This was Sturt's Stony Desert.
That night they camped within its dreary confines, and during the next day crossed an earthy plain, with here and there a few bushes of polygonum growing beside some straggling channel in which they occasionally found a little muddy rain-water remaining.

At night when they camped just before dusk, they sighted some hills to the north, and, on examining them through the telescope, they discerned dark shadows on the faces, as if produced by cliffs.

Next morning they made for these hills, in the hope of finding a change of country and feed for the horses, but they were disappointed.

Sand ridges in repulsive array confronted them once more.

"Even the animals," writes Sturt, "appeared to regard them with dismay." Over plains and sand dunes, the former full of yawning cracks and holes, the party pushed on, subsisting on scanty pools of muddy water and fast-sinking native wells.