Mr Gordon Landsborough
2017
The tragic story of the Burke and Wills expedition is now part of Australian folklore and we know the sad irony that by the time that the relief parties set out, only one member of Burke’s party, John King, was still alive. But in 1861, with none of the rapid means of communication we now enjoy, all the people of Victoria knew was that the explorers were long overdue on their return trip to the Gulf of Carpentaria. In 1860, Victoria and South Australia were involved in a race to achieve the prestige of the first crossing of the Australian continent from south to north. There was intense interest among the populace of the southern states in what lay in the unexplored country to the north of the settled areas, and when proposals to send a party to cross the unmapped interior were announced, it caused great excitement. Both states were planning to send an expedition but it was the Victorian one, led by Burke and Wills that was the first to set off in August 1860, in what amounted to a triumphal procession through the streets of Melbourne, past thousands of flag waving and cheering citizens. Burke, a former police-superintendent, a man with no background as an explorer and with little experience as a bushman, unexpectedly had been selected to lead Victoria’s expedition to find an overland route from the south coast of Australia to the north. Supremely outfitted, with no expense spared, he had struggled with his unwieldy baggage train, his followers at loggerheads with each other, until Cooper’s Creek was reached. Then, though it was December and the hottest time of the year, Burke and three men had plunged off on their own in a bid to make a fast crossing of the unexplored interior of the continent, to the Gulf of Carpentaria. Since that time no word had come out of the interior regarding the fate of the four men and, when they hadn’t returned by June 1861, pressure grew on the Royal Society and the Government of Victoria to send out a search party to look for the explo
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