Robert O'Hara Burke

Robert O'Hara Burke (6 May 1821 – c. 28 June 1861) was an Irish soldier and police officer who achieved fame as an Australian explorer. He was the leader of the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition, which was the first expedition to cross Australia from south to north, finding a route across the continent from the settled areas of Victoria to the Gulf of Carpentaria. The expedition party was well equipped, but Burke was not experienced in bushcraft. A Royal Commission report conducted upon the failure of the expedition was a censure of Burke's judgement. Robert O’Hara Burke was the famous Australian explorer. He was the son of James Hardiman Burke and Anne O’Hara of St. Clerans, near Craughwell in County Galway. His father served as Mayor of Galway a number of times during the 1820s and had a town house in Dominick Street. According to some sources, Robert O’Hara Burke was born there in 1821. He was baptised in St. Nicholas’Collegiate Church on 30 July 1822. “Burke and Wills are up there among the key explorers for Australia. It really is important for us to keep remembering where these people that we as Australians regard as heroes actually came from. And in this case it is a Galway man,” Bruce Davis, Austrailian Ambassador .