National Gallery of Australia | Audio Tour | Ocean to Outback: Australian Landscape Painting 1850–1950

Fuelled by a keen interest in travel, Nolan’s personal experiences of the land are closely linked to the development of mythology within his work. The Burke and Wills paintings from 1949–50 emerged after a journey to Central Australia in 1949. Robert O’Hara Burke and William John Wills were explorers who died in an attempt to make the first organised crossing of Australia from south to north in 1860–61. In Burke at Cooper’s Creek the ghostly appearance of the ill-fated Burke compounds the notions of isolation, displacement and tragedy relating to the expedition. On leaving the Cooper’s Creek depot on 16 December 1860, Burke told his party that if he had not returned within three months he could be considered perished. Four months later he returned to the empty site, only nine hours after the rest of the party had departed. He died from exhaustion, south of the camp.1 Writing about the series some years later, Nolan said that: … wanting to paint Burke and Wills really comes from a need to freshen history