IN HONOR OF

WILLIAM JOHN WILLS

NATIVE OF TOTNES
THE FIRST WITH BURKE TO CROSS THE
AUSTRALIAN CONTINENT

HE PERISHED IN RETURNING, 28 JUNE
1861

When the Australian Government offered a reward for an exploration of that Continent from north to south, Wills, at that time an assistant in the Observatory at Melbourne, volunteered his services along with Robert O’Hara Burke, an Irish police inspector.  Burke was appointed leader of the expedition, consisting of thirteen persons, which started from Melbourne on August 20th, 1860, and in four months’ time reached the River Barco, to the east of Lake Eyre.  Here it became necessary to divide the party:  Burke took Wills with him, and two others, leaving the remainder at Cooper’s Creek to look after the stores and to wait there until Burke and his companions returned.

They reached Flinders River in February of the following year, but they found the country to be quite a desert, and provisions failed them.  They were obliged to return, reaching Cooper’s Creek on April 21st, 1861.  They arrived emaciated and exhausted, only to find that the others had given up all hope of seeing them again, and returned home.  Burke and his companions struggled on for two months, but one by one they succumbed, until only one was left—­a man named King.  Fortunately he was found by some friendly natives, who treated him kindly, and was handed over to the search-party sent out to find the missing men.  The bodies of Burke and Wills were also recovered, and buried with all honours at Melbourne, where a fine monument was erected to their memory.

Many of the early settlers in Australia were killed by the aborigines or bushmen, and a friend of ours who emigrated there from our native village many years ago was supposed to have been murdered by them.  He wrote letters to his parents regularly for some years, and in his last letter told his friends that he was going farther into the bush in search of gold.  For years they waited for further news, which never arrived; and he was never heard of again, to the great grief of his father and mother and other members of the family.  It was a hazardous business exploring the wilds of Australia in those days, and it was quite possible that it was only the numerical strength of Burke’s party and of the search-party itself that saved them from a similar fate.

But many people attributed the misfortunes of the expedition to the number who took part in it, as there was a great prejudice against the number thirteen both at home and abroad.  We had often, indeed, heard it said that if thirteen persons sat down to dinner together, one of their number would die!  Some people thought that the legend had some connection with the Lord’s Supper, the twelve Apostles bringing the number up to thirteen, while others attributed it to a much earlier period.  In Norse mythology, thirteen was considered unlucky, because at a banquet in Valhalla, the Scandinavian heaven, where twelve had sat down, Loki intruded and made the number thirteen, and Baldur was killed.