Oh Mr Burke
‘Tis risky work
To seek the northern coast
Then have a care
Or else prepare
To be a desert ghost…1
On the 20th of August 1860, amid such fanfare as Melbourne had never seen before, the Victorian Exploration Expedition set off from Royal Park. They were embarking on a journey of roughly 3,250km across Australia, from Port Phillip in Victoria to the Gulf of Carpentaria in Queensland. The expedition was expected to take at least twelve months and it was hoped that the brave men setting out will not only fill in “a ghastly blank” in the map of the far north, but also bring back important scientific information about the flora, fauna, climate and landscape of the Australian continent as they travelled. Perhaps they would even find the fabled inland sea that was still believed to exist somewhere in the middle of the country!
“The Departure of the Burke & Wills Expedition from Royal Park, 20th August 1860” by A. H. Fullwood.
None of this happened.
Instead, the exploration party was beset with problems caused by delays, a lack of funds, factionalism, infighting, poor leadership, mismanagement and a mind-boggling amount of sheer stupidity. The further north they went, the more these issues compounded: men were driven to despair, tempers flared and resignations abounded. Communication with the Victorian Exploration Committee, who were funding and overseeing the exercise, became impossible due to both the distance and (disturbingly!) the Committee’s determination not to be bothered with bad news.
It ended, as you might have expected, in tragedy.
Starvation, disease and injury claimed the lives of seven of the party, while a further fourteen people (including twelve Ngawun men who were massacred by a relief party, and the elder of another tribe who was murdered by a depot party) died as a direct result of the expedition. The aim to reach the Gulf of Carpentaria was achieved, but only one man lived to tell the tale – not exactly a success by my reckoning! However, this grim story would be rewritten, edited and embellished over the years until it became a story of heroes and villains: gallant explorers – true Australians! – who were deserted by their comrades and left to perish in the desert.
The names of these supposably gallant men?
Robert O’Hara Burke and William John Wills.
Robert O’Hara Burke (right) and William John Wills (left).
Who Were Burke & Wills?
Anyone who went through primary or secondary school in Australia will have heard of the Burke and Wills Expedition. Even if they don’t know much, they could probably tell you that Burke and Wills were the first (white) men to cross Australia, and that they died on the way back.
This is the bedrock of truth the myth of Burke and Wills is built on. They were the first white men to cross Australia, and they did die on the way back from Queensland, but the story that has been built on this bedrock is unsettling. While Wills deserves his place in Australian history as a man who made outstanding contributions to science, Burke is a decidedly troubling figure. He had no business being outside the settled districts of colonial Australia, was a spectacularly bad leader, and it was his poor decisions which led to his own death, and the deaths of four others.
So who was this man?
Robert O’Hara Burke was born in an old Anglo-Irish family on 6 May 1821 in County Galway, Ireland and had a colourful life prior to immigrating to Australia in 1852. He served in the Austrian Army from 1841 – 1848, before returning to Ireland and enrolling in the Royal Irish Constabulary. Upon arriving in Australia in 1853 he joined the fledgling Victoria police force and rose quickly through the ranks, becoming a Police Superintendent by 1858. He was an upstanding gentleman, the cousin of a baron by marriage, and “had no knowledge whatever of the resources by which an experienced bushman might find a living in the Australian desert.”
In short, while he appeared to be a strong leader and a good officer, Burke was merely a man of class at a time when birth and breeding mattered more than merit and ability. In fact, far from being a man of exemplary character (as he would be described in death), he was erratic, short-tempered, impatient, sometimes violent and decidedly irrational.
So you may be wondering (as I did when I looked deeper into this story) how on earth such a manifestly unqualified man ended up at the head of an expedition party into Australia’s then unexplored interior. Were there no better candidates?
Of course there were! Australia had no shortage of experienced explorers and skilled bushmen at the time, but the reason the unskilled, inexperienced and unqualified Burke was chosen is simple, albeit infuriating and depressing: the Victorian Expedition Committee was bribed. The head of the Victorian Exploration Committee, one Dr. John Macadam, was paid handsomely by a friend of Burke’s to ensure he was appointed, and Robert O’Hara Burke was duly chosen as the expedition leader, following a rigged vote.
