The early arrivals with stock in the Gulf country were obliged to obtain rations and supplies from Bowen, on the east coast, as that was the only port then opened in the North of Queensland. The distance was from five to seven hundred miles through the desert country and down the Flinders, and as the old-fashioned pole bullock-dray with only two wheels was then in vogue, no great quantity could be carried in one dray load. The opening of Burketown in 1865 as the second port after Bowen in North Queensland, enabled the early settlers to obtain supplies more easily, although the cost was still excessive. But the rations were fresher than those the overlanders had been used to. Some of the flour that had come out with the parties had been years on the road, and was very much the worse for the long journey. This flour could only be used after much sifting and airing; it was made into small thin cakes called Johnny cakes, which were cooked in the ashes and eaten hot; even then it was bitter and nearly brown in colour. The grubs and worms had long since left it, or died in it from old age. It was said that some flour from Bowen Downs that had left Sydney years before and come out to the Gulf stations just formed, being too strong to use, was thrown out, and the dingoes and crows were found lying dead round it. The sugar in those days was the dark, treacly kind, that left a stain on the floor like blood; it came in casks. However, people were not very particular as to the quality of the supplies, provided there was anything at all to eat. Pig weed (portulacca), boiled or roasted on a shovel was one of the changes open to travellers; tea was made from the marjoram bush; and very fair coffee was made from the scrapings of the burnt edges of dampers, and was called Scotch coffee. When Burketown was opened, the fresh supply of flour and stores was very welcome to the early settlers. * * * * * For the first year or two of Burketown's existence, a saturnalia of a most original and determined fashion set in. There were only two or three women in the town, and no police, and the crowd enjoyed themselves in their own breezy, sunshiny way. Burketown was the haven of refuge for all the outsiders and outlaws from the settled districts when they had made other places too warm to hold them any longer. "God forsaken, devil may care, Every one with his sins to bear; From East, from West, they are camping there; Where all the bad lots go." All kinds of characters made their way out to the Gulf in those early days. Men went there who had been wanted by the police for years. Horse stealing and forging cheques were very common pastimes among the fancy, and Burketown society, in its first efforts to establish itself, was of a kind peculiarly its own.