How are Burke and Wills remembered?

Answer 1

Burke and Wills are remembered for their expedition across Australia, which was one of the largest to ever be undertaken in Australian history - and one of the most tragic.

Robert O'Hara Burke, with William Wills appointed second-in-command, led the 1860-61 expedition to try to cross Australia from Melbourne in the south to the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north - and back again. Their party was very well equipped and, because of its size, was split at Menindee so that Burke could race ahead to the Gulf of Carpentaria with a smaller group. Part of this smaller group established a depot at Cooper Creek to stock provisions for when the explorers returned from the Gulf. Burke chose the wrong tim,e of year to make the push for the north, leaving in December 1860 - Australia's summer. He took with him Wills, Charles Gray and John King.

The expedition to the Gulf took much longer than Burke expected: when he returned to Cooper Creek, he found that the relief party had left just seven hours earlier, which was actually less than how much time it had taken to bury Gray, who had died on the return journey. Through poor judgement, lack of observation and a series of miscommunications, Burke and Wills never met up with the relief party. They perished on the banks of Cooper Creek. King alone survived to lead the rescue party to the remains of Burke and Wills, and the failure of one of the most elaborately planned expeditions in Australia's history.

There are numerous memorials to Burke and Wills in Victoria, the state that commissioned the expedition. A large statue of the two men stands in Swanston Street in Melbourne. In addition, there are memorials at the Mechanics Institute in Fryerstown; at Back Creek Cemetery in Bendigo; the Explorers Fountain at Ballarat; and the Explorers Memorial in Swan Hill.

Other places by which Burke and Wills are remembered can be found in Queensland because Robert O'Hara Burke and William Wills were the first to travel through western and northern Queensland. Places named after them in that part of Queensland are

• Burketown
• Burke River
• O'Hara's Gap in the Selwyn Ranges

Burke and Wills were both from Victoria, so there are numerous sites around the state commemorating the two men.

• Burke Museum, Beechworth (where Burke was Superintendent of Police for some time) and a monument to Burke in Castlemaine, where he was also Superintendent
• A monumental bronze statue, currently in the centre of Melbourne, but which has previously been in various other locations around Melbourne
• A memorial cairn in Melbourne's Royal Park, the point of Burke and Wills' departure
• A monument in the main Bendigo Cemetery
• The Dig Tree, the Burke Tree and other monuments at Cooper Creek, where the men spent their final weeks awaiting rescue
• A huge memorial in Melbourne General Cemetery
• The Victorian electorate of Wills is named after William Wills.

In addition:

The Haast Pass area of New Zealand was being explored about the time of the searches for Burke and Wills. Julius von Haast named several features after them, There is the Burke River, and the Wills River, both extraordinarily different from the country of their patronym's exploration country.