I should pause here and note that not all of the committee were as enamoured with money as Dr. Macadam. Dr. Ferdinand Mueller, another influential member of the committee, was stridently against Burke’s appointment. He believed the best man to lead the expedition would be Major Peter Warburton, who was an experienced explorer and bushman, who had conducted expeditions into the interior before and knew how to live off the land. Sadly, money won out and once Burke was appointed there was no stopping him: it became a matter of personal honour that he should be the first man to cross the continent. He would “do it or die!” Well, as the Ovens and Murray Advertiser would put it in 1880, “He did it and died,” although the paper neglected to mention the lives of the men Burke sacrificed along the way.
But what of the second man whose name went down in history? Was William John Wills too a fortunate fool with friends in high places? A dilettante who had no business being a part of such an expedition? Certainly not!
William John Wills was born in Devon, to a comfortable, middle-class doctor (also called William) and his wife, on 5 January 1834. He was something of a child prodigy, despite what was most likely mild brain damage from a high fever he contracted while very young. Throughout his life he had slow and hesitating speech as a result of his near deadly brush with illness.
He was an excellent navigator and astronomer, as well as being a prodigious all-rounder in many scientific fields. He was initially appointed as the third officer, and was the expedition’s official surveyor, astronomical and meteorological observer. He was later promoted to second officer; the initial appointee resigned from the expedition at Menindee after Burke threatened to shoot him.
It was Wills’ skills as navigator which “took Burke across the continent [and] without Wills, Burke would have been utterly helpless”. His detailed observations regarding latitude and longitude have allowed us, more than 100 years later, to clearly map the route the expedition took. The map below is one of the many complied from Wills’ notes and observations, it comes from the Australian Museum’s “Trailblazers: Australia’s 50 Greatest Explorers” exhibit and gives a sense of the distance travelled by the party, as well as the location of the Cooper’s Creek Depot.
However, Wills didn’t have “the special bush training which would have enabled him to see what course would be necessary and also to speak with authority given by knowledge.”
That said, Wills’ lack of bush skills is far less troubling than Burke’s as Wills was not hired as a bushman, but as an observer and a scientist. He had every right to expect that the Exploration Committee would have hired bushmen to ensure the expedition could live off the land while in the wilderness. Burke, on the other hand, hired as the leader of the expedition, would have been expected to possess some bush skills. That he had none, and that this was known by the committee before and after his appointment, is an indictment on the committee as much as it is on Burke.
What Went Wrong?
The answer to the above question is: quite a lot, and most of it was the fault of none other than Robert O’Hara Burke. In 1862, the Royal Commission into the disastrous expedition found that key decisions made by Burke significantly contributed to his own death, and the deaths of the men under his command.
First, he split his party at several points along the way, reducing the number of capable, qualified men (of which there had been few to begin with) with the skills to help him reach the top of Australia. Secondly, he took insufficient supplies and provisions with him and left men behind at ill-equipped depots facing the same problem. Thirdly, he failed to properly communicate his intentions to the men he took with him and those left behind to man the various depots; men were given conflicting orders and, as a result, general confusion abounded. These factors were exacerbated by disease and starvation, and the generally unforgiving nature of the Australian desert.
Burke & Wills, along with sole expedition survivor John King, returned to their depot at Cooper’s Creek after crossing the continent to find it had been abandoned. Unknown to them, they had missed the depot party by just hours, and the men there had only left because they themselves were slowly dying of scurvy and starvation. They had stayed longer than ordered, but – truly believing that Burke and Wills were dead – they made the decision to save themselves. By the time they reached civilization again and a rescue party was organised, Burke & Wills were dead, and King had survived only by integrating himself with an Indigenous tribe.
In 1862, Burke and Wills returned to Melbourne, their bones rattling in little canvas sacks.
“Arrival of Burke, Wills and King at the deserted camp at Cooper’s Creek, Sunday evening, 21st April 1861” by John Longstaff (1907)
A Sad Epilogue
The state funeral for Burke & Wills was the first of its kind in Victoria and only the second in the Australian colonies. Melbourne came to a standstill for the grand spectacle, which had been arranged by the very men who were partly responsible for the disaster in the first place: the Victorian Expedition Committee and their parent The Royal Society of Victoria.
“The Burke & Wills Funeral Procession” from The Melbourne Illustrated Post, 1862.
