The Burke and Wills Expedition 1860-1861
Click here to view an interactive map of the Burke and Wills expedition

“AN EXCESS OF BRAVERY” – The Dig Tree, S Murgatroyd

As interpreted by writer, Michelle Murray:

A race! A race! So great a one
The world ne’er saw before;
A race! A race! Across this land
From south to northern shore
 - Melbourne Punch 8 Nov 1860

THE VICTORIAN EXPLORING EXPEDITION set out from Melbourne in August 1860 in a race against the South Australian explorer, John McDouall Stuart, to reach the north of Australia and claim the prize of overland trade and communications. £2000 awaited the first man to lead his party to the coast.

BURKE:  a leader with far more zeal than prudence

“I have only one ambition, which is to do some deed before I die that shall entitle me to have my name honourably inscribed on the page of history. If I succeed in that I care not what death, or when I die.” – Robert O’Hara Burke

ROBERT O’HARA BURKE, 40, leader of the expedition and former Police Chief of the Beechworth gold region, often rode his horse at a thundering pace before retiring to his outdoor bathtub wearing only his police helmet. As a young soldier he travelled Europe flattering women in French, Italian and German while racking up a mountain of gambling debts. In the Victorian police force Burke was popular and charming but restless. After his brother died in the Crimean war he dreamed of a heroic death.

‘I will cross Australia, or perish in the attempt’

WILLS:  the surveyor with an over abundance of loyalty

26-year-old WILLIAM JOHN WILLS, the expedition surveyor, is promoted to second in command at Menindee. He has a rather sober outlook on life and suffers from a slight speech impediment. Fortunately for everyone in this expedition, Wills has an extraordinary sense of direction. He is known to be intelligent but his father fears his son’s strong sense of loyalty will be the undoing of William.

GRAY:  a stout and hearty worker

CHARLES GRAY is a tall bear-like man in his 40s, who gets drunk once a month when he gets paid. Having once been a sailor, his arms are covered in tattoos of mermaids and anchors.

KING: the shy camel handler

JOHN KING, 22, is a small shy character who fought in India for the British Army. He was discharged suffering a tropical fever but his sensitive character could be attributed to having witnessed the execution of sepoy rebels who were tied across cannons and blown apart.  He was included in the expedition as a camel handler despite having no experience with them at all.

The Story:

• Robert O’Hara Burke is chosen to lead the most prestigious exploration party ever to attempt to cross the continent from north to south (no-one had done it yet). Unfortunately he has no experience in anything that might be helpful for the job. His sense of direction, for example, is so bad that he gets lost on his way home from the pub. But that doesn’t deter the selection committee as Burke has just the right amount of blue blood flowing in his veins. 
• It’s 20 August 1860. 15,000 Victorians have turned out to watch Australia’s most expensive expedition leave town. It is spectacularly chaotic. 26 unruly camels, 23 bolting horses, 19 confused men and six overloaded wagons struggle under 20 tonnes of supplies including 270 litres of rum... for the camels! Medicinal pick-me-up perhaps?
• In his former life as an eccentric policeman in the goldfields, Burke was obsessed with the 16-year-old Julia Matthews, a star of the Melbourne stage. As heroic explorer and respected expedition leader, Burke now decides, at the end of the first day travelling, to capitalise on his new status. He gallantly gallops back to Julia and proposes one last time.  The seductive thespian doesn’t exactly say yes, but more importantly, she doesn’t say no, presenting him with a lock of hair and one of her gloves. Now Burke, the dashing adventurer, has everything in place to successfully conquer the Australian inland.

• After only one week, the expedition, at a half a kilometre long, is buckling under its own weight.  Drunken camels break out every night and the whole show is almost crippled with exhaustion before it is out of the settled districts.  Burke decides to sell off supplies, dump the rum and up the pace. Then he sacks, demotes, loses and gains men all over the place, stamping the party with his own peculiar style of leadership.
• George Landells, camel-handler and second in command, is rather incensed by Burke’s method and accuses him of insanity. Burke responds by calling Landells a scoundrel and challenges him to a duel; Landells refuses and quits; Burke counters with leaving William Wills, the quiet, meticulous, disciplined surveyor, to sack the deputy leader.  Wills is then promoted in Landells’ place and the camel handling goes to John King, a small shy character who fought for the British in India.
• The Darling River at Menindee is the final outpost of European settlement. It is here Burke learns that the South Australian explorer, John McDouall Stuart, has turned back in his efforts to cross the continent. But since Stuart is a genuine explorer, no-one doubts his resolve to launch another campaign immediately, and with every likelihood of success. The race between South Australia and Victoria, Stuart and Burke is on!

