He returned on foot documenting and sketching various Pyrenean cultures, customs, dialects and legends.
[5] He took his family, including two sons and two daughters and a younger brother, Robert Dundas Murray, to Port Phillip, Australia, in 1841.
There, he sold one ship, Warlock, and bought a 90-ton schooner, Young (or Yonge) Queen, and a 200-ton brig, Anna, and set off to establish a settlement in Eastern Borneo.
The two ships entered the Mahakam River (then called Kutai) early in 1844 and sailed up to Tenggarong where he consulted the local Sultan.
[9] The story was later written up from the account of another survivor by W Cave Thomas[10] and has been studied in the context of the development of the Dutch East Indies,[11] provoking the Dutch to oblige the Sultan to sign a treaty acknowledging their overall sovereignty over Kutei in 1845,[12] and of the British involvement in Borneo.