Burke & Wills Memorial Obelisk - Castlemaine Victoria
Posted by: 
bucketeer
S 37° 03.997 E 144° 13.563
55H E 253373 N 5894137
The Castlemaine obelisk is the first monument erected in Victoria to honour the achievements of Burke & Wills fateful expedition across Australia.
Waymark Code: WMK0NN
Location: Victoria, Australia
Date Posted: 01/26/2014
Views: 17
In 1860 residents of Victoria and South Australia were engaged in funding competing expeditions in a race to cross Australia from south to north through the centre. The Great Northern Exploration Expedition led by Robert O’Hara Burke and William John Wills won the contest for Victoria in 1861. The expedition, which left Melbourne in early 1860, was funded by the Royal Society of Victoria, the Victorian Government and public subscriptions. From its inception the expedition was remarkable not only as a major event feted at every stopover but also as an embodiment of Victorian ideals of scientific inquiry, human enterprise and nation building.
Having successfully reached the Gulf of Carpenteria in February 1861, all but one of the expeditioners, King, perished in the return journey. The names of Burke and Wills became bywords of noble endeavour and self-sacrifice. The tragedy of the occasion, combined with its strange mixture of human strengths and flaws, chance and battle against the Australian environment resulted in their deaths being widely celebrated in high art, particularly verse and painting. These elements have ensured the event still lies deeply ingrained in the Australian psyche.
At the time Victorians regarded Burke and Wills as their State’s first great heroes and their deaths as a national disaster. Of the many cities and towns to erect memorials to Burke and Wills, Castlemaine was the first to act, not only in enthusiasm to honour the tragic events but to identify the town as the place of Burke’s last residence where he was Superintendent of Police. At first Castlemaine aspired to bury Burke but this was curtailed by a decision of Government that both heroes would be buried in Melbourne. A thousand people met at Castlemaine in November 1861 and decided to erect a 50ft high granite obelisk in memoriam. The bulk of the funds came from small subscriptions of less than a guinea so as to create a ‘people’s monument’. The government granted a site on top of a small hill east of the town centre and the obelisk and its fence were completed by July 1863. Inscriptions cut into the base of the obelisk record its origin through public subscription, the explorers’ achievement in being ‘The First To Cross The Continent of Australia’, Burke’s local connections and date of death, and the legend, ‘Melbourne to Carpenteria - Burke, Wills, Gray, King Survivor’.
Information was taken from the Heritage Victoria online register database (
visit link) on 27/1/2014
Front Inscription
To commemorate the Victorian exploring expedition the first to cross the continent of Australia
Left Side Inscription
Robert O`Hara Burke of Castlemaine Leader Died at Coopers Creek 1st July 1861
Back Inscription
Erected by public subscription AD 1862
Right Side Inscription
Melbourne to Carpentaria Burke Wills Gray King Survivor