Three years before Edward Grainger had been the leader of a small
prospecting party which had done fairly well on the rivers debouching
into the Gulf of Carpentaria from the western side of Cape York
Peninsula. He was an Englishman, his mates were all Australian-born,
vigorous, sturdy bushmen, inured to privation and hardship, and
possessing unbounded confidence in their leader, though he was by no
means the oldest man of the party, and not a "native." But Grainger
had had great experience as an explorer and prospector, for he had been
compelled to begin the battle of life when but a lad of fifteen. His
father, once a fairly wealthy squatter in the colony of Victoria, was
ruined by successive droughts, and died leaving his station deeply
mortgaged to the bank, which promptly foreclosed, and Mrs. Grainger
found herself and two daughters dependent upon her only son, a boy of
fifteen, for a living. He, however, was equal to the occasion. Leaving
his mother and sisters in lodgings in Melbourne, he made his way to New
South Wales with a mob of travelling cattle, earning his pound a week
and rations. At Sydney he worked on the wharves as a lumper, and then
joined in the wild rush to the famous Tambaroora diggings, and was
fortunate enough to meet with remunerative employment, and from then
began his mining experiences, which in the course of the following ten
years took him nearly all over the Australian colonies, New Zealand,
and Tasmania. Never making much money, and never very "hard up," he had
always managed to provide for his mother and sisters; and when he formed
his prospecting party to Cape York and sailed from Brisbane, he knew
that they would not suffer from any financial straits for at least two
years.

For nearly three years he and his party wandered from one river to
another along the torrid shores of the great gulf, sometimes doing well,
sometimes not getting enough gold to pay for the food they ate, but
always, always hopeful of the day when they would "strike it rich." Then
came misfortune--sharp and sudden.

Camped on the Batavia River during the wet season, the whole party of
five sickened with malaria, and found themselves unable to move to the
high land at the head of the river owing to all their horses having died
from eating "poison plant." Too weak to travel by land, they determined
to build a raft and reach the mouth of the river, where there was a
small cattle station. Here they intended to remain