Crowder was a seventeen year old working with the construction teams. His diary begins with him sailing on the barque Bengal from Port Darwin to the Roper River depot. On 3 January 1872 he celebrated his eighteenth birthday by recording that there were 40 men at the Roper River bar who were facing starvation if supplies were not got to them quickly. He writes of the makeshift punt that was constructed from a wagon by Robert Patterson leader of the government construction team, of the river which flooded above the height of the makeshift jetty that had been built to unload the ships, of reading the book Swiss Family Robinson on a Sunday, and of a camp singalong. Crowder's diary is a first hand account of one of the most important engineering feats in Australia's history. That he could continue to make his entries through the appalling conditions under which the men worked, is testament to the young man's strength of character.