One of the pioneers who went through much personal privation and hardship in the general forward march to discover new country, was Mr. Reginald Halloran, associated with his brother-in-law, Mr. Robert Alexander, of Proston, on the Burnett. They suffered heavy losses among the sheep while going through the desert, from the poison plant, and also from want of water. With the party was a young fellow named Briggs, who was killed by the blacks on Skeleton Creek before reaching Hughenden while a detachment of the party was camped there. The remnant of the stock that survived the trip were placed on a piece of country on the Lower Flinders, which they named Home Creek, but which was soon deserted by this firm, though held as a station years afterwards. Mr. Halloran was a man conspicuous for his utter disregard of personal comfort; he would start on a ride of a hundred miles without rations or blanket, trusting to the chapter of accidents for food, and to his saddle cloth for covering for the night, and he was always welcome at any camp owing to his geniality and fund of humour. The young fellow, Briggs, who met with an untimely death, had arrived at the advance camp only the night before for rations, and while alone in the tent next morning, the other man being absent horse-hunting, a party of blacks visited the camp. The white man showed fight, breaking a gun over the head of one of the blacks, but was soon killed, and when the horse-hunter returned, he found Briggs dead and the camp looted. A place called Sorghum Downs, on the Lower Cloncurry, now part of Conobie, was claimed by an old colonist and pioneer named Murdoch Campbell; he and his wife (a Devonshire woman), had camped on the Bowen River in 1863, but it was a long time before they found their way out so far west. Mrs. Campbell's hospitality and kindness to all travellers was one of the pleasant remembrances of those early hard times. Campbell died in 1867, and Mrs. Campbell ultimately went to New Zealand, where she had friends. A small firm of two men, Anderson and Trimble, successful diggers from the Snowy River, in New South Wales, joined the rest of the pushing crowd, and held a good run on the Saxby River with sheep. Still the tide of occupation flowed on, and when all the available watered runs around the Gulf were occupied in 1865 and the following year, those remaining unsatisfied, marched on, restless as the surges that beat on the shore. Several of those in charge of stock travelled up the Gregory River southwards, and out far away on to Barkly Tableland, discovered by Mr. W. Landsborough. These were among the first to make known the capabilities of this splendid district. The Stieglitz Brothers held country far away to the south on the Herbert River, called now the Georgina, having passed through all the Flinders and Gulf country unrewarded.