SECOND CAPE YORK SURVEYING VOYAGE 167 



September, 1839. Freeze exchanged into the " Pelorus" and was replaced by 



Forsyth. 



December yth, 1839. Stokes speared at Point Pearce. 

 February, 1840. Helpman entered Colonial service in Western Australia. 

 March, 1841. Emery and Eden returned to England. 

 March, 1841. Wickham invalided and Stokes took command. 

 March, 1841. Emery succeeded by Lieutenant Graham Gore (Gore's father was 



with Bligh and his grandfather with Cook). 



NORMANTON AND THE NORMAN RIVER 

 (SEE MAP M.) 



In consequence of the disastrous issue of the Burke and Wills 

 expedition, parties set out in different directions, in the year 1861, 

 in search of traces or survivors, and two of these, Landsborough's 

 and Frederick Walker's, reached the base of the Cape York Penin- 

 sula. Both parties had been carried north by the 2OO-ton brig 

 " Firefly " (Captain Kirby). Walker's debarked at Rockhampton 

 and Landsborough's at the Albert River. LANDSBOROUGH estab- 

 lished a depot 20 miles up the river and commenced his land 

 travelling on 1 7th October, 1861. He ran the ALBERT (SEE MAPS 

 N AND R) up to its head, either by the Gregory or O'Shanassy 

 branch, crossed the BARKLY TABLELAND and followed down the 

 Herbert (now GEORGINA) RIVER southward to 20 S., i.e., to 

 about the site of CAMOWEAL township, when the hostility of the 

 natives compelled him to retrace his steps to his depot on the Albert 

 River, which he regained on yth December, to find that Walker 

 had already been there. WALKER had gone westward from Rock- 

 hampton to the Barcoo River in long. 146 E. and lat. 24 S., and 

 from this point had shaped his course to the north-west, running 

 down the river which was afterwards called the NORMAN, and 

 crossing the Flinders to the Albert. He had left the depot on 

 his return journey before Landsborough's arrival. 1 



By the end of 1869, the northward march of pastoral occupation 

 had brought it to the southern shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria, 

 BURKETOWN had been established as a township on the Albert, and 

 a custom house on SWEERS ISLAND was supposed to meet the 

 requirements of the Gulf and Straits. A small steamer named the 

 " Slack Diamond " (Captain Norman) left Sweers Island in Feb- 

 ruary, 1870, and landed 200 tons of cargo at the point where the 

 NORMANTON custom house now stands. The new township and the 

 river itself were named in honour of Captain Norman. 2 Normanton 

 is now the port for a considerable area of pastoral country, as well 

 as for the Croydon goldfield, with which it is connected by a 



1 Tracks of McKinlay and Party across Australia, by John Davis, one of the Expedi- 

 tion. Edited from Mr. Davis's Manuscript Journal. With an Introductory View of 

 the Recent Australian Explorations of McDouall Stuart, Burke and Wills, Landsborough, 

 etc., by William Westgarth. London, 1863. 



2 Captain William Campbell Thomson, " The Gulf of Carpentaria." Proc. Queens- 

 land Branch of Roy. Geogr. Soc. of Australasia, V, p. 26, soth September, 1889. 



