THE IRISHMAN who led the first successful traverse of Australia was “everywhere at the wrong time” and had “no sense of direction”, writer and mountaineer Dermot Somers has said.
Robert O’Hara Burke from east Galway was “overbearing” in his attitude to the aboriginal people who tried to help him and made a series of “eccentric” decisions that were to prove fatal in terms of survival, Somers said at the weekend.
The climber, author and broadcaster, who retraced the expedition’s course for a TG4 series broadcast last year, was speaking at a seminar hosted by Galway County Council and Loughrea Literary and Historical Society.
The event is one of several planned in Galway to mark the 150th anniversary of the Burke and Wills Victorian Exploring Expedition. Burke (1820-1861), from St Cleran’s, Craughwell, Co Galway, was one of half a dozen Irish in a group which left Melbourne in 1860 with horses, camels and six wagons, heading north on a 3,250km trek through as-yet unmapped territory.
The party had been commissioned by the Royal Society of Victoria’s expedition committee, which was keen to open up new pastoral grounds, and to ascertain whether there was an inland waterway system which could shorten shipping routes.
Plagued by poor leadership and lack of bushcraft knowhow, the expedition lost most of its members. Just three men – Burke, English surveyor William John Wills and Tyrone man John King – eventually reached the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north.
Burke and Wills subsequently died and the sole survivor, King, owed his life to the aboriginal tribe of Yandruwhanda people, who gave him food and shelter. He was later taken back to Melbourne by a Victorian relief expedition, but died 11 years later at the age of 33.
Somers said King was an animal handler who could speak to the Afghans and Indians looking after the camels. He could communicate with the aborigines, but Burke repeatedly alienated indigenous people who offered aid.
“Burke had no sense of direction, and was eccentric enough not to care,” Somers said. “He was part of an aristocratic mindset . . . the only reason they reached the north coast was because Wills was a navigator and surveyor, who could therefore find water.”
Also speaking were historian and archaeologist William Henry, and author Catherine de Courcy. Marie Boran of the NUI Galway James Hardiman library’s special collections section spoke on the background to the landed society Burke was born into.