John McKinlay was born at Sandbank, on the Clyde, in 1819. He first came to the colony of New South Wales in 1836, and joined his uncle, a prosperous grazier, under whose guidance he soon became a good bushman with an ardent love of bush life. He took up several runs near the South Australian border, and thenceforth became associated with that province.
In 1861 he was appointed leader of the South Australian relief party and started from Adelaide on October 26th. On arriving at Blanche Water, he heard a vague rumour from the blacks that white men and camels had been seen at a distant inland water; but put little faith in the story. He traversed Lake Torrens, and, striking north, crossed the lower end of Cooper's Creek at a point where the main watercourse is lost in a maze of channels. Here he learned definite and particular details respecting the rumoured white men, and thinking there might be some groundwork of truth in the report, he now pressed forward to the locality indicated. Having formed a depot camp, he went ahead with two white men and a native. Passing through a belt of country with numerous small shallow lakelets, they came to a watercourse whereon they found signs of a grave, and they picked up a battered pint-pot. Next morning, feeling sure that the ground had been disturbed with a spade, they opened what proved to be a grave, and in it found the body of a European, the skull marked, so McKinlay states, with two sabre cuts. He noted down the description of the body, the locality, and its surroundings; and in view of these particulars, it has been stated that the body was that of Gray, who died in the neighbourhood.*
*[Footnote.] See Chapter 14.
Considering the minute and circumstantial accounts that have from time to time been related by the blacks concerning Leichhardt, one is not astonished at the legends told to McKinlay. The native with him told him that the whites had been attacked in their camp, and that the whole of them had been murdered; the blacks having finished by eating the bodies of the other men, and burying the journals, saddles, and similar portions of the equipment beside a lake a short distance away. A further search revealed another grave -- empty -- and there were other and slighter indications that white men had visited the neighbourhood, so that McKinlay was led to place some credence in this story.
Next morning a tribe of blacks appeared; and although they immediately ran away on perceiving the party, one was captured who corroborated the statement made by the other native. Both of them bore marks on them like bullet and shot wounds. The second native said that there was a pistol concealed near a neighbouring lake. He was sent to fetch it; but returned the next morning at the head of a host of aboriginals, armed, painted, and evidently bent on mischief. The leader was obliged to order his men to fire upon them, and it was only after two or three volleys that they retired.
McKinlay was now satisfied that he had discovered all there was to find of the Victorian expedition, and, after burying a letter for the benefit of any after-comers, he left Lake Massacre, as it was mistakenly named, and returned to the depot camp. His letter was as follows:--
"S.A.B.R. Expedition,
"October 23rd, 1861.
"To the leader of any expedition seeking tidings of Burke and party.
"Sir, I reached this water on the 19th instant, and by means of a native guide discovered a European camp, one mile north on west side of flat. At or near this camp, traces of horses, camels, and whites were found. Hair, apparently belonging to Mr. Wills, Charles Gray, Mr. Burke, or King, was picked up from the surface of a grave dug by a spade, and from the skull of a European buried by the natives. Other less important traces -- such as a pannikin, oil-can, saddle-stuffing, etc., have been found. Beware of the natives, on whom we have had to fire. We do not intend to return to Adelaide, but proceed to west of north. From information, all Burke's party were killed and eaten.