Track No01
[00:31.84] unit one
[00:36.20] lesson 1
[00:37.80] Burke and Wills:
[00:39.13] Across Australia
[00:42.16] Australia is a huge country,
[00:44.16] and the outback
[00:45.65] (the Australian word for the
[00:46.91] interior of the country) is desert.
[00:49.40] In some years, it rains only eight
[00:51.41] centimeters in the outback,
[00:53.15] but in other years,
[00:54.73] rainstorms tum the desert into sandy swamps.
[00:58.66] Until the eighteenth century,
[00:59.91] only aborigines lived in Australia.
[01:02.90] These are the first people
[01:04.40] who lived in Australia.
[01:06.41] When Europeans went there to live,
[01:08.15] they built towns on the coast.
[01:10.37] However, in the 1850s, people
[01:12.87] began thinking more about the interior.
[01:15.51] gan thinking more about the interior.
[01:16.76] In 1860, Robert O'Hara Burke,
[01:19.26] a police officer from Ireland,
[01:21.01] was chosen to lead an expedition across
[01:23.04] the continent from south to north.
[01:25.79] He took with him William John Wills
[01:28.29] and eleven other men, camels
[01:29.78] horses, and enough supplies
[01:31.90] for a year and a half
[01:33.76] They left Melbourne for the Gulf
[01:35.53] of Carpentaria on August 20,
[01:38.18] winter in the southern hemisphere.
[01:41.04] The expedition had problems
[01:42.51] from the beginning.
[01:44.01] Burke had no experience in the outback.
[01:46.63] The men fought
[01:47.95] and would not follow orders.
[01:50.26] Twice they left some of
[01:51.44] their supplies so that
[01:52.66] they could move faster and later
[01:54.88] sent one of the men, William Wright,
[01:56.38] back for them.
[01:58.38] Finally, a small group led by
[02:00.38] Burke moved on ahead
[02:02.12] of the others to a river named
[02:03.63] Cooper's Creek and set up
[02:05.39] their base camp.
[02:06.92] They were halfway across the continent,
[02:09.32] but it was summer now,
[02:10.64] with very hot weather and sandstorms.
[02:14.07] They waited a month for Wright,
[02:16.13] and then Burke
[02:16.56] decided that four from
[02:17.81] his small group, with three
[02:19.27] months' supplies,
[02:20.76] should travel the 1,250 kilometers
[02:23.51] to the north coast as quickly as possible.
[02:26.69] They told the others to wait for them
[02:28.76] at Cooper's Creek.
[02:30.88] The journey across the desert
[02:31.68] was very difficult,
[02:33.75] but at the end of January,
[02:35.26] they reached the Flinders River
[02:37.02] near the Gulf of Carpentaria.
[02:39.35] They started their return
[02:40.39] journey, but now it was
[02:42.28] the rainy season and traveling
[02:43.83] was slow and even more difficult
[02:45.82] than on their trip north.
[02:47.95] They did not have enough food,
[02:49.64] and the men became hungry and sick.
[02:52.39] Then one of them died.
[02:54.73] Some of the camels died or were killed for food.
[02:58.39] Finally, on April 21,
[03:00.89] they arrived back at Cooper's
[03:02.64] Creek, only to find
[03:04.14] that no one was there.
[03:06.39] The rest of the expedition had
[03:07.89] left the day before because
[03:09.64] they thought Burke must be dead.
[03:12.64] The men continued south,
[03:14.44] but without enough food,
[03:16.01] both Burke and Wills died.
[03:19.02] Aborigines helped the last
[03:20.27] man who was still alive,
[03:22.11] and a search party found him
[03:23.52] in September 1861.
[03:26.02] He was half crazy
[03:27.33] from hunger and loneliness.
[03:29.96] There were many reasons that
[03:31.28] the expedition did not
[03:32.52] go as planned.
[03:33.77] It had an inexperienced leader,
[03:36.03] the men made bad decisions,
[03:37.78] some did not follow orders,
[03:39.62] and they did not get along.
[03:41.69] But it was the first expedition to
[03:43.53] cross Australia,
[03:45.28] and Burke and Wills are still
[03:46.98] known as heroes of exploration.
