On 6 December 1837 as Hutchinson and Strangways came back down Currency Creek, their whaleboat was stove in by a snag, a large sunken tree, and repairs were made using cloth, tallow and kangaroo skin. Two of the whalers from Encounter Bay who crewed the boat, told Strangways and Hutchinson how they had walked overland from Port Fairy in Victoria and rafted across the River Murray, upstream from the Mouth, which was too wide and the current too fast for them to attempt.

Snags in the River Murray would be a continual problem for the paddle steamers in the last half of the nineteenth century, and would require special snagging boats. Cattle and sheep were overlanded from Victoria, but this may be the earliest account of men walking overland from that colony, until some years in the future when Chinese men landed at Robe in the South East and walked overland to the Victorian goldfields to avoid paying landing taxes in that colony.