One of the most remarkable features in the physiography of Australia is the great depression which centres in Lake Eyre, or Katitunda as the natives call it, where the level of the land is actually below that of the sea. A glance at the map of Australia will reveal the size of the area drained by rivers which, when they do run, and this may be only at long intervals, carry their waters towards Lake Eyre. In ordinary circumstances these rivers are rivers in name only. They consist of wide, sandy channels, bordered perhaps by gum trees and containing scattered waterholes which are more or less permanent. On the eastern side the Barcoo, or Cooper's Creek, and the Warburton, with their various branches, carry down great volumes of flood water from the interior of Queensland and New South Wales. On the north and west the Finke, the Macumba, and the Neale run down from the Macdonnell, the Musgrave, and other minor ranges that margin the Eyrean region in this part of the Centre.

In the accounts of the early explorers nothing is more striking than the way in which one traveller met with sterile wastes and was turned back by an entire absence of water, while another, traversing perhaps the same region, only at a different time, met with water and grass in abundance.