This was the last exploring expedition sent out by the Queensland authorities, the country within the bounds of that colony being by that time all known.
But across the western border, the vacant and unknown country of South Australia attracted many private expeditions to examine it in search of pastoral holdings.

Amongst those from Queensland were two brothers named Prout, who, with one man, went out to look for new grazing lands, and never returned.

Many months afterwards a search party, under W.J.H.
Carr-Boyd, found some of the horses, and then the remains of one of the brothers.

It was evident from the fragments of a diary recovered, that they had pushed far into the dry region of South Australia, and had met their deaths from thirst on the return journey.

Probably some of the waters on which they had relied had unexpectedly failed.
In 1878, Nathaniel Buchanan, a veteran pioneer and overlander of Queensland, made an excursion from the Queensland border to Tennant's Creek on the overland telegraph line.