any knowledge of a reward having been
offered for opening the road. We decided to follow the road party, who
had marked a line to junction with the old Flinders road. On the journey
I found a tree on which I had cut my initials when travelling to the
Gulf with sheep, some twelve years before. Owing to double banking the
teams through the heavy sand bordering "Billy Webb's Lake," we had to
camp without water that night. There was green picking on the water-less
lake for the bullocks, but they had to be watched. The road party had
left an empty cask where they had camped on the lake, and one of the
bullocks, a poly, smelling water in the bottom of the cask, forced his
head into it. On lifting his head, the cask came with it. The bullock,
being unable to see, made for his mates with their bells on, and then a
general stampede of the bullocks took place in all directions. Finally,
a bell bullock made for the timber, the poly followed him, and running
against a tree, smashed the cask. Thus ended an amusing incident, with
no damage done except to the cask.

The road party left the old road and made a ploughed furrow across the
downs to Rockwood Creek, which we followed, and camped the night there.

Fitzmaurice, whilst riding after the bullocks, met Mr. Bergin, the man
in charge of the party, who told Fitzmaurice that he was instructed to
mark a direct line to Collingwood, on the Western River, and that he
intended going up Thornhill Creek, cross the divide between the
Landsborough and Diamantina Rivers, and then run down Jessamine and
Mill's Creeks to the Western River, and thence to Collingwood.

We took the road up Rockwood Creek to its head, and crossed the same
divide as the road party were going, only farther north, striking the
head of Manuka Creek, which we ran down to its junction with Mill's
Creek. This we followed to the present site of Winton, which we reached
at the end of October. The new road opened by the road party had so many
patches of heavy sand on it, and long stages for water, that it was
never used by carriers, and some years later Ramsay Bros. obtained
permission from the Government to close that portion of it running down
Jessamine Creek, on the Oondooroo run.

A few years later the Government made tanks on the road between
Hughenden and Winton, after which all traffic from Townsville to Winton
and the west generally, came that way.

Mr. Tom Lynett, whom I had previously known on the Palmer, and wh