er flowing into the Gulf of
Carpentaria, on the 6th of May.

As his rations were becoming perilously low, McKinlay was anxious to get
to the mouth of the Albert, it having been understood that Captain
Norman, with the steam-ship Victoria was there to form a depot for the
use of the Queensland search parties. His attempts to reach it however,
were fruitless, as he was continually turned back by mangrove creeks both
broad and deep, and by boggy flats; so that on the 21st of May he started
for the nearest settled district in North Queensland, in the direction of
Port Denison.

He followed much the same route as that taken by A.C. Gregory on his
return from the Victoria River.* Crossing on to the head of the Burdekin,
he followed that river down, trusting to come across some of the flocks
and herds of the advancing settlers. On reaching Mount McConnell, where
the two former explorers had crossed the Burdekin, he continued to follow
the river, and descended the coast range where it forces its way through
a narrow gorge. Here on the Bowen River, he arrived at a temporary
station just formed by Phillip Somer, where he received all the
accustomed hospitality. Since leaving the Gulf, the explorers had
subsisted on little else but horse and camel flesh, and were necessarily
in a weak condition. Had they but camped a day or two when on the upper
course of the Burdekin, they would have been relieved much earlier, for
the pioneer squatters were already there, and the party would have been
spared a rough trip through the Burdekin Gorge. In fact the tracks of the
camels were seen by one pioneer at least, a few hours after the caravan
had passed. E. Cunningham, who had just then formed Burdekin Downs
station, tells with much amusement how McKinlay's tracks puzzled him and
his black boy. The Burdekin pioneers did not of course, expect McKinlay's
advent amongst them, although they knew that he was then somewhere out
west; and such an animal as a camel did not enter into their
calculations. Cunningham said that the only solution of the problem of
the footprints that he could think of was that the tracks were those of a
return party who had been looking for new country, and that their horses,
having lost their shoes and becoming footsore, they had wrapped their
feet in bandages.

*[Footnote.] See Chapter 18.

For his services on this expedition which were of great value in opening
up Central Australia, McKinlay was presented with a gol