When Major Mitchell travelled through the Maranoa district, he had with him an Aboriginal from the Molong area, known as Yuranigh.
Yuranigh's role was as a guide, within the area he was familiar with, and as an adviser when the expedition reached more remote areas.
Of Yuranigh, Mitchell wrote:- "He has been my guide, companion, counsellor and friend on the most eventful occasions during this journey of discovery.  His intelligence and judgement rendered him so necessary to me that he was ever at my elbow on foot or on horseback.
Confidence in him was never misplaced.  He knew well the character of all the white men of the party.  Nothing escaped his penetrating eye and quick ear."




Yuranigh returned to Sydney with Mitchell at the conclusion of the expedition, and eventually returned to his tribal area at Boree.Yuranigh died there in April of 1850.  Mitchell arranged for a headstone to be erected over Yuranigh's grave, wherein Yuranigh had been buried according the customs of his Wiradjuri tribe.  The tribe had carved several living trees around the grave, some of which have survived

The above marble headstone replaced the original sandstone one, which became  damaged by erosion, and which remains at the base of the replacement.  The best surviving example of the carved trees was covered by a shelter after it died.   The remaining carved trees around the grave have gradually had their markings covered by the growing bark.

                                                                     

Mighty Maranoa

Mighty Maranoa

Further to Ludwig Leichhardt... it may be confusing to locals to read, even in recent publications, and on an information board in the Queensland Museum, that Leichhardt departed from Cogoon Station, never to be heard of again.

Now, Cogoon Station was not established until the 1850s, while Leichhardt went AWOL in 1848.  The error seems to have originated from reading of a letter written on 3rd April 1848, despatched from Mt. Abundance to Captain P.P.King; that letter was headed as being written at "Mr. Macpherson's Station, Cogoon."  Leichhardt would have known, from Mitchell's map that the creek we now know as the Muckadilla was regarded as being the Cogoon River; possibly, on the 3rd April he was not aware that MacPherson named his Run as Mount Abundance.  It was on that day that he actually arrived at Mount Abundance.

However, a letter written the very next day to the Sydney Morning Herald is headed "Sheep station at Mount Abundance,".  Presumably Leichhardt had in that brief period met up with one of MacPherson's men, as obviously there was no postal facility from which to despatch his correspondence.

That sheep station was between the Muckadilla Creek and the northern end of the mountain, as verified by an 1854 sketch map made by William Macpherson, and located by this writer in Scotland.

On that map, the location is identified as an "old sheep station", because when Allan Macpherson left the Run to return to Scotland in 1849, he withdrew all his sheep, as they and their shepherds had become easy prey to the local Aborigines.  He left his cattle, and sufficient men to care for them, in order to retain possession of the land.

The explorer Ludwig Leichhardt had greater association with the Maranoa region than is usually appreciated.  It is well known that Leichhardt's 1848 expedition was last heard of in correspondence from Macpherson's Mount Abundance Run, but his 1847 visit to the area is less publicised.

Following on from his 1845-46 expedition from the Darling Downs to Port Essington, Leichhardt decided to cross Australia, to the Swan River, from east to west.  He attempted this in 1847, retracing his Port Essington route as far as the Mackenzie River, when further progress was impossible.  The party returned to the Darling Downs.  At Cecil Plains, Leichhardt broke the party up, and with a small group he opted to travel westward to examine the country around Fitzroy Downs, examined by Major Mitchell in 1846.  This journey took the party all the way to the Maranoa River, where they located trees marked by Mitchell.

The following year, 1848, saw Leichhardt's last expedition, again an attempt to cross the continent east to west, setting out from the Downs, on a  more direct course to Mount Abundance.  It was from an outstation of that Run, on Muckadilla Creek, that Leichhardt's party set out to the westward, establishing a mystery as to his fate, which lasts to this day.

On 31st May 2010, a plaque was dedicated to Constable George Doyle at Mount Moffatt; Doyle and Albert Dahlke were murdered in Lethbridge Pocket, Easter 1902, and their bodies incinerated by the killer/killers on a  rock outcrop adjacent to the plaque.

South Brisbane Cemetery has a section reserved for criminals executed in Boggo Road Gaol;  the only headstone in that section is that of Patrick Kenniff, hanged for the murder of Constable Doyle, in Lethbridge Pocket, ( present day Mount Moffatt section of Carnarvon National Park)  Easter 1902.  Property manager Dahlke was also killed in this episode.

Did you know ... that while Major Mitchell is regarded as having led the first European exploration into the Maranoa region, in fact one Finney Eldershaw travelled down the Maranoa River, four years before Mitchell, in 1842  ?  check it out in Eldershaw's book "Australia as it really is", published in 1854.