Located 104 km south east of Cloncurry, McKinlay was named after the McKinlay River which was discovered and named by the explorer John McKinlay. McKinlay had arrived in New South Wales in 1836 and by 1861 had become such an adept bushman that he was chosen to lead the South Australian Burke Relief Expedition to search for the missing Burke and Wills.

There was no immediate rush to the area. Captain James Henry, the founder of Cloncurry, passed through the area in 1866 as did George McGillivray the following year. Gold was discovered on the McKinlay- Cloncurry road in 1872. In 1883 a letter receiving office was opened in the small settlement.

It wasn't until 1888 that allotments of land in McKinlay were sold and seventeen people bought half-acre blocks. The town grew as a service centre for the surrounding pastoralists but it was never going to become a major centre. Even today, with the interest generated by Crocodile Dundee, it is really nothing more than a couple of stores, a few houses and a pub. Like so much of western Queensland any future that it might have had was destroyed with the arrival of motor vehicles and farm mechanisation.

From the web at; http://www.walkabout.com.au/locations/QLDMcKinlay.shtml