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Outside Magazine June 2003
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The Hard Way
Hot on the Trail (Cont.)

THEY ARE STILL teaching the Shakespearean tale of Burke and Wills to Australian children, whereas Sturt, Gregory, and Stuart—efficient and capable, paradigms of exploration—were consequently forgotten. Tragedy and irony always play better than common sense. We humans adore martyrs, as long as we don't have to be one.

The five rescue missions dispatched to find Burke, Wills, and the stragglers from their party further opened the interior. On August 22, 1872, the first telegram was sent from London to Adelaide, passing through an underwater cable from Java to present-day Darwin and then across the scorching expanse of outback.

A few miles northwest of Innamincka, on the banks of languorous Cooper's Creek, there is a concrete cairn marking Burke's grave. As I stand before it in the dizzying heat, swatting flies and staring at the simple plaque, it occurs to me that, in the end, Robert O'Hara Burke got exactly what he wanted.





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