Big John: The Extraordinary Adventures of John McKinlay 1819-1872 (Signed Copy)

Melbourne: State Library of Victoria 1995 First Edition Trade Paperback xxx,194pp ill. ISBN 0-724-10007-8, 1995 Very Fine original illustrated self-wrappers, illustrated with 16 pages of b&w plates, plus 3 maps. Signed on title page by Kim Lockwood. John McKinlay was the first European to lead a team acrosss the Australian continent from the south coast to the north and return safely. The journey resulted from McKinlay's being chosen to lead the South Australian Burke Relief Expedition (although Burke and Wills were dead before he set out). It was a harrowing trip, complete with intense heat, floods, fliies and starvation that was relieved near the end of the trip by camels' feet soup. On a second expedition three years later McKinlay was stranded by the Wet season in western Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory. He saved his party of fifteen by building a punt from saplings and sailing for six days and nights down the swollen East Alligator River out into the Arafura Sea and back to the settlement they had left six months previously. Kim Lockwood is the son of well-known Australian author Douglas Lockwood. Highly Recommended.