MULLIGAN'S THIRD EXPEDITION 429 



From a main camp on TIN CREEK, which they named, they 

 followed the creek north for 20 miles, to near its head, where 

 they found, besides a little GOLD, " a fair show of TIN," but Mulligan 

 observed, " when we consider it would take three tons to pay the 

 carriage of one, better leave it alone, and try to find it over the 

 eastern falls towards the coast near the Daintree, where carriage 

 will not be such a consideration." A belt of granite country, 

 containing TIN LODES, is now known to extend from the divide where 

 the South Palmer and Tin Creek (of the St. George) take their 

 rise, westward to the head of CANNIBAL CREEK. 



On 2)tk August, the camp was moved 8 miles south, to 

 where Tin Creek falls into the ST. GEORGE RIVER. A little GOLD 

 was found in the ST. GEORGE here. In two days (^otb and $ist 

 August) to the south, the party struck the MITCHELL RIVER. This 

 watershed must have been crossed only a mile or two east of HANN'S 

 FURTHEST EASTERN POINT, which he reached on foot on 29th July, 

 1872, the country being too rough for horses. From the greatest 

 elevation reached, a " notable landmark " descried to the south- 

 east was the tableland to which the name of MOUNT MULLIGAN was 

 afterwards applied. The MITCHELL VALLEY at the camp of 

 3 ist August and ist September is described as " FINE CATTLE COUN- 

 TRY." The hoof-prints of four cattle were seen north of the river, 

 and a day was spent in an (unsuccessful) hunt for beef. Probably 

 the cattle had been dropped from some travelling mob, as by this 

 time cattle had begun to be driven from every possible source 

 towards the Palmer, where they commanded high prices. 



The camp on the MITCHELL must have been very near the infall 

 of the HODGKINSON RIVER, which was met with early on 2nd 

 September. The river was named in honour of W. O. Hodgkinson, 

 M.L.A. 1 The CAMP of 2nd September was 6 miles up the Hodg- 

 kinson River (ESE.) and at the foot of the tableland, the " notable 

 landmark " of 3 ist August, which the other members of the party 

 insisted on calling MOUNT MULLIGAN. This tableland, overhanging 

 the Hodgkinson valley, extends south-eastward from the junction 

 of the HODGKINSON with the MITCHELL for 23 miles, is apparently 

 of Permo-Carboniferous age and consists mainly of horizontal beds 

 of sandstone, with a seam of COAL. For the connection of this coal 

 with metallurgical works on the heads of the Walsh and at Chillagoe, 

 a RAILWAY has now been built from Dimbulah, on the Chillagoe 

 line.' 



* Hodgkinson had been a member of the Burke and Wills Expedition, 1860-61, and 

 crossed Australia in 1862 with McKinlay. In 1876 he led an expedition from Cloncurry 

 to Lake Coongi, in South Australia, and by the western boundary of Queensland to the 

 Gulf of Carpentaria, thence to Brisbane via Normanton, the Cloncurry and the Flinders 

 (Meston's Geographic History of Queensland, p. 209). He was afterwards a Goldfield 

 Warden. Having entered Parliament, he became Minister for Mines in the Griffith 

 Government in the late " eighties." 



J See " Report on Mount Mulligan Coalfield," by Lionel C. Ball, B.E. Geol. Survey 

 Publication, No. 237. Brisbane, by Authority, 1912. 



