Fortunately they were not distressed for fresh water at the time, and knowing what to expect if the river was followed down again, the party halted and formed a camp.
The next day Sturt, Hume, and two men crossed the river and made a short journey of investigation to the west, to see what fortune held for them further afield.

Not having passed during the day "a drop of water or a blade of grass," they found themselves by mid-afternoon on a wide plain that stretched far away to the horizon.

Sturt writes that had there been the slightest encouragement afforded by any change in the country, he would even then have pushed forward, "but we had left all traces of the natives behind us, and this seemed a desert they never entered -- that not even a bird inhabited." Back to Mount Harris once more, where they arrived on the 7th of April, 1829.

On their way they had stopped to follow a depression first noticed by Hume, and decided that it was the channel of the overflow of the Macquarie Marshes.
6.3.THE PASSAGE OF THE MURRAY.
The mystery of the Macquarie was now, to a certain extent, cleared away, but the course and final outlet of the Darling now presented another riddle, which Sturt too was destined to solve.
The discovery of such a large river as the Darling, augmented by the Macquarie and Castlereagh, and (so people then thought) in all probability the Lachlan, naturally inflamed public curiosity as to the position of the outlet on the Australian coast.

All the rivers that had been tried as guides to the hidden interior having failed to answer the purpose, the Murrumbidgee -- the beautiful river of the aboriginals -- was selected as the scene of the next attempt.