The Burke, Wills, King and Yandruwandha National Heritage Place is a heritage-listed historic precinct on the Birdsville Track, Innamincka, South Australia, Australia. It was added to the Australian National Heritage List on 22 January 2016.
History The Birdsville and Strzelecki Tracks have an earlier history and are part of Aboriginal trails, trade and custom. Neither has ever been a single fixed route for long. Over time, the footprint and hoofprint trails of both tracks have shifted, fluctuated and occasionally disappeared, only to reemerge later.Historical Research Pty Ltd 2002 p.15
It is generally accepted that Australia's desert regions have been occupied since approximately 30,000 to 40,000 BP.Smith, M., Veth, P., Hiscock, P., Wallis l., 2005 In the preliminary assessment area, archaeologists have found some sites that are between 12,000 and 15,000 years old.Symons n.d.:18 Prior to the establishment of 19th century European and Afghan settlements in the region, evidence exists which points to Aboriginal people from fourteen or more language groups moving through and living in the rugged arid lands of central Australia.
The Birdsville and Strzelecki tracks extend over various Aboriginal territories, including those of the Yandruwandha people (including Innamincka), Diyari people (Dieri), Wonkangurru, Ngamini, Gawarawarga, Garanguru and Yarlijandi.McBryde, I. 1987p.253-8 The explorer John King did not record information about the language or identity of the people who saved his life except that they knew the word "White Man", which suggests a degree of prior knowledge and possibly contact with Europeans.
News of the arrival of people from Europe, Asia and elsewhere could have arrived through the network of traditional routes whereby goods and cultural knowledge were communicated far and wide across the continent. In this region, "networks of contact between individuals and groups allowed prized goods to be distributed across the region," including red ochre, gypsum for rain making ceremonies, hardwoods and softwoods, stone axe heads, shells, weapons and tools.McBryde 1997 p.256-259 The waters of Strzelecki Creek, the Cooper Creek system and the Great Artesian Basin dictated the cultural geography and survival.
The movement along these routes not only allowed for the distribution of objects, resources and goods, but also culture. The movement helped to establish important relationships between groups, and connection with country as the rituals, ceremonies and myths that reinforced them (the trade routes) were of great social importance. These trade routes and tracks were used by Indigenous Australians for thousands of years and many tracks remain culturally significant today. Non-Indigenous people utilised Indigenous pathways in their attempts to explore and settle this part of the country. The Birdsville and Strzelecki Tracks were used as stock routes for overlanding sheep and cattle from the centre of Australia to southern markets. The tracks became the traditional transport corridors across the north-east of South Australia, to the east of Lake Eyre and connected the former railhead at Marree to the Channel Country of south-western Queensland. Some of ancient trade routes "now form the origin of the highways where modern tourists now travel".Donavan & Wall 2004 p.ix
Early Exploration in the centre of Australia
In 1839 and 1840 Edward Eyre, supported by the recently established government in Adelaide, travelled into northern South Australia in search of grazing land. Each of the colonies was very interested in the great unknown which was central and northern Australia. The reports made by Eyre were disappointing; he travelled past the Flinders Ranges to discover a horseshoe of impassable salt lakes: Lake Torrens, Lake Eyre, Lake Blanche, Lake Callabonna and Lake Frome. Eyre's expedition coincided with a dry period; from the aptly named "Mount Hopeless" he described inland South Australia as a "dreary waste".Historical Research Pty Ltd 2002 p.23-24
In 1844 Charles Sturt followed Eyre and discovered the Strzelecki Creek which he named after his colleague, Paul Edmond de Strzelecki, and the main watercourses which fed Lake Eyre: Cooper Creek, Eyre Creek and the Georgina River. Sturt failed to realise the significance of his discoveries and corroborated Eyre's reports that the region would not support grazing.
The thirst of pastoralists for new grazing land in South Australia was unquenchable. Graziers began squatting past the surveyed boundaries of the northern frontier. They were frustrated by the slow pace of government surveys and the land tenure principles of the Wakefield Plan which favoured landownership over leasehold. In 1842 the South Australian Legislative Council broke away from the Wakefield Plan by passing An Act to Protect the Waste Lands of the Crown from Encroachment, Intrusion and Trespass. This act allowed pastoralists to lease land on an annual renewable basis based on a system of sight-lines between landmarks rather than formal survey.Love 1986 p.4 cited in Historical Research Pty Ltd 2002 p.24-25 This provided a degree of security for pastoralists and allowed the government to collect revenue from the lease agreements.
