B&W (V) The staff of life? Innamincka, South Australia, Australia
By Geocaching Australia on 20-Aug-10. Waypoint GA2402

This is a special Burke & Wills cache listed on Geocaching Australia.

This cache requires you to visit a Burke & Wills historical location and take a photo as described along with your GPS receiver and if possible yourself in the picture. Once you have logged this cache as a find, you are required to load your picture to your log to validate your find.

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Validating Your Log
Take a picture of your GPS receiver showing the same co-ordinates as the cache page (plus or minus 100 meters) and attach it to your online log.

Important Information
The Burke Wills Historical Society notes: "The actual route Burke and Wills followed once they left Camp 78 is unknown and one of the most intensely debated issues. Wills' map and some of his journals containing astronomical observations have been lost. Because the journals have never been transcribed, it means the expedition's track north of the Diamantina, through the gibber rises, confused sand dunes and extensive claypans, is a matter for conjecture."
Travel in Outback Australia can be extremely hazardous. Plan your trip with care and seek and follow local advice on what precautions to take. Be aware of private property restrictions. Do not risk your life to log this geocache.

About This Location
The "Blacks", who Burke so disdained and his companions tolerated primarily due to necessity, were in fact the proud Yandruwandha people, who were generous with offerings of fish, the small cakes made from nardoo and other food. What they understood about nardoo was what the explorers fatally misunderstood: that its seeds, if not correctly prepared, are toxic. Nardoo contains thiaminase, which depletes the body's natural thiamin - vitamin B1. Burke and Wills probably died from beri-beri.
"I cannot understand this nardoo at all," Wills lamented in his journal on June 20, though he'd earlier called it "the staff of life". "It certainly will not agree with me in any form. We are now reduced to it alone, and we manage to get from four to five pounds per day between us. The stools it causes are enormous, and seem greatly to exceed the quantity consumed." Nardoo (Marsilea drummondii, sometimes spelled ngardu or nardu) is a small four-leafed clover with a seedpod called a sporocarp. The seeds are ground and cooked with water to make cake or porridge. It was readily available to the Burke party, but although it assuaged their hunger, it provided virtually no nutrients and did nothing to curb their physical deterioration.
Nardoo became the unofficial floral emblem of the failed expedition. Specimens were brought back by the relief party and treasured like holy relics. Charles Summers worked it into the floral border on his monument to the explorers in Melbourne.
Another gift from the Aborigines was pitcheri, the leaves of Duboisia hopwoodii which, when correctly prepared, are enjoyably narcotic. King compared its effect to "two pretty stiff nobblers of brandy".

Aborigines played an intriguing role at crucial stages of the expedition. The explorers brought with them glass beads and pocket mirrors to trade with the natives, but otherwise their only other preparation derived from the accounts of their predecessors like Stuart, who had bad luck with them. Becker hoped any hostile Aborigines would be so stunned by the sight of the camels that guns would prove unnecessary. The Aborigines in fact got used to the camels very quickly.
In any event, by the time Burke, Wills and King returned to Cooper's Creek, their struggle to survive meant they could no longer simply ignore the locals, and for the most part they were received with great hospitality. Burke, however, tired of the obligation to provide something in exchange and on one occasion he refused to part with a piece of cloth and fired his revolver over the head of the man who had asked for it.
After the death of Wills and Burke, King earned survival rations from the Yandruwandha by shooting birds for them. They treated him as "one of their own" for two and a half months, he said. They asked to see Burke's body, and "the whole party wept bitterly, and covered [the remains] with bushes". Alfred Howitt rewarded them with sugar, mirrors and Union Jack handkerchiefs, and the South Australia government gave them land, though this soon ended up in missionaries' hands.



Additonal Information
Source: Paul Dorsey Used with Permission