about midday
Horseshoe Bend In order fully to understand the position in which Sax and his friend were soon to be placed , it is necessary to go back several weeks and find out what had happened to the famous Boss Stobart . Joe Archer , the storekeeper at Oodnadatta who had been so kind to the boys , had told them that the drover had not been heard of since he had called in at Horseshoe Bend . It is possible to connect up with the Overland Telegraph Line at Horseshoe Bend , and Stobart had taken advantage of this opportunity of getting into touch with Oodnadatta . Boss Stobart , with a thousand Queensland cattle , reached the Finke about midday . The Finke is a wide river of soft white sand , bordered on each side by gnarled and ancient gum trees . Not once in the memory of white man had the Finke carried water from its source in the Macdonnel Ranges to its mouth in the great dry salt Lake Eyre , and the trees which mark its course , and can be seen from many , many miles away scattered about the landscape , gain their nourishment from a water-supply fifty or sixty feet below the arid surface . The drover saw the cattle safely over the dry creek , put them on camp in a clay-pen surrounded by sandhills , and then rode up to the little group of rough buildings which , because the Finke makes an almost complete turn on itself just there , goes by the name of Horseshoe Bend .