After some minor excursions in the neighbourhood of the Cloncurry, Hodgkinson and party left that place in May, 1876, and proceeded across the dividing watershed to the Diamantina River, and followed that river down to below the boundary of the colony of Queensland and South Australia, where it received the name of the Everett, from Lewis. This much of the progress of the North West Expedition, as it was called, included little country not already known, and, moreover, at this time the district was being settled on in all parts by the pioneer squatters, the tracks of whose cattle were now up and down the whole length of the river. From the lower Diamantina, Hodgkinson made west towards the boundary of the colony, and beyond Eyre's Creek found a fine watercourse running through good pastoral country, which he branded with the name of the Mulligan River. Following this river up, and finding it alternately well and poorly watered, the party crossed from the head of it on to the Herbert, unwitting that they had done so, and followed that river on until they overtook Buchanan, Landsborough's old companion, who, with a mob of cattle, was re-stocking the Herbert. As this country had been at one time stocked, and stations formed and abandoned, exploration may be considered to have ceased. The surveys of Messrs. Scarr and Jopp soon explained the mistake fallen into by Hodgkinson as to the identity of Landsborough's Herbert and his own Mulligan. It will be remembered that in the central districts, the watersheds are so low and the size of the rivers so uncertain, that to find a watercourse dwindle away into nothing in one mile, and expand into a river the next is not at all surprising, so that to leave the head of a river and come on to another running in the same direction, it would appear quite feasible that it was the same river re-formed. This was the last exploring expedition sent out by the Queensland Government; their colony being now nearly entirely known, and in fact the earlier squatters of the Herbert, before its abandonment in 1874, were settled some distance across into South Australian territory. Unfortunately, the commercial depression of 1871 and 1872 led to the stations on the Herbert being thrown up, and the country, good as it was, lapsed into its original state of loneliness, and remained for many years quite unoccupied. Although Queensland herself had little or no territory within her own borders left to explore, the energy and enterprise of her pioneers led to many private explorations being organized across the border into the colony of South Australia, or rather into the northern territory of that colony. Amongst those undertaken in the year 1878 may be instanced one which resulted in the loss of the entire party.