Sturt had had to follow every turn and curve, whilst the Overlanders avoided the bends of the Murray by following the native paths, which spared them in some cases a journey of one or two days.

It was while following a native path that they discovered and named Lake Bonney.

At last they sighted the Mount Lofty ranges, and after some difficulty in getting through some rough mallee-covered country, arrived at Adelaide, and gladdened the residents with the prospect of roast beef.

"Up to this time," says Bonney in his diary, "they had been living almost exclusively on kangaroo flesh." Eyre, whose name was afterwards so closely allied with a famous story of thirst and hardship, narrowly escaped with his life during his overlanding trip.
It was owing to a very natural mistake that Eyre was led astray.

He intended to try a straighter and shorter route than the one round the Murray, and for a time got on very well, but coming across a tract of dry country across which he could not take the cattle, he determined to follow Mitchell's Wimmera River to the north, naturally thinking that it would lead him easily to the Murray, and would probably prove to be identical with the Lindsay, as marked on Sturt's chart.