It was left to the veteran explorer, Sturt, to achieve the arduous enterprise of penetrating from the Darling northward to the very centre of the continent.
With a view to determine this question, Governor Sir Ralph Darling, in the year 1828, sent out the expedition under Captain Charles Sturt, who, proceeding first to the marshes at the end of the Macquarie river, found his progress checked by the dense mass of reeds in that quarter.
Accordingly, dividing his party, leaving at the depot four men and taking with him Wills and two men, King and Gray, with a horse and six camels, he left Cooper's Creek on the 16th of December and crossed the desert traversed by Sturt fifteen years before.
He had also proved that the interior of Australia was not a stony desert, like the region visited by Sturt in 1845.
After a few months' rest it started on the return journey, following Sturt Creek until its termination in Gregory's Salt Sea, and then keeping parallel with the South Australian border as far as Lake Macdonald.