This story was written by Beryl Dowsett

John McKinlay was the first European to lead a team across the Australian Continent from south to north and return safely. However the story of this great pioneer has rarely been told although it is one of the most amazing stories of survival in the history of Australian exploration.

John was born in Glasgow on August 26th, 1819. His father Dugald was a shopkeeper at the time and his mother Catherine was Dugald's second wife. When John was 16 he came to Australia with his older brother Alexander. He was already over six feet tall and powerfully built, able to take on work in the bush which he loved. Alexander was never too happy or settled in this new country and moved to Tasmania where he drowned after his boat overturned near Hobart in May 1841 when he was just 25 years old. Two of John's letters written at that sad time have survived. He had a most peculiar way of writing to save paper and postage. He first wrote across the page in the usual way, then turned the paper 90 degrees and started again, making the writing, which ran both horizontally and vertically, very hard for the reader to decipher.

Working for his uncle gave McKinlay a taste for bush life and he soon joined the march of pastoralists who initially followed the easier passage on the Lachlan and Murrumbidgee-Murray system until 1847. By this time squatting regulations were restricting them so much that they went to the freer lands on and beyond the Darling. Some allied themselves with Port Phillip as a handy market and port of supply while others, including McKinlay, started forming bonds with the young colony of South Australia.

The first settler on the lower Darling was nineteen year old Edmund Morley, closely followed by McKinlay, and the pair joined forces to take cattle up the river to stock their runs. He was at Toopalung (Station) by 1847 and by 1851 he had land on the Murray and on the Darling just south of Wilcannia in New South Wales. Eight years later he held at least six runs in the lower Victorian and Albert districts.

As for all squatters, life was rough and lonely, dwellings consisting of one or two bough sheds with another for shearing and bush or log yards for the stock. It was also costly, with the aborigines regularly helping themselves to stock. He constantly tried to win their trust, and his efforts were sometimes rewarded when they helped look for horses, sheep and cattle.

By 1854 government surveys had been made of the station runs and he successfully tendered for frontages on Lake Victoria, on the Murray and several runs on the west bank of the Darling, giving him a total of 820 square miles. By this time he knew the country better than most. He soon made an immense fortune, but regrettably he lost it in two years due to heavy drought in the area.

There had been agitation in Melbourne from March 1861 over the fate of Burke’s expedition to the Gulf of Carpentaria. Nothing had been heard of the party for five months and people remembered the disappearance of Leichhardt thirteen years before. In the middle of June the Government announced that a ‘contingent expedition’ would be sent to search, led by a thirty-one year old geologist and bushman, Alfred Howitt. The party left on the 4th July 1861 and the Queensland Government allotted £500 for two parties, one under William Landsborough to head south from the Gulf of Carpentaria and another under Fredrick Walker to go overland from Rockhampton.

John McKinlay had already offered his services in letters dated July 4th and l1th, as he had twenty years experience of exploring the bush. The South Australian Government was the first to hire him and he arrived in Adelaide on the 1st August. His advertisement for fit young men attracted fifty-four applicants eager to venture into the interior, and he interviewed all who turned up.

McKinlay’s South Australian Burke Relief Expedition set out from Adelaide not realising that Burke and Wills were already dead. The party consisted of McKinlay as leader, five men, twenty two horses and four camels. Stores were forwarded to Blanchwater for the use of the expedition. His instructions were to engage two native trackers there, and then he should proceed to Eyres Creek, Mt Hampshire or Central Mt Stewart and return by the western shores of Lake Eyre. He was advised to make frequent cairns of stone or conspicuous marks on trees on the way.

The send-off from the Willaston Hotel at Gawler included a pigeon shooting match and a long champagne lunch, but this was the last measure of comfort the expedition would experience. The very next day the horse cart crumbled and the men took the horses and the camels on to the next stop, Anlaby Station, until the cart was fixed. Several `skirmishes' occurred between horse and camel, horses were bogged, and the cart took six days to repair. One man drank water from an aboriginal well which had a dead dog floating in it, reminding McKinlay of an old General’s remark ‘…the river in which my dead enemies were floating was the best water I have ever tasted’.

In October they found a grave that had been crudely formed by the aborigines and discovered, buried there, a white man who they thought might have been from the Burke and Wills expedition, and indeed it may have been Gray. The aborigines admitted to eating parts of white men they had killed but nothing was determined with certainty. McKinlay referred to the area as Lake Massacre. On Friday 29th November two aborigines arrived at Lake Buchanan with the news that Howitt had found the remains of Burke and Wills at Cooper Creek and that King had been discovered living further down the creek.

