Maps of Burke & Wills' route

The most frequently asked questions relating to the Expedition are.....

'Where did Burke & Wills go?'

'Is there a map I can follow the journey with?'

The simple answer to the above questions is that nobody knows exactly where Burke & Wills went and there has never been a map published which contains enough information to accurately follow the track of the expedition. The records of the expedition are quite extensive, however the records are incomplete and scattered through a number of different repositories.

Gerard Hayes of the Manuscripts Collection of the State Library of Victoria wrote;

Anyone hoping to 'trace the footsteps' of Burke and Wills must resign themselves to acquiring, at best, an approximate idea of the whereabouts of the explorers.

The State Library of Victoria is often visited by prospective outback travelers....[who] are confronted by a mass of material which is reluctant to yield its secrets to all but the most determined researcher.

It is best to start with two blunt facts about these records. They are incomplete and to some extent they are unreliable.

Gerard Hayes, "Paper trails", La Trobe Library Journal, No. 58, 1996.

The uncertainty that surrounds the passage of the expedition still continues to fascinate people even a century and a half after the event and there are currently a number of researchers and historians attempting to solve the mystery.

The Expedition's Missing Records Previously Published Maps Retracing the Route Recent Maps Google Earth

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