The new version was to the effect that the whites, on their return, had been attacked by the natives, but had repulsed them.  One white man had been killed, and had been buried after the fight, whilst the other whites went south.  The natives had then dug up the body and eaten the flesh.  The old fellow also described minutely the different waters passed by Burke, and the way in which the men subsisted on the seeds of the nardoo plant, all of which he must have heard from other natives.

After waiting a month, Hodgkinson returned, bringing the news of the rescue of King and the fate of Burke and Wills.  This explained McKinlay’s discovery as that of Gray’s body, the narrative of the fight and massacre being merely ornamental additions by the natives.  After an easterly excursion, in which he visited the two graves on Cooper’s Creek, McKinlay started definitely north.  It is difficult to follow without a map the Journal containing the record of his travel during the first weeks.  Not only does he give the native name of every small lakelet and waterhole in full, but he omits to give the bearing of his daily course.

A northerly course was however, in the main pursued, and Mckinlay describes the country crossed as first-class pastoral land.  As it was then the dry season of the year, immediately preceding the rains, it proves what an abnormally severe season must have been encountered by Sturt when that explorer was turned back on his last trip in much the same latitude.  On the 27th of February, the wet season of the tropics set in; but fortunately the party found a refuge among some stony hills and sand-ridges, in the neighbourhood of which they were camped, though at one time they were completely surrounded by water.  On March 10th, the rain had abated sufficiently to allow them to resume their journey; but the main creek which they still continued to follow up north was so boggy and swollen that they were forced to keep some distance from its banks.  This river, which McKinlay called the Mueller, is one of the main rivers of Central Australia, and an important affluent of Lake Eyre, and is now known as the Diamantina.  McKinlay left it at the point where it comes from the north-west, and following up a tributary, he crossed the dividing range, there called the McKinlay Range, in about the same locality as Burke’s crossing.  He had christened many of the inland watercourses on his way across, but most of his names have been replaced by others, it having been difficult subsequently to identify them.  In many cases, the watercourses which he thought to be independent creeks, are but ana-branches of the Diamantina.

Passing through good travelling country, and finding ample grass and water, he reached the Leichhardt River 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.