Disaster down under: the Burke and Wills expedition

Born on January 5th 1834, William was the second of seven children of Dr. William Wills and Sarah Mary Elizabeth Calley and he went to school in Ashburton and studied chemistry at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London.

In 1852 William sailed to Australia with his brother, Thomas, where they found work as shepherds in South Melbourne before moving to Ballarat and working in the goldfields. In 1854 their father joined them and opened his own medical practice.

William, always keen to improve himself, soon started to study surveying, he taught himself geometry and trigonometry and by 1858 received a temporary job at the Magnetic Observatory in Melbourne. A year later he was promoted to the job of photolithographer in the Survey Department of the Office of Crown Land and Survey.

In 1860 William, as a surveyor and astronomer, was asked to join an expedition led by the Irish soldier and police officer, Robert O’Hara Burke. The expedition had been put together after the South Australian parliament offered a £2,000 reward to anyone who could cross the continent from Melbourne in the south to the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north (a distance of about 2,000 miles or 3,250km).

The expedition left on 20th August 1860. Burke and Wills were joined by 17 other men, 27 camels and 23 horses.

From the beginning of the expedition it was clear that Burke had little or no experience of Bush craft, and his leadership skills were also poor. By the time the group reached the town of Menindee a month later, the expedition’s second-in-command and the medical officer had both resigned.

Frustrated by the slow progress and afraid that others might complete the task before him, and win the prize-money, Burke decided to split his expedition group and take only the fastest and fittest men and horses. He left Menindee guided by William Wright. They arrived at Cooper Creek on November 11th and set up a depot. The rest of the expedition thought that Burke would wait for them to arrive so they would not have to travel in the hot Australian summer. However, Burke’s poor leadership showed again, He waited until December and then set off with another splinter group of just seven men, six camels, one horse and enough food for three months.

Despite the fifty-degree temperatures, the small group arrived at the Flinders River delta in February 1861, but they were unable to reach the sea because of the thick mangrove forest swamp. The explorers decided to turn back but only had 27 days of supplies: it had taken them 59 days to get there.

On the return journey the exhausted and starving explorers were forced to shoot and eat four of the camels and the horses and much of their equipment were left behind because they were too weak to carry it. They finally arrived back at Cooper Creek on 21st April to find that it was empty. The rest of the party had left several hours earlier after waiting for five weeks longer than originally planned for the returning group. Burke and Wills decided that they were all too tired to follow; they needed to rest and recover before continuing.

The main party had organised for supplies to be hidden underground in case Burke’s group did return to the camp. Burke, Wills and the others used this food to recover their strength. It was now that Burke made his most fateful decision.
Wills and the other expedition members wanted to follow the other group back to Menindee, but Burke decided that they should try to reach the Cattle station near Mount Hopeless, 240km away through the desert. They wrote a letter explaining their plans and reburied it under the tree in the compound with the remaining supplies. Unfortunately they forgot to change the mark on the tree or the date showing they had been there.

Meanwhile, two of the original group had decided to return to Cooper Creek to see if the others had made it back. They arrived to find that the place was empty and the tree remained untouched. They assumed that Burke and Wills had not returned, so they didn’t look under the tree to see if the supplies had been eaten.

Burke, Wills and King travelled less than five miles (8km) per day in the desert heat, they lost the last two camels and were unable to carry enough water to survive so they returned to Cooper Creek. Their supplies were running low so they bartered their sugar for fish and beans with the local Aborigines. This arrangement was working well until Burke foolishly shot his pistol at one of the locals while Wills was away from the camp. The Aborigines fled the area leaving the men with no food supply.

At the end of June 1861 the three men decided to follow the creek upstream in order to find the Aborigine camp. Wills became even weaker and asked to be left at a waterhole with some food and water. Burke and King continued for two more days until Burke also became too weak to continue. Burke died the next day and when King returned to the waterhole he found that Wills had also died.
On 11th September Alfred William Howitt arrived at Cooper Creek and four days later tracked down King who was living with the Aborigine tribe.

The explorers’ bodies were returned to Melbourne where they were given a state funeral on Wednesday 21st January 1863. Despite the catalogue of misfortune, mismanagement and poor leadership the expedition had managed to complete the picture of the Australian interior.