vertical silurian slate, is less than a mile long. Poole rests by the creek where the gorge opens quite abruptly on to a vast cretaceous plain. Photo by the Reverend J.M. Curran.
The party now left the Barrier Range, and followed a course to another range further north, staying for some time at a small lagoon while engaged in making an examination of the country ahead. On the 27th of January, 1845, they camped on a creek rising in a small range, and affording, at its head, a fine supply of permanent water. When upon its banks the explorers pitched their tents, they little thought that it would be the 17th of the following July before they would strike camp again. This was the Depot Glen, and an extract from Sturt's journal depicts the situation of the party:--
"It was not, however, until after we had run down every creek in the neighbourhood, and had traversed the country in every direction, that the truth flashed across my mind, and it became evident to me that we were locked up in the desolate and heated region into which we had penetrated, as effectually as if we had wintered at the Pole. It was long, indeed, ere I could bring myself to believe that so great a misfortune had overtaken us, but so it was. Providence had, in its all wise purposes, guided us to the only spot in that wide-spread desert where our wants could have been permanently supplied, but had there stayed our further progress into a region that almost appears to be forbidden ground."
This then was Sturt's prison -- a small creek marked by a line of gum trees, issuing from a glen in a low range. By a kindly freak of nature, enough water had been confined in this glen to provide a permanent supply for the exploring party and their animals, during the long term of their detention.
Of Sturt's existence and occupation during this dreary period little can be said. He tried to find an avenue of escape in every direction, until convinced of the futility of the attempt; sometimes encouraged and lured on by the shallow pools in some fragmentary creek, at others, seeing nothing before him but hopeless aridity. Now, too, he found himself attacked with what he then thought to be rheumatism, but which proved to be scurvy. Poole and Browne were afflicted in the same manner.
Sturt made one desperate attempt to the north during his imprisonment in the Depot Glen, and succeeded in reaching a point one mile beyond the 28th parallel, but further north he could not advance, nor did he find any inducement to risk the safety of his party.
There passed weeks of awesome monotony, relieved by one strange episode. From the apparently lifeless wilderness around them there strayed an old aboriginal into their camp. He was hungry and athirst, and in complete keeping with the gaunt waste from which he had emerged. The dogs attacked him when he approached, but he stood his ground and fought them valiantly until they were called off. His whole demeanour was calm and courageous, and he showed neither surprise nor timidity. He drank greedily when water was given to him, ate voraciously, and accepted every service rendered to him as a duty to be discharged by one fellow-being to another when cut off in the desert from his kin. He stopped at the camp for some time and recognised the boat, explaining that it was upside down, as of course it was, and pointing to the North-West as the region where they would use it, thus raising Sturt's hopes once more. Whence he came they could not divine, nor could he explain to them. After a fortnight he departed, giving them to understand that he would return, but they never saw him again.
"With him" writes Sturt pathetically, "all our hopes vanished, for even the presence of this savage was soothing to us, and so long as he remained we indulged in anticipations for the future. From the time of his departure a gloomy silence pervaded the camp; we were indeed placed under the most trying circumstances: everything combined to depress our spirits and exhaust our patience. We had witnessed migration after migration of the feathered tribes, to that point to which we were so anxious to push our way. Flights of cockatoos, of parrots, of pigeons, and of bitterns; birds also whose notes had cheered us in the wilderness, all had taken the same road to a better and more hospitable region."
And now the water began to sink with frightful rapidity, and all thought that surely the end must be near. Hoping against hope, Sturt laid his plans to start as soon as the drought broke up. He himself was to proceed north and west, whilst poor Poole, reduced to a frightful condition by scurvy, was to be sent carefully back to the Darling, as the only means of saving his life.