of the country, he was but twenty-five miles from the
river.

Bonney, however, on another occasion, took a mob of cattle from the
Goulburn River to Adelaide in almost a direct line. In February 1839, he
left the Goulburn and steered a course for the Grampian Mountains, where
he struck the Wannon, and followed it down to the Glenelg. Here he came
upon one of the Henty stations, and was strongly advised not to persist
in his attempt. Captain Hart, who had been examining the country with the
same purpose in view as Bonney's, stated that it would be impossible to
take cattle through and turned back with his own to follow the old route
round the Murray bend. But Bonney was not to be daunted, and resolutely
pushed on west of the Glenelg. He discovered and named Lake Hawdon, and
also named two mountains, Mount Muirhead and Mount Benson. But at
Lacepede Bay his most serious troubles commenced. The party had pushed on
steadily to within forty miles of Lake Alexandrina when, in the middle of
a sandy desert, the working bullocks failed. Bonney divided his party,
and sending some of the men back to take the workers to a brackish pool
which they had passed, he himself with the stockmen and two black boys,
made a desperate effort to reach the Lake with the main mob. For two days
they pushed steadily on, travelling day and night, until men and beasts
were alike at their last gasp. Bonney then tried a desperate expedient:
"I then determined," he says, "as a last resource, to kill a calf and use
the blood to assuage our thirst. This was done, and though the blood did
not allay the pangs of thirst to any great extent, it restored our
strength very much."

The exhausted men then lay down to rest; but whilst they slept their
thirsty beasts scented a faint smell of damp earth on a wandering puff of
wind, and stampeded off to windward. Too weak to follow on at once, the
men, after an hour or two, staggered after them and tracked them to a
half-dry swamp, which still maintained a little mud and water. It was
brackish, but palatable enough for men in their exhausted condition, and
saved the lives of all. After some trouble in crossing the Murray, they
reached Adelaide in safety with the stock.

When the news of their arrival reached Port Phillip, many other
Overlanders were encouraged by Bonney's example to try the shorter route,
and the trade in shipping cattle across the straits from Tasmania almost
ceased.

Bonney had been born at Sando