• Burke urgently splits his party into three groups because it is abundantly clear to him that all these scientists, artists and men, food and equipment is making the whole show more like a circus than a race. Burke needs pace so:
  • The bulk of the supplies are left at Menindee under the leadership of Wright, a bushman and manager of sheep stations, who Burke met at the pub.
  • Four men are left at a big waterhole called Bulloo Bulloo on Cooper Creek under the watch of 25-year-old Brahe and told to wait three months. Burke gives his word that the supplies from Menindee will be there any day. The problem with that is that Burke took most of the camels and horses for himself so Wright doesn’t have a hope of getting anything to the Cooper.
  • With this ill conceived plan Burke sets out into the desert with three men, a pony, six camels and enough supplies for three months exactly. He doesn’t write down any instructions for his back-up parties. He’s bold, courageous, determined and inexperienced.

• It is summer. Burke, Wills, Gray and King walk - yes walk! - 1,500km over unexplored desert and through the traditional country of many Indigenous groups including the Yawarrawarrka, Wangkangurru, Mithaka and Kalkadoon.  
• After two months travelling with barely a rest day they reach the northern coast. Well, it is not actually the coast because they get bogged in a tidal swamp about twenty kilometres from the sea, but it is close enough to taste the salt in the water. The men have used up nearly three-quarters of their rations. Now, for the gruelling return journey back to the Cooper, each man’s share of food and tea is cut in half. Things are looking pretty pitiful.
• With 1,100km to go their position becomes wretched. They know they don’t have enough food to make it back so Burke reduces the rations once more. Six weeks after leaving the Gulf, Gray is caught by Wills stealing flour. He is given ‘a good thrashing’ by Burke for his betrayal. This small vulnerable party is beginning to waste away but it is Gray who is in the early stages of dying of starvation. When he can no longer walk, he is strapped to a camel and finally gives up the ghost within 150km of the Cooper. It takes Burke, Wills and King about a day to give him a decent burial. Their bodies are consuming themselves.

• Brahe’s party waits on the Cooper four months and one week for the return of Burke. Wright never did turn up with extra supplies. Brahe finally decides to make for Menindee before his own men start to drop dead. Tragically, Burke’s party staggers into the freshly deserted camp about nine hours later – about the time it took to bury Gray. The only welcome is a message blazed onto a coolabah instructing them to ‘DIG’ for supplies.
• Burke made it to the Gulf and back in 127 days and misses Brahe by hours. The three explorers rest the night and dine on flour, sugar, tea and dried meat. Twenty-two kilometres south, Brahe and his men are also setting camp for the evening. The next morning, in all his starving wisdom, Burke decides that rather than follow Brahe back toward the Darling and any potential search party, he will take his men down the Cooper to try for Mt Hopeless, 250km away. Wills and King attempt to talk him out of it but Burke insists and Wills’ loyalty overrides any possible mutinous thoughts.
• They bury a note with the trunk that held the supplies and tidy up so well it looks like they’ve never been. This is apparently to deter the Aboriginal people of the river from following. Burke’s fatal flaw is his refusal to accept that the local Aboriginal peoples have the knowledge and experience that will keep him and his men alive.   
• As they trek south, Burke and Wills’ last camel drops dead.

• At Menindee, Wright has finally managed to get enough transport ready to set out for the Cooper. He has eight men, 13 horses and 10 camels with as much food as they can carry. It is the height of summer. On the first night Dick, the Aboriginal guide, suspects it will end tragically and slips away.
• Burke’s party lies dying on the Cooper 64km south of the DIG TREE. Brahe and Wright’s parties meanwhile, stumble upon one other in the middle of the night. The two leaders decide to make one last dash back to the DIG TREE just in case. They take fifteen minutes to conclude that the camp site is untouched and that Burke’s party has either died or walked to Queensland. 

