John Lindsay commanded the brig Europa and Sir James Fergusson's yacht Edith[2] before a career on Murray River steamers which included a pioneering trip to Brewarrina with W. R. Randell in 1859.

[1] The party, consisting of four white men and two Indigenous Australians, met with a hostile response from local Aboriginal people, and drove them off with firearms.

Lindsay subsequently explored territory between the Overland Telegraph Line and the Queensland border and discovered Australia's first payable mica field.

[7] The scope of the Elder Scientific Expedition,[8] funded by Sir Thomas Elder, included recording fauna, flora, geological structures and climate, mapping the territory, potential for pastoral development, recording original indigenous place names, languages and pronunciation, avoiding conflict with indigenous tribes and to investigate the disappearance of Ludwig Leichhardt.

The mallee scrub had been 'burnt in vast patches' possible a year or two previously'[7] and burnt ground had better feed for the camels than unburnt land.

[9] Lindsay believed that the Northern Territory could support extensive pastoral ground and in Arnheim (sic) Land gold, silver, copper and tin had already been discovered.

It appears that Lindsay was reluctant at first to engage in hostilities which he encountered especially around Castlereagh Bay, the Roper River and in the locality of the Wornunyan Woorie.

[10] In 1895 Lindsay was in business as a stockbroker, formed various companies connected with Western Australian goldmines, and shortly before World War I broke out in 1914 was in London raising capital for development work in the Northern Territory.

After the war, Lindsay was in the Northern Territory for three and a half years carrying out topographical surveys for the Australian Federal government.

Some good pastoral land was discovered, and Lindsay proved that the Queensland artesian water system extended some 150 miles further west than its supposed limits.