O'Connor and his troopers, at the time of the request, were in active service in the Cooktown region conducting punitive expeditions against Indigenous communities and had recently massacred thirty people near Cape Bedford. The ability of the Native Police troopers to locate Kelly was hampered early on with Sambo dying from pneumonia not long after arriving at the police barracks in Benalla. Furthermore, Standish was fearful that if the Queensland contingent were to locate Kelly quickly, they would make the Victorian police appear incompetent, so he obstructed and withheld information from O'Connor's force. In late March 1879, Kelly's sisters Kate and Margaret asked the captain of the "Victoria Cross" how much he would charge to take "four or five gentlemen friends" to California from Queenscliff. On 31 March, an unidentified man arranged an appointment with the captain at the General Post Office to give a definite answer for the cost. The captain contacted police, who placed a large number of detectives and plain-clothes police throughout the building, but the man failed to appear. There is no evidence that Kelly's sisters were enquiring on behalf of the gang, and was reported in the "Argus" as "without foundation". According to Tom Lloyd, the gang "frequently discussed their plans for the future", and he suggested they go to Queensland one at a time where they could join up again. He felt that "a few years in the tropical climate" would render them unrecognizable. The gang came to the conclusion however that they would be forever estranged there and would lack the kind of whole-hearted support they had been getting in Victoria, and that their best recourse was to resolve their issues with the Victoria and New South Wales state governments. In late 1879, Kelly agreed to be interviewed in person by journalist J. F. Archibald of the "Sydney Daily Telegraph", but it fell through when the newspaper refused to run the story. On 9 February 1880, the "Felons' Apprehension Act 1878" lapsed with the dissolution of the Berry Parliament, and the gang's outlaw status and their arrest warrants expired with it. While Ned and Dan still had prior warrants outstanding for the attempted murder of Fitzpatrick, technically Hart and Byrne were free men although the police could still re-issue the murder warrants. In April 1880 a "Notice of Withdrawal of Reward" was posted by the government. It stated that after 20 July 1880 the Government would "absolutely cancel and withdraw the offer for the reward". During the Kelly outbreak, police watch parties monitored houses belonging to relatives of the gang, including that of Byrne's mother in the Woolshed Valley, near Beechworth.