Burke and Wills Expedition Across Australia

Australia is a huge country, and the outback (Australian word for the interior

of the country) is desert. In some years, it rains only eight centimeters in the

outback, but in other years, rainstorms turn the desert into sandy swamps.

Until the eighteenth century, only aborigines lived in Australia. These are the first

people who lived in Australia. When Europeans went there to live, they built towns

on the coast. However, in the 1850s, people began thinking more about the interior.

In 1860, Robert O’Hara Burke, a police officer from Ireland, was chosen to lead

an expedition across the continent from south to north. He took with him William John Wills