Year after year settlers had advanced farther from Sydney along the coastal ranges, until stations were occupied to the westward of Twofold Bay. In that rugged country, where no wheeled vehicle could travel, bullocks were trained to carry produce to the bay, and to bring back stores imported from Sydney. Each train was in charge of a white man, with several native drivers. But rumours of better lands towards the south were rife, and Captain Macalister, of the border police, equipped a party of men under McMillan to go in search of them. Armed and provisioned, they journeyed over the mountains, under the guidance of the faithful native Friday, and at length from the top of a new Mount Pisgah beheld a fair land, watered throughout as the Paradise of the Lord. Descending into the plains, McMillan selected a site for a station, left some of his men to build huts and stockyards, and returned to report his discovery to Macalister.
Slabs were split with which walls were erected, but before a roof was put on them the blacks suddenly appeared and began to throw their spears at the intruders; one spear of seasoned hardwood actually penetrated through a slab. The men, all but one, who shall be nameless, seized their guns and fired at the blacks, who soon disappeared. The white men also disappeared over the mountains; the rout was mutual.
But the country was too good to be occupied solely by savages, and when McMillan returned with reinforcements he made some arrangements, the exact particulars of which he would never disclose. He brought cattle to his run, and they quickly grew fat; but civilised man does not live by fat cattle alone, and a market had to be sought. Twofold Bay was too far away, and young Melbourne was somewhere beyond impassable mountains. McMillan built a small boat, which he launched on the river, and pulled down to the lakes in search of an outlet. He found it, but the current was so strong that it carried him out to sea. He had to land on the outer beach, and to drag his boat back over the sands to the inner waters.
He next rode westward with his man Friday to look for a port at Corner Inlet, and he blazed a track to the Albert River. Friday was an inland black. He gazed at the river, which was flowing towards the mountains, and said:
"What for stupid yallock* yan along a bulga**?"
[* Footnote: *Yallock, river. **Bulga, mountain.]
McMillan tried to explain the theory of the tides.
"One big yallock down there push him along, come back by-and-by." And Friday saw the water come back by-and-by.
They reached the mouth of the river on February 1st, 1841, saw a broad expense of salt water, and McMillan concluded that he had found a port for Gippsland.
Ten months afterwards Jack Shay arrived at the port. He had first come to Twofold Bay from Van Diemen's Land, and nothing was known about his former life. "That's nothing to nobody," he said. He was a bushman, rough and weather-beaten, with only one peculiarity. The quart pot which he slung to his belt would hold half a gallon of tea, while other pots only held a quart, and that was the reason why he was known all the way from Monaroo to Adelaide as "Jack of the Quart Pot."