150th Anniversary of Burke & Wills ExpeditionPrint Page

The basalt plaque commemorates the 150th anniversary of the departure of Burke & Wills expedition from Melbourne in 1860.

The Burke and Wills expedition was an Australian exploration expedition in 1860–61 of 19 men, led byRobert O`Hara Burke and William John Wills, with the objective of crossing Australia from Melbourne in the south, to the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north, a distance of around 3,250 kilometres (approximately 2,000 miles). At that time most of the inland of Australia had not been explored by non-Indigenous people and was largely unknown to the European settlers. The expedition set off from Royal park, Melbourne at about 4 pm on 20 August 1860 watched by around 15,000 spectators. The 19 men of the expedition included six Irishmen, five Englishmen, three Afghan and one Indian camel drivers, three Germans and an American. They took 23 horses, 6 wagons and 26 camels. 

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