The Exploration of Cape York Peninsula by Robert Logan Jack

The lofty, jungle-clad ranges overhanging the coast between Cardwell and Cooktown present themselves to the mind in the first place as the country that wrecked Kennedy and baffled Hann.

In 1873 George Elphinstone Dalrymple, who had been Gold Commissioner at Gilberton for two years, in conjunction with Sub-Inspector Johnstone, of the Native Police, explored the mouths of most of the rivers between Rockingham Bay and the Endeavour, namely, the Moresby, Johnstone, Russell, Mulgrave, Trinity Inlet, Mosman, Daintree and Blomfield. These rivers and a few others, notably the Barron, drain the eastern side of the ranges. It took many years of patient and laborious boring through the scrub to force the secret of the hills, and it would be an endless task to apportion the credit. Conspicuous among those who took part in the work were the officers of the Native Police, Johnstone, Barron, Thompson, Marrett, Armit, Douglas, Fitzgerald, Urquhart, Galbraith, Carr, Coward, Lamond, Garraway, and Whelan, an irregular army of cedar getters, and a host of prospectors of gold and tin and seekers after sugar lands, besides the surveyors and local committees who supported the rival claims of Port Douglas and Cairns for the advantage of being the starting point of the Herberton railway.