John MacGillivray

In 1842 he sailed as naturalist on board HMS Fly, despatched to survey the Torres Strait, New Guinea, and the east coast of Australia, returning to England in 1846.

The expedition was in Hobart, Tasmania, in June 1847 and also surveyed in Bass Strait, and on the southern coast of New Guinea and the Louisiade Archipelago.

On this series of voyages his most notable achievement was to make records of the aboriginal languages of the peoples he encountered.

T. H. Huxley found his consumptive wife down to her last shilling, and raised £50 to send her and the children back to Australia where her parents could look after her.

He had become a hopeless drunkard, and when he died, alone in a squalid hotel room, the records noted 'mother and father unknown' (Desmond 1994).