John Graham MacDonald

John Graham MacDonald (1834–1918) was an explorer and pioneer in Queensland, Australia.

Macdonald was born at Campbelltown, near Sydney, New South Wales in September 1834. At the age of 18 years he joined his brother, a civil engineer, in Victoria, and gained a considerable knowledge of engineering and surveying. A few years later he took up farming near Geelong, and became a model farmer of the district and chairman of the local farmers' association (probably the first farmers' association established in Australia), the chairman of the local road board, and a judge for the Geelong Agricultural Society.

In May 1859, he sold out his Victorian interests, and came to Queensland, joining another brother, Peter Fitzallan MacDonald, of Yaamba, near Rockhampton. Soon afterwards the two brothers started on their first exploration tour. They explored the head waters of the Nogoa and Belyando Rivers, where they took up a large area of pastoral country. Two years after the separation of Queensland in 1859, John Macdonald explored the districts drained by the Burdekin, Einasleigh and Lynd Rivers, and, on behalf of Southern financiers, amongst whom were Sir John Robertson and Captain Robert Towns, he established the Inkerman, Strathbogie, Dalrymple, Kirknie, Leichhardt Downs, and Carpentaria Downs pastoral stations. In the following year, on behalf of this adventurous firm of station promoters, John Macdonald, accompanied by two stockmen and some Aboriginal boys, explored the Gulf country (around the Gulf of Carpentaria) and took up great pastoral areas in the neighbourhood of where Burketown and Normanton now stand. For more than 10 years Mr. Macdonald managed pastoral stations stretching between Inkerman,near Bowen, and the Plains of Promise near the present site of Burketown, contending against floods, droughts, and other difficulties.

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