Burke and Wills – The Disastrous Expedition that People Still Talk About.

In1860 the leaders in Melbourne mounted an expedition to explore a route across Australia to connect the city to trade routes to Asia and, equally importantly, the new telegraph network to London. Four of the party did actually make it 2,000 miles to the Gulf of Carpenteria but the Maidens Hotel in Menindee is the last place the leaders of the expedition were seen alive.

Melbourne was in the middle of a gold boom and called itself the biggest city in the British Empire (not sure any of them had been to Calcutta, but I digress). But Melbourne is still a LONG way from Great Britain. The need for connection was urgent so they mounted an expedition and thousands came out to see 19 men take off with horses, camels, and two years of food. To lead the  expedition the city chose Robert Burke, and Irish police officer with no experience of the Australian bush. A choice that doomed the effort from the start.

They took two months to get to Menindee (normally a one week trip for the mail coach), the team fell out and Burke decided to take Wills and two others to go it alone – fast and light – and told the others to wait for them at Cooper Creek. The small party made it back to the agreed rendezvous after three months but one day after the crew gave up on them and left them to their fate.

Over beers at dinner at he Maidens Hotel, the locals here in Menindee but also plenty of other places we stopped still describe what went wrong and discuss new books and new findings about the expedition. This is still an Australian obsession.

Photos: The Maidens Hotel was built in 1842 and is still largely how Burke and Wills would remember it apart from the really cold beer – plaque to remember the disaster.