Australia Adventure Travel - Hot on the Trail (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine June 2003

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The Hard Way
Hot on the Trail (Cont.)

BECAUSE COOPER'S CREEK had permanent water in the billabongs and ample shade under the coolibahs, it was a center of commerce for the Aborigines for a thousand generations. They would travel hundreds of miles to trade shields, wooden bowls, ax heads—or simply to socialize.

When Burke and Wills arrived at Cooper's Creek, they were welcomed by the Yandruwandha Aborigines with offerings of fish and invitations to ceremonies. Burke rebuffed them by blasting bullets into the air.

Summer and its mortal heat had descended. Although the Yandruwandha had warned Burke not to venture farther into the desert during the hottest months, he was insistent. He ordered four men to stay behind at the base camp at Cooper's Creek to guard a stock of provisions against a plague of rats. They were instructed to wait three months for Burke's return—until March 15, 1861—before forsaking the post.

On December 16, Burke, Wills, and two other men—ex-soldier John King and ex-sailor Charley Gray—strode defiantly into the unknown. They took six camels, one horse, and barely three months of food. The terrain varied from dismal rows of dunes to baked claypan, rock-tiled wasteland to savage, waterless mountains. On some days, Burke and his men managed a meager five miles; other days they slogged 35 or more across the punishing landscape.

Through inhuman persistence, Burke and Wills reached the Gulf of Carpentaria on February 9, 1861. But they never saw the ocean. They marched until they were knee-deep in a mangrove swamp, then simply turned around. The Victoria Exploring Expedition had triumphed—although what began as "the finest expedition ever assembled in Australia," according to the journalists of the time, was now down to four emaciated men in rags. And it was 900 miles back to their supply base at Cooper's Creek.

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