After service in India and the Far East, Tuckey was sent to Australia in 1802 to help found the British colony of New South Wales, where he explored the interior and surveyed the harbour of Port Philip. In 1815 he was appointed commander of an expedition to search for a connection between the Congo and Niger rivers. Though the expedition failed in its primary object and Tuckey himself died of fever during it, he did travel 300 miles (480 km) up the Congo River and sent back ethnographic and geographic information on the interior for his Introduction to the Narrative of an Expedition to Explore the River Zaire (1816).