Burke & Wills 25: Menindee - Burke and Wills Expedition (sitios de interés)
Descripción del sitio
On October 15, two months and 750 kilometres out of Melbourne, the expedition at last reached Menindee – the mail coach regularly did that same distance in a week.This was, by all accounts, the "edge of civilisation". Burke's worries about the slowness of his pace were compounded by the approach of summer, when travel in the interior would be difficult, if not impossible. As well, he knew the experienced explorer John McDougall Stuart was vying to be the first to cross the continent and might beat him.
So he split the group in two, in direct contradiction of the Royal Society's order to take the whole party at least as far as Cooper's Creek. After a few days' rest at Thomas Pain's hotel, he set out with seven men and a lightened load, aiming to move quickly to the Cooper and there wait for the others to catch up. With him was the new third-in-command, William Wright, who after a few drinks with Burke at the hotel, had agreed to get the party as far as Torowotto Swamp, 200 miles to the north.
Wright was the manager of a sheep station at Kinchega on the west bank of the Darling, and an experienced bushman.
Captain Frances Cadell had his paddle steamer on the Darling and offered to transport the expedition's stores upstream for £500, but Burke spurned the idea, still stung by Cadell's opposition to his appointment as party leader. Burke plodded on, wearing out his animals and blowing his budget on wagons even as cheques from the Royal Society started to bounce and the men's wages looked uncertain. At this stage he had only two of his original six officers remaining, and had sacked 15 men in all.
At Menindee the explorers had a base camp on Pamamaroo Creek from which the secondary party was to follow. It's today marked by a plaque on a tree. But Burke and company spent their 11 weeks in Menindee in more comfortable digs at Pain's pub, which he opened in 1853. Here Burke and Wills organised their supplies for a trip into the unknown, and for years afterward visitors would come to see their room and the arrow they supposedly carved in the door post indicating the direction they were headed next.
On October 19 Burke, Wills, Brahe, King, Gray, McDonough, Patton and Dost Mahomet left with 15 horses and 16 camels. The balance of the expedition party stayed for the next year.
The Yartla Street inn became known as the Maiden Hotel after the Maiden family bought it in 1879 (and held onto it for a century), and although a fire resulted in much of the building being razed in 1999, the hotel kept operating its historic bar out front as rebuilding proceeded. You can drop in for a pint to this day.
Menindee's striking string of lakes draw local daytrippers, and tourists also might take in the spot where John Cleary briefly introduced the state's first motorised postal service in 1910, then gave it up because it became too expensive to have a coach and horses follow him everywhere in case he broke down, as required in his contract. He switched back to horses.
