It was in the year 1827 that Cunningham accomplished his most notable journey of exploration, one which eventually threw open to settlement an entirely new area of country; country destined to mould the destiny of the yet unborn colony of Queensland, and afford homes for thousands of settlers.  It was mainly by his exertions that the young community at Moreton Bay was able to stretch its growing limbs to the westward immediately after its birth, instead of waiting long weary years and wasting its strength against an impassable obstacle as had been the fate of the settlement at Farm Cove.

Cunningham started from Segenhoe, a station on one of the head tributaries of the Hunter River, whence he ascended the main range without any difficulty beyond having to unload some of the pack-horses during the steepest part of the ascent.  He had with him six men, eleven horses, and provisions for fourteen weeks.  He left civilisation, or the outskirts of it, on the 2nd of May, and on the 11th he crossed the parallel on which Oxley had crossed the Peel River in 1818, and once beyond that point he was traversing unexplored country.  The land was suffering under a prolonged drought in that district, and most of the streams encountered had but detached pools of water in their beds, at one of which, however, his party caught a good haul of cod, which were such ravenous biters and so heavy that several were lost in the attempt to land them.

Travelling through open forest land, which was suffering more or less from the want of rain, Cunningham came on the 19th of May to a valley.  Here, on the bank of a creek he encamped on “the most luxuriant pasture we had met since we had left the Hunter.”

“We were not a little surprised,” he says, “to observe at this valley, so remote from any farming establishment, the traces of horned cattle, only two or three days old, as also the spots on which about eight to a dozen of these animals had reposed.

“From what point of the country these cattle had originally strayed appeared at first difficult to determine.  On consideration, however, it was thought by no means impossible that they were stragglers from the large wild herds that are well-known to be occupying plains around Arbuthnot Range.”

This speaks volumes for the wonderful increase and spread of wild cattle in those days; Arbuthnot Range, first sighted by Evans in 1817, being already an acknowledged resort of wild cattle in seven years.  Or it advertises the negligence of the stockmen who guarded the comparatively tiny herds of the period.