Burke & Wills 54: Tropic of Capricorn - Burke and Wills Expedition (sitios de interés)
Descripción del sitio
Encountering far less water than they'd hoped for, Burke and his men were relieved to come across "a creek of considerable dimensions" and stayed for the night. "I should have liked this camp to have been in a more prominent and easily recognisable position," Wills noted, "as it happens to be almost exactly on the Tropic of Capricorn."They'd reached what became known as the Burke River (the Wills River is 14 kilometres upstream), near the present-day town of Boulia, and continued north along the 140th meridien of longitude.
A sign at the entrance to Boulia invites tourists to fill their waterbags at the spots where Burke and Wills once did. The town has been grazing territory almost since they departed, but the tourists supplement the local economy, lured not just by the legend and the rugged landscape but by the Min Min Encounter, a recently built attraction capitalising on the eerie phenomenon called the Min Min Lights, said to haunt travellers hereabouts.