More than eight years had elapsed since the Jardines had made their dashing journey; but their report, coupled with Kennedy's fate, did not offer much temptation to follow up their footsteps.

There was, however, a tract of country near the base of the Peninsula still comparatively unknown; and a party was organised and placed under the leadership of William Hann.

Hann was a native of Wiltshire, who had come out to the south of Victoria with his parents at an early age.

He was afterwards one of the pioneer squatters of the Burdekin, in which river his father was drowned.

The object of the trip was to examine the country as far as the 14th parallel South, with a special view to its mineral resources.