Bedford's second in command, William Davidson, in later years wrote:"As white ants were very bad out there, it is quite possible that very few traces remain of our work above ground, but perhaps the bottles of cement we placed at every five miles along our line may prove interesting to scientists of some future generation, should they ever be unearthed."In 1988, as a special project for the Australian Bicentenary, the Queensland Division of the Institute of Engineering and Mining Surveyors of Australia retraced Bedford's survey and found his bottles.