A year and a day after leaving the men returned to Gawler, some in poor condition due to illness and injuries. It had been a harrowing trip, plagued as they were by intense heat, floods and flies and the starvation which was finally relieved by camel stew and horse soup. Many congratulatory dinners were given in their honour.

On January 17th, 1863 McKinlay married Jane Pike after whom he had named Lake Jeannie, Jeannie Lagoon and Jeannie Creek. Four days later a public procession was held in Adelaide, principally to honour John McDouall Stuart who had recently crossed from the Southern Ocean to the Arafura Sea at his third attempt. ‘Big John’ McKinlay was to ride beside ‘little’ Stuart at the head of the parade.

But McKinlay was to make a second trip two years later in 1865.

In 1818, Captain Phillip Parker King had discovered Port Essington, an enormous harbour that bites into the north coast of Coburg Peninsula, 125 miles north of what is now Darwin. Settlements were established in the area in 1829 and 1838, but were abandoned. In 1839 commander J.G.Wickham explored the Adelaide and Victoria Rivers and the port where Darwin now stands, but his favourable reports were ignored.

By 1863 South Australia had secured the Northern Territory and land was sold with the proviso that it would be surveyed within five years. Boyle Travers Finniss was sent to carry out this survey. He landed at Adam Bay on the mouth of the Adelaide River and established the nearby settlement of Escape Cliffs in June 1864. However, he was a very arrogant man and differences occurred between him and his men from the beginning, until gradually he lost control.

He was also terrified of the aborigines and ordered his men to pitch their tents three deep around his hut in the stockade and issued orders that the natives should be shot down. After one poor victim was riddled with bullets he sent word to Adelaide that he needed relief urgently.

Early in December 1864 the steamer South Australian arrived at Escape Cliffs with three officers and forty men under the command of Robert Henry Edmunds. He found the settlement was in chaos and he moved on to survey Palmerston, a mile up the Adelaide River. He laid the first surveyor’s chain in the Northern Territory at a spot that is underwater at Spring tide and which he considered a most unsuitable place for a port, but he was told to continue.

By this time the settlers could take the madness of Finniss no longer and abandoned Escape Cliffs. Half of them went to Singapore on a cargo ship and seven set off in a long boat travelling south. They eventually landed at Champion Bay in Western Australia where Geraldton now stands, after a journey of 2,854 miles, one of the longest open boat trips in history.

Finniss was recalled and John McKinlay was sent with the formal notice from the Government. He arrived into this climate of insecurity in late 1865, having been commissioned also to explore the country. Edmunds was to accompany him as surveyor and navigator in the role of second in command. They were to explore country east of Adelaide River towards Liverpool River and south to the Roper River, and return by a different way. To do this they were to cooperate with Captain Howard of the Beatrice.

The sea trip from Adelaide had been rough and many of McKinlay’s sheep and goats died on the way. Those that remained, together with other supplies, were left on the beach at Escape Cliffs in complete disorder, as bullocks that were to be used for transporting them were elsewhere. To quote McKinlay, ‘A greater scene of desolation and waste could not be pictured.’

The land party in the charge of Edmunds met them at Escape Cliffs and finally the expedition set out, however there were arguments between Edmunds and McKinlay from the start. Then one man, Crispe, went missing in a crocodile infested area and the search held them up for days. Rain set in and after six inches fell Edmunds wrote, ‘We should have been on higher ground a month ago.’ Flying foxes – McKinlay called them vampires – were found in abundance along the riverbanks. The party also found crocodile eggs, which they ate.

Crispe eventually found his way back to camp after being lost for eight days. He was delirious and had discarded his boots so his feet were cut, one bandaged with grass. However he had his revolver tightly clasped in his hand. ‘The man was in a deplorable condition,’ said Edmunds.

Next day they made about twelve miles headway through swampy flats and some ironstone ridges before heavy rain began to fall. Horses were bogged to their bellies and had to be dug out. By the end of February they were on an island surrounded by water stretching 400 to 500 yards across in all directions. Seven horses died, some were eaten, and McKinlay dropped the flour ration to 5lbs per man per week. The humidity tested their endurance.

By April lst, they were still 200 miles from their rendezvous with the Beatrice, which was bringing supplies. The ship arrived and waited eight weeks then, on the 18th May, the crew buried two bags of flour and some letters under sandhills south-east of Cape Hawkesbury, before sailing on. The Beatrice left the mouth of the Liverpool River planning to work along the coast to the east to survey as far as Cape Stewart just where the Cadell River enters the Arafura Sea.

