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 gold watch by the Royal Geographical Society, and was voted 1,000 pounds by the South Australian Government.

During the early settlement of the Northern Territory, much dissatisfaction had arisen concerning the site chosen at Escape Cliffs.  McKinlay was sent north by the South Australian Government to select a more favourable position, and to report generally on the capabilities of the new territory.  He organized an expedition at Escape Cliffs, and left with the intention of making a long excursion to the eastward.  But a very wet season set in, and he had reached only the East Alligator River when sudden floods cut him off and hemmed him in.  The whole party would have been destroyed but for the resourcefulness displayed by the leader, who made coracles of horse-hides stretched on frames of saplings, by which means they escaped.  On his return, McKinlay examined the mouth of the Daly River, and recommended Anson Bay as a more suitable site, but his suggestion was not adopted.  McKinlay, whose health suffered from the effect of the hardships incident to his journeys, retired to spend his days in the congenial atmosphere of pastoral pursuits, and died, in 1874, at Gawler, South Australia, where a monument is erected to his memory.