Burke and Wills: 20 Tons of Gear, a Chinese Gong and the Dig Tree

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Gold made Melbourne rich, growing it from about 29,000 people to nearly 140,000 in a decade, and Victoria wanted to be first across the continent from south to north to claim the telegraph route to Europe, with South Australia offering a prize of 2,000 pounds. The Philosophical Institute of Victoria chose Robert O'Hara Burke, an Irish former army officer and police superintendent with no bushcraft, over seasoned bushmen, with surveyor William John Wills under him. In August 1860, cheered by 15,000 people, they left with two dozen camels, over 20 horses and 20 tons of equipment, and took two months to cover 470 miles to Menindee.

Impatient to beat John McDouall Stuart, Burke split the party at Menindee and again at Cooper Creek, leaving William Brahe at Camp 65 and racing north with Wills, King and Gray. They reached the mangrove swamps of the Gulf of Carpentaria in February 1861 but never saw the open sea. Returning through monsoon rain, they ate their horse Billy and a python, and Gray died. On April 21 they reached Cooper Creek nine hours after Brahe had left. Burke buried a note in the cache without marking the tree, and when Brahe returned he rode away again. Wills and Burke died in late June, and King alone survived with the Yandruwandha people until rescued in September.

• The baggage included a cedar-topped camp table with chairs, rockets, flags and a Chinese gong.
• Camel handler George Landells quit after Burke dumped 60 gallons of rum meant to keep the camels free of scurvy.
• Wills secretly told Brahe to wait four months instead of three, and Brahe stayed 18 weeks.
• Brahe carved DIG into a coolibah tree to mark a buried cache of supplies.
• Eating unprocessed nardoo, whose thiaminase strips vitamin B1, starved the men even when their stomachs were full.