HISTORIC LINK WITH OUTBACK TRAGEDY

The above Coolibah tree  in  Hughenden , halfway between Townsville and Mount Isa, Queensland, is  linked to two of the four  expeditions which went  searching for the missing explorers Robert O'Hara Burke  and  William  Wills . Both expeditions blazed the tree on the banks of what is now Station Creek.

In 1861 Frederick Walker led a team from Rockhampton to the Gulf  in a vain search for the missing explorers.  William  Landsborough,see above, led a  joint Victorian and Queensland government search party which set out from Brisbane on  August 1861  aboard  the SS  Firefly  and headed for the  Gulf, the vessel wrecked on Cape York . Two years earlier, Landsborough had gone  searching for missing German naturalist and explorer ,Ludwig  Leichhardt .

A person who took a great interest in and wrote about  the disappearance of Leichhardt  was the  late  Glenville Pike.

An  early article about  Pike , who started the North Australian Monthly magazine  and  encouraged  many  people to  write their memoirs ,some of which  he  helped  get  published ,  will be   rerun  soon in  Little  Darwin .    

( Explorers. Missing. Tree.)