B&W (M) Bolinda Creek Campsite Bolinda, Victoria, Australia
By SamCarter on 20-Aug-10. Waypoint GA2516

This is one of a series of caches commemorating the 150th anniversary of the 1860 Burke and Wills Expedition.

A full list of caches is available here: http://geocaching.com.au/my/query/screen/2635

Overview
The cache is not at the given coordinates, but you need to go there to get some information. This is a one-step multicache, with about 5km or so between the given coordinates and the cache. It highlights a couple of places where the Burke and Wills expedition may have camped. Feel free to take a picture of the countryside and your GPS at the same co-ordinates as the cache page (plus or minus 100 meters) or at the final GZ and attach it to your online log. The cache is a 2L ammo container and contains the usual swaps, plus there is a bonus freebie (no swap required) for the first six teams (one per team only, please), contained in a ziplock bag. Don't forget to sign the log book in the cache. The instructions for finding the cache are given at the end of this description.



Important Information
Be aware of private property restrictions and proximity to nearby roads. Do not risk your life to log this geocache.



About This Location
The members of the party comprising the Victorian Exploration Expedition were a mixed bunch. There were six Irishmen, four Englishmen, three Germans, an American, a South African and four Indian sepoys skilled at handling the 27 camels. Caroline Denison, the wife of Governor William Denison, wrote a lovely description of the German naturalist, Ludwig Becker:

He is a most amusing person, he talks English badly but very energetically. I have sometimes great difficulty in keeping my countenance when I see him struggling between the rapidity of his ideas and the difficulty of giving them utterance, repeating to himself, in a very audible soliloquy, the German words he wishes to translate into English, and helping all out with an abundance of most expressive gesticulation; but I would not for the world let him see me laugh, poor man, for he is rather shy and sensitive; but with all that he is very pleasing. He is one of those universal geniuses who can do anything; is a very good naturalist; geologist, etc., draws and plays and sings, conjures and ventriloquises and imitates the notes of birds so accurately that the wild birds will come to him at the sound of a call. He is very fond of children, amuses and astonishes ours to a great extent by his conjuring tricks and ventriloquism, and being very oddish-looking besides, with a large red beard, little C… stares at him with comical astonishment!



This sketchbook image by William Strutt captures Ludwig Becker’s likeness on the day of departure.

It is known that the Burke and Wills expedition camped somewhere near Bolinda Creek as they headed north but the exact location is not known. This site was an overnight camp for the Expedition.

“We started at 10 a.m.; the appearance of the sky was not at all of a cheering character, before we reached Bolinda, near Captain Gardners place at 5 p.m. it commenced raining, and ere night had set in it came down in torrents. No tea, no fire; we slept in the wet." (Ludwig Becker, Expedition naturalist)

They were off to a miserable start. The first few weeks of the expedition were somewhat ironically drenched in rain. The camels struggled with the soft ground and the sodden weather, and the baggage carts were often bogged. Burke was frustrated and annoyed – he wanted to move quickly, but his baggage train was far too extensive.

It is hard to comprehend the amount of equipment carried by the group. They had 23 horses and six wagons laden with nearly 21 tonnes of gear, including six tonnes of firewood, ostensibly enough food for two years, but it's been said they should have known from earlier outings that they were, in fact, at least three tonnes short of supplies. And much of what they had, HistoryHouse.com sneers, was "absurdly new-fangled and ridiculously excessive. It included an oak table with cedar top, 12 dandruff brushes for camels, six pairs of tailor's scissors and, incredibly, 10 pack saddles and 10 pairs of hobbles for oxen, even though they weren't taking any oxen with them." (Note that HistoryHouse.com's account should, perhaps, be taken with grains of salt of varying sizes.)

Add to this a bathtub, a Chinese gong and a specially made branding iron designed to burn the letters B/VE, for Burke/Victorian Expedition, into tree trunks at campsites, a task that could be accomplished with a few strokes of an axe. Inflatable cushions and enema syringes (!) probably quickly found their way onto the second-hand market somewhere en route. Burke had stubbornly rejected Captain Francis Cadell's offer to transport the supplies to Adelaide by ship up the Murray and Darling Rivers.

Burke was later to ditch most of his supplies along the way, concerned for speed over thoroughness. The quest for speed was, of course, deeply distressing to Ludwig Becker, who expected to spend the expedition collecting, illustrating, annotating and exploring. Burke was impatient with the expedition’s scientists, and Becker in particular, forbidding him to paint or sketch during the day. Becker nonetheless kept up his scientific duties, sleeping only a few hours each night. Becker kept up his observations and sketches until only a few days before his death in the outback.

Finding the cache

The given coordinates take you to a place where one of today's roads cross Bolinda Creek. I like the terrain here: there are two huge gum trees, and a bit of a cliff, and it feels iconically Australian. Maybe the gum trees, as saplings, saw the VEE pass through this way, although perhaps the terrain is a little rough for camping. Since the roadside verge has been fenced off I did not feel I could hide a cache here, so you might like to take your photo here, instead.
THEN, find out the property number by the driveway behind the letterbox on the north side of the road. Call these abb. The cache can be found at

S 37° 25.(b+1)(a-2)(b+1)
E 144° 44.0(b)(a-2)

GZ is another place where you can see Bolinda Creek. Here the land is flatter and perhaps more suitable for camping, although maybe it had more trees in the past before it became farmland.

Pause to think awhile about the expeditioners as they travelled near the creek (take a photo here if you forgot at the first waypoint). Imagine that it's dusk, and the rain is starting to pour down. Perhaps the party's spirits are starting to sink even at this early stage, and maybe already they aren’t quite so enthusiastic about the whole enterprise.

Note that there is also a Burke and Wills virtual cache not far from GZ. See http://geocaching.com.au/cache/ga2325

[Most of the details come from information kindly supplied by the State Library of Victoria and Paul Dorsey.]

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