Where flooded country was encroached upon, the dry beds of former lakes were found, encircled in all cases with a ring of dead trees.
In January, 1879, the thunderstorms set in, and the party reached Powell's Creek telegraph station in safety.
This expedition opened up a good deal of fine pastoral country, which is now all stocked and settled.
Western Australia was still busy in the field of exploration.

In 1876 Adam Johns and Phillip Saunders started from Roebourne and crossed to the overland line in South Australia.

Ostensibly theirs was a prospecting expedition; but as the country to the eastward of the Fitzroy River was then unknown, it was an important exploration event.

They were unsuccessful in finding gold, but on their arrival at the line they reported having passed through good pastoral country.
There is no doubt that the east and west tracks of the Queensland explorers, and of Alexander Forrest,* did more to throw open that part of Australia to settlement than did the north and south journey of Stuart, more important as that one was from the purely geographical point of view.

Stuart led the way across the centre of the continent, but even after the telegraph line was constructed on his route, very little was known of the country to the east and the west.
*[Footnote.] See Chapter 19.
The South Australian Government had several times made slight attempts to reach the Queensland border, but in 1878, they sent out H.V.Barclay to make a trigonometrical survey of most of the untraversed country between the line and the Queensland boundary.