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Outside Magazine June 2003

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The Hard Way
Hot on the Trail (Cont.)

"YA SEE, MATE, they weren't Aussie bushmen, now were they?" Bomber Johnson chides, wiping his damp forehead with a neckerchief in the 110-degree shade.

Red-faced, yellow-haired, bushy brows drooping into his eyes, 69-year-old Bomber is the self-appointed historian and personal guide to the Dig Tree, a 44-mile drive north from Innamincka along a twisting sand track.

"They were arrogant. They didn't try to learn from the Aborigines," says Bomber. He's a jackaroo (Aussie for "cowboy") pilot who has spent 35 years mustering cattle in his Cessna 172. Bomber tells me tale after tale of Aborigines: the trackers who could follow outlaws across bare rock by finding the grains of sand that fell from beneath their toenails, the jackaroos who could survive on goanna lizard flesh for weeks. "They knew how to live in this nice big slice of hell," he says appreciatively.

Bomber directs me to an unassuming coolibah distinguished only by an encircling boardwalk. Carved into the twisting trunk are the letter B, for Burke, and the roman numerals LXV, for the expedition's 65th camp. Over the last century, Bomber explains, folds of bark have covered up the most famous inscription:

DIG
UNDER
3 FT NW
APRIL 26, 1861

On February 13, 1861, Burke, Wills, Gray, and King began dragging themselves southward from the gulf. With supplies almost gone, Burke cut rations in half. Although Wills was a good shot and King would later report that they were surrounded by "kangaroos, emus, and any quantity of ducks and pelicans," Wills was too debilitated to hunt.

Burke, by this point, had likely gone mad. Once, when a camel dropped and couldn't continue, he inexplicably abandoned the beast instead of eating it.

On March 15, 1861, the day they were due back at base camp, Burke and his men were still 680 miles to the north. Burke cut rations again. They were drinking three quarts of water a day, when their bodies needed ten, and burning twice the number of calories they were consuming.

Gray began lagging behind, his legs in excruciating pain. He became delirious and then unable to speak. He died at sunrise on April 17, 1861, less than 100 miles from Cooper's Creek.

Four days later, Burke, Wills, and King stumbled into Cooper's Creek and, upon seeing the inscription in the coolibah tree, collapsed. King felt the still-warm ashes of the campfire. The four men at base camp had waited an extra five weeks at their post but had left that very morning.

After eight months of unspeakable hardship, Burke, Wills, and King had missed salvation by eight hours—and now were too exhausted to catch up.

Buried beneath the Dig Tree in an old camel trunk were stores of flour, sugar, tea, and dried meat left behind by Burke's men, but it wasn't enough. Robert Burke and William Wills died of starvation and exhaustion beside Cooper's Creek. In September 1861, King was found living with Aborigines near Innamincka. Of the men left behind along the way, five perished, most of them from scurvy.

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