What were Burke and Wills' problems while traveling?

Answer 1

The expedition of Burke and Wills met with many problems.

The Burke and Wills expedition was Australia's best-equipped and most expensive exploration. With such preparation behind them, they should not have died - but Burke was impatient, and it was this very human quality that caused a problem and essentially resulted in their premature deaths.

Robert O'Hara Burke, with William Wills later appointed second-in-command, led the expedition to try to cross Australia from south to north and back again. The exploration party was very well equipped, and subsequently very large. Because of its size, the exploration party was split at Menindee so that Burke could push ahead to the Gulf of Carpentaria with a smaller party. Splitting the part was a fatal mistake. The smaller group went on ahead to establish the depot at Cooper Creek which would serve to offer the necessary provisions for when the men returned from the Gulf. After several unsuccessful forays into the northern dry country from Cooper Creek, Burke decided to push on ahead to the Gulf in December 1860, regardless of the risks - and the intense summer heat. He took with him Wills, Charles Gray and John King.

The expedition to the Gulf took longer than Burke anticipated: upon his return to Cooper Creek, he found that the relief party had left just seven hours earlier, less than the amount of time it had taken to bury Gray, who had died on the return journey. Gray died from starvation, and from being abused and badly beaten by Burke when he was found stealing food.

Through poor judgement, lack of observation and a series of miscommunications, Burke and Wills never met up with the relief party. They perished on the banks of Cooper Creek. Burke died on or around 30 June 1861. King alone survived to lead the rescue party to the remains of Burke and Wills, and the failure of one of the most elaborately planned expeditions in Australia's history.

The exact cause of Burke and Wills's death was not starvation or malnutrition, but inadvertent poisoning. The men knew that the Aborigines gathered nardoo which they had used to sustain Burke and Wills, 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.