During the early months of 1880, Thomas McIlwraith, the new Premier (first minister) of Queensland, was in London to promote the interests of his colonial government. McIlwraith, who came originally from Ayr in southwest Scotland, had abandoned his studies at Glasgow University in 1854 to join the great exodus from Scotland to the goldfields of Australia. He subsequently became a railway engineer and contractor, and a pastoralist. His investments in sheep runs eventually focused on properties in Queensland, where he also involved himself in cattle ranching. McIlwraith, a colourful, ebullient and pugnacious character, was elected to the Queensland legislature in 1870 and rose swiftly within the colony's rumbustious politics, becoming secretary for public works and mines in 1874 and Premier in 1879. He was in London in 1880 to attend to several matters of immediate concern to his government, principally the management of Queensland's Agency-General in London and the placing of contracts for iron for railway construction in the colony. However, he also brought with him wider ambitions, and some partially formulated proposals, to advance the economic development of Queensland through investment in transport infrastructure and the attraction of more British capital and migrants to the Colony. In drumming up interest in these schemes, McIlwraith made contact with William Mackinnon and his business network – and opened up a new chapter in the long history of the group's flirtation with Australia.

Although neither man had met before, or otherwise been in touch, McIlwraith quickly sought out his fellow Scot, and he and Mackinnon were soon deep in discussion of two projects. The first concerned steamships, reflecting William's long-standing ambitions to secure government financial support for an entry into shipping to and from Australia – about which McIlwraith must have been well aware. The second involved railways, reflecting William's growing reputation as a railway financier, his association with one of Britain's wealthiest individuals, the Duke of Sutherland, and McIlwraith's hopes that both would support a proposed railway in the western districts of Queensland. Of the two schemes, the shipping one was the more immediately attractive to William Mackinnon.