McKinlay’s party was at this time approaching the wall-like bluffs of the Arnhem Land escarpment and they were at Camps 35-39 on the map, which is Ubirr (Kakadu). In the caves of Kakadu and Nourlangie can be seen clear and beautiful rock paintings of men on horses with bells on the horses, possibly inspired by Leichhardt; however a rock art expert contends it was more likely to have been McKinlay. The last camp, Number 41, was established on 9th June, 1866. This was just two days before the patient Captain of the Beatrice again left the Liverpool River for Adam Bay leaving behind a letter saying he would be back in July, three months after the original rendezvous date.

At this time McKinlay decided that, due to bogs and inaccessible ranges, the only way to proceed back to Point Hawkesbury and the Beatrice was via what they hoped was the East Alligator River then out into the open sea. He decided to build a raft of saplings tied together with tent lines and tether ropes, Two seafaring men in the party drew up plans and a rectangular design was chosen, McKinlay insisting on a nine foot beam and three foot sides. They used hides cut into squares and sewn together. The hides were from the horses as they died, the skins pegged out to dry. At this time the aborigines became less cautious and the explorers were worried when fires appeared all around the camp.

The raft frame was finished by June 23rd but when they turned it over to attach the hides it fell apart as the timber had shrunk. It was joined together again and the joints wedged. They hoped to launch it by the end of June so that they could take advantage of the highest Spring tide. Edmunds marked a tree so it could be seen plainly by a passing boat.

MK41

MADE PUNT OF HORSEHIDES AND TENT

AND STARTED DOWN THE RIVER 7TH TO 29TH JUNE, 1866.

DIG IN THE TRACK FOR BOTTLE 8FT SW.

R.H.E

The bottle was a pickle bottle containing a summary of the journey and a farewell letter from McKinlay to his wife.

Edmunds cut into another tree the words:

NATIVES TREACHEROUS

The punt was named the Pioneer. They set out with McKinlay and Edmunds arguing over which river they were on. Edmunds thought it was the East Alligator but McKinlay was unsure, however the intention was that they would reach the gap between Field Island and the mouth of the South Alligator River.

Despite all their efforts, the Pioneer was blown eight miles out into the Arafura Sea. Although they were hungry and thirsty they rowed all night until the early morning, when they could see the hazy outline of Escape Cliffs. After seven days on the punt they met an aborigine fishing in a canoe and sent a message by him saying, ‘On board the Pioneer. Will be at Cliffs in about an hour. Please have dinner ready.’

The food and rest were life saving, but although they ate sparingly they quickly had bloated bellies and a lot of pain. Next morning they went to the beach to check the Pioneer and found the rancid craft full of maggots and holes and the tent which formed the bow was worn almost through. It would probably not have lasted another day. More bickering followed, however they went on to explore the Daly River on their homeward journey.

The Beatrice, after revisiting the Liverpool River and finding McKinlay's party had still not turned up, finally re-entered Adam Bay at Escape Cliffs on the 31st July 1866, having been sailing, revictualling or simply waiting for McKinlay for a full six months.

McKinlay retired to Gawler and has not been awarded the attention or respect he deserves from fellow Australians, including the historians. Despite the discord of the Northern Territory trip, it too deserves acknowledgment as an epic of survival. These searchers for lost explorers did great reconnaissance work in their own right, helping to open up the outback and good grazing land much sooner than would otherwise have happened. McKinlay traversed more than 4,000 kilometres (2,500 miles) of unknown territory, both on land and water, and made an important contribution to geographical knowledge.

He brought considerable skill as a bushman to his expeditions. There is evidence of this in his journals, with frequent references to the examination of trees at campsites for marks made by previous travellers. He had the ability to identify the age of a camp, often by distinguishing the type and age of dung, determining the prior presence of horses, camels or native fauna. His sharp eyes also noted broken flora or rocks grazed by horseshoes, which helped establish the earlier passage of his and other parties.

McKinlay’s attitude to his men could be called firm but fair, though incompetence invariably aroused his wrath. His attitude to the aborigines was ‘softer’ than generally prevailed at that time, and his approach to his guides on the Burke expedition appears to have been fair-minded.

However he did not die a tragic death like Burke & Wills, did not mysteriously disappear like Leichhardt, did not open gates through mountains like Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth or access worthwhile pastoral country like Mitchell, and he did not make three awe inspiring attempts to cross the continent like Sturt.

He came out of relative obscurity as a land claimant on the Darling and in the Flinders Ranges and made two immensely difficult journeys in only five years. Then, apart from one short business trip to Palmerston, remained in the relative obscurity of Gawler, South Australia, until he died in 1872.

Written by Beryl Dowsett

Acknowledgement: BIG JOHN by Kim Lockwood