• Burke, Wills and King are dying of starvation and exhaustion by a river that feeds a population of around 2000 people from the Ngurawola, Wangkamurra, Yawarrawarrka and the Yandruwandha groups. Burke doesn’t have any trouble accepting fish and nardoo (a native damper) from the Yandruwandha people, but has an unfortunate habit of firing his gun over their heads when they invite him to ceremonies or when they expect anything in return for their hospitality.
• Meanwhile, making their way back to Menindee, Wright’s horses don’t stand a chance, and one by one the camels either die or disappear into the desert. The party entrusted to rescue Burke is dying from the heat and plagued by dysentery, beri-beri, scurvy, barcoo rot and one bloke is in the final throes of syphilis. They do at least make it back to the Darling River but four men have died and no supplies get to the Cooper.
• Burke’s party don’t realise there is a way to prepare nardoo so it doesn’t kill them. The plant is rich in the enzyme thiaminase which blocks the absorption of Vitamin B, causing beri-beri. To neutralise the thiaminase the nardoo must be sluiced with water and cooked in the fire. They are eating it as a paste.
• Wills realises he is dying. He is left in his shelter by the creek with a billy can of water, some nardoo and wood for a fire. He has convinced Burke and King that their only hope of survival is to find the Yandruwandha. Burke and King reluctantly head off but they don’t get far before it is clear Burke doesn’t have the strength. After three days King wakes to find his leader dead. He weeps for hours. King himself is suffering from beri-beri, scurvy, malnutrition and exhaustion. He has little food and no shelter. Finally he walks back to find Wills has also died by the Tilka waterhole. After burying the surveyor he follows tracks to the Yandruwandha who generously welcome him and give him food and shelter.
• On the banks of the Cooper Creek, ten months after leaving Melbourne, King is clinging to life and sanity. He is the sole survivor of an epic journey across the continent to be the first Europeans to cross Australia in any direction.   

• On 15 September 1861 a member of Alfred Howitt’s rescue party comes across a man who resembles an Aborigine except that he is wearing a hat. It is King. He is a shattered man. Never regaining his health, he dies at the age of 34. 

EPILOGUE:

• The royal commission of inquiry into the expedition deaths distributed blame to:

1. Brahe for abandoning his Cooper Creek post;
2. the exploration committee for not taking Burke’s dispatches seriously;
3. Wright for not mounting a successful party to reach the Cooper. Wright never restored his reputation.

• John McDoull Stuart reached the northern coast in July 1862.
• Burke and Wills’ remains were immortalised in Victoria’s first state funeral procession drawing a crowd of somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000 spectators. Stuart returned to Adelaide a hero on the very same day.
  • A final account for the Burke and Wills expedition put the costs at £57,840.
  • Adelaide won the construction of the overland telegraph line and annexed the Northern Territory, while Stuart was awarded the £2000 for being the first man to cross the continent (and live to tell the story!).
  • Victoria’s prize for her efforts was a couple of remarkably famous dead explorers.
• In 1867 a drover came across a little girl on the Cooper who is thought to have been King’s daughter.
• As for the actress Julia Matthews, with whom Burke had been so besotted...amongst Wills’ remaining possessions was found the partner to the kid glove that Burke had so devotedly carried across the Australian wilderness. Did Julia promise her hand to both men?
• While it has to be said that the expedition was a spectacular failure, it cannot be said that Burke did not succeed in his objective:
  • “I have only one ambition, which is to do some deed before I die, that shall entitle me to have my name honourably inscribed on the page of history. If I succeed in that I care not what death, or when I die.” – Robert O’Hara Burke
  • Burke and his party crossed the continent on foot, walking 3,000kms from Cooper Creek to the Gulf of Carpentaria and, back in 127 days, an astonishing feat. These men out-lived their camels and but for a series of unfortunate blunders, missed out on the celebrations of their heroic achievements by just a few hours.    
    • But just as ironically, the search parties that set out from three states to rescue Burke and his men collectively covered more than 11,000km without a single death. They also opened up millions of hectares for pastoralists and miners.
    • In 1862 the Victorian Government presented the Yandruwandha with inscribed breast plates in appreciation of all they had done to help Burke, Wills and King. But that acknowledgement did little to prevent the shattering of the river’s Indigenous cultures in the wake of European pastoralists. A river that once supported around 2,000 people in a rich and complex society has ever since been an outpost for a handful of people and on three occasions since settlement, the town of Innamincka has almost ceased to exist. But she seems to have a fortuitous nature and perhaps that’s because she plays host to one of the best yarns Australia has to tell.