The BIG DRY

certain that there was an inland sea within the centre of continental Australia. The westward flow of rivers west of the Great Dividing Range had them convinced that they all led to a vast inland reservoir, and many risked – and lost – their lives attempting to prove that point. In 1844-45 Charles Sturt even went as far as to carry a hefty whaleboat as far north as today’s Milparinka, almost at the site of today’s Tibooburra, as a necessary tool for exploring that inland sea. A replica still stands in central Tibooburra