On the 3rd of September, Flood, the stockman who was riding in the lead, lifted his hat and waved it on high, calling to the others that a large creek was in sight.
When the main party came up, they feasted their eyes on a beautiful watercourse, its bed studded with pools of water and its banks clothed with grass.

This creek Sturt named Eyre's Creek, and it was an important discovery in the drainage system of the region that he was then traversing.
Along this new-found watercourse, they were enabled to make easy stages for five days, when the course of the creek was lost; nor could any continuation be traced.

The lagoons, too, that were found a short distance from the banks, proved to be intensely salt.

Repeated efforts to continue his journey to other points of the compass only led Sturt amongst the terrible sandhills, their parallel rows separated by barren plains encrusted with salt.

Sturt now came to the erroneous conclusion that he had reached the head of Eyre's Creek, and that further progress was effectually barred by a waterless tract of country.