A commission was set up to examine what went wrong, but it was reluctant to criticise the titans of Melbourne’s Royal Society (who got off with a slap on the wrist for hiding the fact that they had run out of money) and even more reluctant to look at Burke’s role in the disaster. Instead, blame was heaped on William Brahe, who had been forced to abandon the depot at Cooper’s Creek, and William Wright, who had been supposed to bring a supply party up from Menindee. Neither of these men deserve the heat they have been subjected to throughout history, but perhaps our strange obsession with never speaking ill of the dead hasn’t allowed us to really dig into the disaster of the Burke & Wills Expedition.
‘Mid sand and stones
You’ll leave your bones
‘Tis said, if all be true.
For says report,
You’re not the sort
To see the party through.2
Sources
Primary Sources
‘Beechworth Burke: The Museum and the Library’, Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 3 August 1880, p. 2, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/201538910?searchTerm=burke%20die, (accessed 19/02/2023)
Bush, O. ‘Mr. Bush’s Latest Despatch To O’Hara Burke. Esq., Leader of the Victorian Exploration Expedition’, The South Australian Advertiser, 28 December 1860, p. 3, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/828390?searchTerm=burke, (accessed 19/02/2023)
‘Coroner finds on Burke and Wills deaths, 151 years later’, ABC Radio [podcast], https://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-04-20/coroner-finds-on-burke-and-wills-deaths-151-years/3963250utm_campaign=abc_news_web&utm_content=link&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_source=abc_news_web, interview with Victorian coroner Jane Hendtlass, ABC Radio National, 20 April 2012, (accessed 29/01/2023)
‘The Exploring Expedition, The Departure of Mr Burke and the Camels – Starting of the Expedition’, The Argus, 25 August 1860, p. 3, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/264145671?searchTerm=burke%2C%20expedition%2C%20explore%2C%20explorers, (accessed 19/02/2023)
Fullwood, A. H, ‘Departure of the Burke and Wills Expedition from Royal Park, 20th August 1860’ [picture], https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-135906991/view, (accessed 18/01/2023)
Hervey, M., Pratt, T., Murphy, F., Sturt, E. & Sullivan, J., Report of the commissioners appointed to enquire into and report upon the circumstances connected with the sufferings and death of Robert O’Hara Burke and William John Wills, Melbourne, 1861, Government Printer, http://www.burkeandwills.net.au/Commission_of_Enquiry/Report.htm (accessed 19/03/2023)
Howitt, A. ‘Personal reminiscences of Central Australia and the Burke and Wills expedition’, Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, Adelaide, 1907, p. 19 https://viewer.slv.vic.gov.au/?entity=IE4186056&file=FL17998264&mode=browse, (accessed 19/02/2023)
‘The Funeral Procession of Burke and Wills’, The Melbourne Illustrated Post, 1 January 1863, [picture], https://blogs.slv.vic.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Burke-and-Wills-funeral-procession.jpg, (accessed 19/02/2023)
Sadleir, J. ‘Old Time Memories – Robert O’Hara Burke’, Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 28 May 1898, p. 2, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/199741073?browse=ndp%3Abrowse%2Ftitle%2FO%2Ftitle%2F326%2F1898%2F05%2F28%2Fpage%2F21892439%2Farticle%2F199741073, (accessed 19/02/2023)
‘Tuesday, January 31st 1860’, The Age, 31 January 1860, p. 4, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/154882855/18200270, (accessed 19/02/2023)
‘Wednesday, September 1, 1858’, The Argus, 1 September 1858, p. 4, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/7300289?searchTerm=blank, (accessed 19/02/2023)
Secondary Sources
A Compendium of Irish Biography, ‘Robert O’Hara Burke’, Library Ireland, https://www.libraryireland.com/biography/RobertOHaraBurke.php, (accessed 05/03/2023)
FitzSimons, P., Burke and Wills, The Triumph and Tragedy of Australia’s Most Famous Explorers, Random House Australia, Sydney, 2017
Longstaff, John. ‘Arrival of Burke, Wills and King at the deserted camp at Cooper’s Creek, Sunday evening, 21st April 1861’, 1907, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Victoria, https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/collection/work/5865/, (accessed 09/04/2023)
National Australia Museum, Burke and Wills [website], https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/burke-and-wills, (accessed 10/04/2023)
Wills, W. A Successful Exploration through the Interior of Australia from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria, Burke and Wills Web, ch. 1, para. 2, http://www.burkeandwills.net.au/Successful_Exploration/Chapter_01.htm