Having made a tidy profit of several thousand pounds from his second overlanding trip, the young Eyre (then only twenty-three years old) turned his attention to the interior, and the speculation surrounding the possibility of an inland sea. Planning a three-month expedition to the head of the Spencer Gulf, he left Adelaide with five other men on May 1, 1839, taking two drays and travelling north for the coastal plain west of the Flinders Ranges. He named the Broughton River after William Broughton, the Anglican Bishop of Australia, and proceeded northward past the head of the gulf to establish camp halfway between The Dutchmans Stern and Mount Arden at a small creek with permanent springs in it: he named this Depot Creek and was to return to it several times in future years.
