A long continued drought was in full force when Mitchell commenced his preparations; horses and bullocks in good condition were in consequence hard to obtain; but no expense was spared by the Government in providing the animals required. On reaching Bathurst, he was informed that even the Lachlan was dry.
In spite of the state of the weather and country, Major Mitchell departed in high spirits. He writes:—
"I remembered that exactly that morning, twenty-four years before, I had marched down the glacis of Elvas to the tune of 'St. Patrick's Day in the Morning,' as the sun rose over the beleagured towers of Badajoz. Now, without any of the 'pride, pomp, and circumstances of glorious war,' I was proceeding on a service not very likely to be peaceful, for the natives here assured me that the myalls were coming up 'murry coola' [Very angry.] to meet us."
On March 17th, 1836, this start took place, but it was not until the end of the month that he reached the limit of the cattle stations, and then he was at the point where Oxley had left the river and turned south to avoid the flooded marshes. Oxley wrote of a country that no living thing would stop in if it could possibly get away; twenty years afterwards, Mitchell writes of the same place:—
"In no district have I seen cattle so numerous as all along the Lachlan, and, notwithstanding the very dry season, they are nearly all in good condition."
As might have been expected, he followed down the Lachlan riding dry-shod over the swamps and flats that had barred Oxley's progress, and finding his lakes only green and grassy plains. Such had been the effect of the exceptional season during which the late Surveyor-General had conducted his explorations, that the country, save for the few land-marks afforded by the hills here and there, could scarcely be recognised from his description. Mitchell seems to have been strongly imbued with two leading ideas, one being the existence of well-defined mountain chains in the interior, forming systematic watersheds in a country where we now know there is no system; the other that former explorers, however reliable they might have been in their main facts, were quite at sea in any deductions they had drawn from them, and that his theories would be confirmed to their discomfiture.
The Surveyor-General had with him as second on this trip, Mr. Stapylton, a surveyor, and his company consisted of Burnett, the overseer, and twenty-two men, some of whom had been with him before.
For some reason or other he seemed particularly anxious to upset Sturt's positive belief that the junction of the large river with the Murray discovered by him, was the confluence of the Darling and the Murray. During his journey down the Lachlan he returns to this idea again, and his remarks are decidedly inconsistent with his former statements. On turning back from following the Darling down, his words were:—
"The identity of this river with that which had been seen to enter the Murray, now admitted of little doubt, and the continuation of the survey to that point was scarcely an object worth the peril likely to attend it."
On the Lachlan, he writes:—