The campaign was beset by severe weather, rugged terrain, impenetrable scrub and vast swamps, inadequate maps and poor supply lines and although two of the divisions met in mid-October the hostile terrain soon resulted in the cordon being broken, leaving many wide gaps through which the Aboriginal people were able to slip. Many of the men, by then barefoot and their clothes tattered, deserted the line and returned home. The campaign's single success was a dawn ambush on 25 October in which two Aboriginal people were captured and two killed.