In 1851 the Waste Lands Act was enacted which extended leases from one year to fourteen years and an incentive scheme was introduced which gave preferential leasing rights to the discoverer of new grazing land.Gee 2000 p.7 cited in Historical Research Pty Ltd 2002 p.25 A number of other changes also supported pastoral expansion in South Australia during the 1850s: a decade of high rainfall, the high price of wool, and the availability of easy finance thanks to the wealth created by the gold rush.Historical Research Pty Ltd 2002 p.25
Water, geographic and climatic knowledge of the Birdsville and Strzelecki region improved in the 1850s thanks to a series of expeditions and discoveries made by Benjamin Herschel Babbage, Sir Augustus Gregory, John Stuart and Peter Warburton.
In 1856 Babbage, an engineer searching for gold, discovered two permanent waterholes in the MacDonnell River that led him to believe that he could pass Eyre's impassable horseshoe. In 1858 Babbage and Warburton discovered the Mound Springs and the following year John Stuart discovered a permanent waterhole known today as Stuart Creek.Historical Research Pty Ltd 2002 p.26
In 1858 Sir Augustus Gregory was asked by the NSW Government to search for the missing explorer, Ludwig Leichhardt, who in 1846 set out on an expedition to cross the continent from east to west and was never seen again.Tolcher 1986 p.25 After the search for Leichhardt was abandoned, Gregory travelled into South Australia via the Strzelecki Creek and dispelled Eyre's impassable horseshoe theory.Feeken et al. 1970 p.130 These discoveries led to a wave of pastoral expansion in the Birdsville and Strzelecki Tracks region.
By the middle of the 19th century, Europeans had explored large parts of the Australian continent but had failed to cross the country from south to north. The need to connect the isolated settlements of the north coast, facilitate trade and communication with the rest of the world and secure grazing land culminated in a race between South Australia and Victoria across the continent.Tolcher 1986 p.28Favenc 1983 p.203
In the early 19th century three theories existed about what lay at the heart of Australia: a vast desert, an inland sea or a great river.Cathcart 1999 p.232 The drawing up of colonial boundaries in 1860 had left a large tract of unclaimed land on the northern coast of Australia. The land remained nominally a part of New South Wales who showed little interest in exploring and opening it up. Visions of rich grazing land and other natural assets piqued the interest of Queensland, South Australia and Victoria who each set about claiming it for themselves.Historical Research Pty Ltd 2002 p.30
South Australia and Queensland both made submissions to the Colonial Office to have the land incorporated into their territory or alternatively divided between them. Victoria was a small colony which had expanded to its territorial limits, and with no adjacent unclaimed land looked to the north to fulfil its ambitions.Historical Research Pty Ltd 2002 p.31 The gold rush of the 1850s had enabled Victoria to amass a substantial wealth that led to the creation of numerous scientific and cultural societies such as the Royal Society of Victoria. The mystery of Australia's center was at odds with Victoria's new sense of cultural and scientific sophistication. Victorian hubris refused to let the mystery remain unsolved and the Royal Society of Victoria set about filling in the blanks on the map of Australia by organizing an expedition which would cross the continent from south to north.Murgatroyd 2002 p.23-24
The race to discover the center of Australia and claim the northern land was between South Australia and Victoria. The South Australian government offered a reward of £2,000 for the first successful crossing to the north coast of Australia. In March, 1860, John McDouall Stuart set out from Chambers Creek and travelled north past the Mound Springs system and passed through the MacDonnell Range which he named after the then Governor of South Australia.Favenc 1983 p.205 Stuart and his party arrived at Tennant Creek in June 1860 but were pushed back by the hostile environment.Favenc 1983 p.206-207
In 1861 Stuart and his party of ten men and forty-seven horses attempted a second crossing of the continent, well aware that Burke and Wills had already set off from Victoria with the same goal in mind. Stuart was again turned back and returned to Adelaide suffering blindness. Stuart recovered and within the month launched another expedition. On 24 July 1862 Stuart and his party reached the north coast of Australia at the Arafura Sea. Stuart had discovered a route from south to north. His expedition had enormous implications for both South Australia and Australia.Historical Research Pty Ltd 2002 p.29 Stuart retired soon after and returned to England but his years of exploration caught up with him and he died three years later.
The Burke and Wills Expedition 1860-1861
Melbourne was 23 years old in 1858, and had been established as the Colony of Victoria for just seven years. Citizens of the Australian colonies at that time knew very little of the "ghastly blank" in the centre of the continent. In 1860 the Royal Society of Victoria established the Exploration Committee. The committee was a consortium of Victoria's scientific, social and economic elite charged with organizing the Victorian Exploring Expedition. The Victorian Exploring Expedition was the most "lavishly equipped exploration party in Australian history" assembled for the purpose of crossing the continent and incorporating the unclaimed grazing land into its territory. The Victorian Exploring Expedition was posthumously renamed the "Burke and Wills Expedition". The expedition involved 19 men, 26 camels, 23 horses, and several supply wagons.