Burke & Wills Camp 119 - QLD

Burke and Wills arrived here on 9/2/1861 and left for the return journey on 13/2/1861. This is recognised as the last camp the party made. However, Burke and Wills left King and Grey at camp and, with 3 days supplies loaded onto Billy the horse, headed north to try and reach the ocean. I have marked where they got as far north as camp 119a but in reality it was not a camp but rather the most northerly point that Burke and Wills reached. The trip from Camp 65 Cooper Creek had taken 58 days. Burke and Wills were very aware that they had told Brahe to remain at Cooper Creek Depot for 3 months (92 days). The return journey had 61 camp sites. Some were where the expedition had camped on the way up and took 67 days.


The exhausted four man party led by Robert O'Hara Burke and 2IC William John Wills set up camp close to the seasonal Little Bynoe River, in the hinterland of the Gulf of Carpentaria. In their attempt to cross Australia from south to north, this camp was the northernmost of their ill-fated expedition. At the site itself, plaques mark the trees 'blazed' (marked) by the party to prove that they had made it this far.