What happened to Robert O'Hara Burke?

Answer 1

Robert O'Hara Burke, together with William Wills, led the Australian expedition that was intended to bring fame and prestige to Victoria: being the first to cross Australia from south to north and back again. Burke's party left from Royal Park, Melbourne, in August 1860, and headed north-northwest to Menindee. Part of the group then pushed on to the Gulf of Carpentaria, with most remaining at Cooper Creek.

Burke had absolutely no experience in exploring, and it remains a mystery as to why he was even chosen to lead the expedition. He was a police superintendent on the goldfields, and had a tendency towards quick impatience (which was his undoing, in the end). Through poor judgement, lack of observation and a series of miscommunications, Burke and Wills never met up with the relief party at Cooper Creek on their return. Burke and Wills died around July 1861, without ever returning to Melbourne.

The exact cause of Burke's death was not starvation or malnutrition, but inadvertent poisoning. Burke and Wills knew that the Aborigines gathered nardoo which they had used to sustain the explorers, until they were frightened off by Burke's defensiveness against the Aborigines. So, whilst awaiting the rescue that never came, Burke and Wills made their way to where they knew Aborigines collected Nardoo. Nardoo was an important bush food for Aborigines, who knew how to prepare its seedpods (or, strictly speaking, sporocaps) to make flour. The sporocarps contain poisons that must first be removed for them to be eaten safely. Studies of the explorers' journals indicate that they probably died of nardoo poisoning, after failing to follow precautions from the Aborigines of how to prepare it safely.