He gave fiery public speeches in the towns where he sold insurance, warning against the dangers of what he called "stagger juice". O'Malley supported the pro-temperance Republican Party, and in 1884 stumped for the presidential campaign of James Blaine. He later claimed that he would have been appointed ambassador to Chile if Blaine won. While in Texas, O'Malley founded a church, taking the title of "First Bishop of the Waterlily Rock Bound Church, the Red Skin Temple of the Cayuse Nation" in order to take advantage of a government land grant then being offered to churches. In 1881 O'Malley married Rosy Wilmot, who died from tuberculosis shortly before she was due to give birth in 1886. O'Malley claimed he had contracted the disease from her, and in 1888, having been given six months to live, he sailed for Queensland, Australia. Move to Australia In April 1888, the Oregon City Courier published an article titled "King O’Malley Exposed". The newspaper reported that he and a partner had "placed policies to the amount of tens of thousands of dollars by misrepresentation", and that the Home Life Insurance Company was actively warning customers not to take any money from him. O'Malley left for Australia a few months later, arriving in Sydney in late July 1888. He travelled from San Francisco via Hawaii aboard the SS Mariposa. He then went south to attend the Melbourne Centennial Exhibition; his photograph appears in the exhibition's official albums, where he is listed as a representative of an American glass manufacturer. O'Malley had a different version of his arrival in Australia. According to his account, he moved to Australia for health reasons, as he was suffering from tuberculosis. He supposedly arrived in the country at Port Alma, Queensland, then took up residence in a cave at Emu Park where an Aboriginal man named Coowonga nursed him back to health. He subsequently walked overland to Sydney and Melbourne before eventually reaching Adelaide. Of this account, states "whatever its merits as a story, it has absolutely none as a statement of fact". O'Malley fabricated a dramatic arrival story to hide his real reason for leaving the United States – to escape embezzlement allegations. Given the documentary evidence placing him in Sydney and Melbourne in 1888, it would have required a rapid recovery from tuberculosis followed by a walking journey of hundreds of miles, conducted within a timespan of several months.