Way We Were: The great Qld explorer you’ve never heard of

No man did more to open up the far north, and no man was more universally respected, writes Dot Whittington, yet while Petrie, Leichhardt and Oxley have had their names preserved in suburbs, streets, rivers and creeks, there’s little to recall the endeavours of this explorer.

Great explorers such as Petrie, Leichhardt, and Oxley have had their names preserved in suburbs, streets, rivers and creeks, but there’s little to recall the endeavours of James Venture Mulligan in far north Queensland.

Mulligan led eight expeditions on Cape York and the Atherton Tablelands and discovered payable quantities of gold on the Palmer and Hodgkinson rivers as well as Queensland’s first silver field near Herberton.

At one time hailed among Australia’s foremost explorers, Mulligan’s name remains on only Mount Mulligan and its deserted mining town, the 266km highway between Mareeba and Cooktown, and a cairn in a Mareeba park.

James Mulligan was born on February 13, 1837, in Drumgooland, County Down in Ireland, the son of a farmer. Determined to leave the farm and explore new territory, he gave himself a middle name – Venture. He was 23 when he arrived in Melbourne in June 1860, eager to join the expedition of his countryman Robert Burke, who was planning to cross the continent from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria. The party was leaving two months later, in August, with British surveyor William Wills second in command and Mulligan was bitterly disappointed when his bid to join them was unsuccessful.

Dot Peters, John Hay (author & President of the Mareeba Historical Society) Helen Kindt (Secretary of Mareeba Historical Society), Mayor Mick & Mrs. Borzi, Mareeba Shire and Mike Rimmer (author) look at pictures of James Venture Mulligan.

As it turned out, it may have been their bad luck, as the expedition’s failure was largely attributed to Burke’s lack of bushcraft, which was to be Mulligan’s specialty.

Mulligan moved on to NSW, where he learnt the tricks of prospecting before opening a butchery in Armidale. He set off for Queensland soon after James Nash found gold at Gympie in 1867, and travelled the state, prospecting at Gympie, Rockhampton, Cape York and Charters Towers.

When he heard in 1872 that William Hann had reported seeing the colours of gold on a river in the Cooktown area, the young Irishman decided to try his luck.

He browsed Hann’s journals, recruited five others to go with him, and in June 1873, left Georgetown on a challenging journey of more than 400km northeast across the Cape York wilderness.

The party relied on Mulligan’s bushcraft, capable leadership and an old ship’s sextant. They returned three months later claiming Hann’s report had been an understatement – creeks rippled over pebbles of gold, sandbars shone with it and every spadeful of dirt yielded a rich reward.

On Mulligan’s advice, Cooktown was opened as the new goldfield’s port and by the end of November, a mining warden and roads engineer had arrived. They found 500 men already on the field and 2000 ounces of gold in their possession. The Palmer River gold rush was on. Mulligan’s party claimed a £1000 government reward, which turned out to be his only profit from the discovery, as well as a £500 subsidy to keep looking. Although it wasn’t enough to keep them going, his party set out again and returned with valuable information on the unknown rivers – gold on the Hodgkinson, which he named after explorer and politician William Hodgkinson; tin at the Herbert River headwaters; and timber near the Barron River.

A memorial to James Venture Mulligan.

James Venture Mulligan (13 February 1837 – 24 August 1907) was an Ireland-born Australian prospector and explorer.

He and two others then set off to explore beyond the Mitchell and returned to Cooktown reporting payable gold at the Hodgkinson River.

Cairns opened as a port for the goldfield and Mulligan, hoping for another gold rush, opened a store near the diggings at Thornborough.

He was declared insolvent two years later, the failure attributed to his willingness to help poor miners: “Never was a man more incapable of running a store, because his heart was too big, his nature too generous. The store did a roaring trade but the profits did not balance with the losses.”

Mulligan drifted to Herberton where his name was attached to the discovery of silver and other minerals at Mt Carbine, Mt Athol and on the Mitchell.

He kept journals, writing of his last trip to the rivers of the Gulf in 1881: “The whole of the country that I now mention has been thoroughly prospected by me. No trace of white man here; no cattle or horse tracks.”

James Venture Mulligan.

In 1903, at the age of 66, James Venture Mulligan married Fanny Buls, 47, the widow of a mining friend. Four years later, he was ready to retire when, despite a lifetime of risks in the unknown Cape, his principles led to his demise.

When he overheard a drunk swearing at a woman, Mulligan, who was known to detest bad language, intervened. He overbalanced and fell, breaking two ribs. While recovering, the 70-year-old suffered bronchitis and was taken to Mount Molloy hospital where he developed pneumonia and died on August 24, 1907.

A household name for three decades, Mulligan was widely mourned, “for no man did more to open up the country, and no man was more universally respected.”