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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Burke and Wills expedition | 5/9 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burke_and_Wills_expedition | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T12:39:46.567045+00:00 | kb-cron |
== Burke, Wills and King at Cooper Creek == Burke, Wills and King arrived at Camp 65 in the evening of Sunday, 21 April 1861, finding the Cooper Creek depot deserted after Brahe's group had left earlier that day. They found the "Dig Tree" and dug up the cache of supplies together with Brahe's letter explaining that the party had given up waiting and left. Burke's party had missed them by only nine hours. The three men and two remaining camels were exhausted; they had no hope of catching up to Brahe's party.
Burke's party rested at Camp 65 for two days, living off the supplies left in the cache. Wills and King wanted to follow their outward track back to Menindee, but Burke overruled them and decided to attempt to reach the furthest outpost of pastoral settlement in South Australia, a cattle station near Mount Hopeless. This would mean travelling southwest through the desert for 240 kilometres (150 mi). They wrote a letter explaining their intentions and reburied it in the cache under the marked tree in case a rescue party visited the area. Unfortunately, they did not change the mark on the tree or alter the date. On 23 April they set off, following Cooper Creek downstream and then heading out into the Strzelecki Desert towards Mount Hopeless. After leaving the "Dig Tree", Burke's party rarely travelled more than 5 mi (8.0 km) a day, mostly following paths used by the local Aboriginal residents. The region was well populated with Yandruwandha people and they were very courteous to the three explorers, giving them fish, beans called padlu and a type of damper made from the ground sporocarps of the ngardu (nardoo) plant (Marsilea drummondii) in exchange for sugar. One of the two remaining camels, Landa, was shot when he became bogged in Minkie waterhole and the other, Rajah, later collapsed on 7 May. Without pack animals, it became impossible for Burke, Wills and King to leave Cooper Creek and cross the Strzelecki Desert. Over the next few days, the party encountered several Yandruwandha communities who gave them a variety of cooked foods, including fish, nardoo, native rats and padlu. They were also given gunyahs to sleep in and the stimulant pituri to chew. Some Yandruwandha even stayed attentive to their fire at night so the explorers wouldn't get cold. However, by 10 May these Yandruwandha moved elsewhere, forcing the three men to fend for themselves. They were unable to locate other Aboriginal camps and had to make do for the next two weeks camping next to a nardoo patch, preparing this food themselves. At the end of May 1861, Burke ordered Wills to return to the "Dig Tree" to deposit some items for safekeeping. During this trip, Wills met with two more Yandruwandha clans who offered their hospitality to him. For about a week, Wills lived with them, sharing a gunyah with a man named Poko Tinnamira and learning some of their language. He became friends with another man called Pitchery, and was supplied with ample water and food. They even de-boned the fish for him before he ate it. By 5 June, Wills left this group to reunite with Burke and King. While Wills was away, Burke and King had also been well cared for by another group of Yandruwandha. However, when one of them took Burke's oilcloth after giving him some fish, Burke ran after him and shot over his head. King had also lined some Yandruwandha up outside the gunyah they were staying in and fired over their heads after he felt threatened by their approach. Burke then went up to another group who had arrived with nets full of fish. He knocked the nets out of their hands and ordered King to fire over them. They ran away and Burke collected the fish left behind. While cooking this fish, Burke accidentally set fire to the gunyah they were in, destroying most of their remaining belongings except for Burke's pistol and another firearm. On 6 June, Wills had returned to Burke and King. They spent the following days trying to find another Aboriginal camp, but unsurprisingly the Yandruwandha had cleared out from the area. Over the next few weeks, the three men subsisted on leftover camel meat and nardoo they prepared themselves. The weather became rainy and cold, and they had little to protect themselves from exposure to the elements. Wills recorded that the nardoo agreed with King more, while he and Burke were starving and feeling the cold.
=== Death of Burke and Wills ===
Wills' last entry in his journal was on 29 June, when King and Burke had decided to leave him to look for an Aboriginal camp. Wills had become too weak to continue. At his own insistence he was left behind at Breerily waterhole with some food, water and shelter. Burke and King continued upstream for another two days until Burke became too weak to continue. He died the following morning at a place called Yaenimemgi, his pistol loaded and capped in his hand. King stayed with his body for two days and then returned downstream to Breerily waterhole, where he found that Wills had died as well. The exact dates on which Burke and Wills died are unknown, and different dates are given on various memorials in Victoria. The Exploration Committee fixed 28 June 1861 as the date both explorers died. After the deaths of Burke and Wills, King found a two-week supply of nardoo flour at an abandoned Aboriginal camp. He then came across a group of Yandruwandha willing to give him food and shelter, and in return he shot birds to contribute to their supplies. He became more closely united with this clan after he attempted to heal a skin sore on a woman named Carrawaw, and lived with them for around a month until he was found on 15 September by the rescue expedition led by Alfred Howitt.
== Rescue expeditions ==