He had started from Sydney in the barque Tam o' Shanter, which was convoyed by Captain Owen Stanley in the Alligator.

This was in 1848, the same fateful year that witnessed Leichhardt's disappearance.

A schooner was to meet the party on the north, at Port Albany, where it was proposed to form a settlement should the features of the peninsula warrant such an enterprise.

In actual point of distance the task was not great, being a land traverse of from three to four hundred miles, allowing for deviations.

But never were men in Australia so dogged by disaster and beset by danger as were Kennedy and his followers.