“We are the Yandruwandha people, Burke and Wills died in our country, we kept John King alive!”

So read the subject line of an email that caused much excitement when it arrived at the Royal Society. It was sent by Aaron Paterson, a descendant of a full blood Yandruwandha man born in the 1830s or 1840s who saw the coming of Robert O’Hara Burke, William John Wills, and John King in his country, where Burke and Wills later died.

Here are some insights that Aaron has got from his mother Gloria's stories and passed on to us:

“Our people tried to help these fellows who we thought were under some spell or sung by someone as they seemed to act kurrani (mad), as they wandered around aimlessly as if they didn’t know how to get back to where they came from.”

They also had trouble understanding the Victorian hierarchy of “officers” and “men”, which was maintained even when there were only three members of the party remaining:

“… our old people saw John King always moving around the camp (Burke & Wills’ camp) waiting on them – he was an employee I suppose – our old people thought he acted like a woman to do all the things he did such as collect firewood, cook food, attend to them etc.”

Fish was the main source of food for the Yandruwandha, supplemented by various varieties of grasses and seeds which were used to make flour. Aaron’s people tried to help the explorers by providing them with food, but they did not get a very favourable response:

“My great grandfather was told by his grandad Kimi that Burke was a mean-spirited person who rejected our offers of friendship and food.”

It is not surprising that the aborigines were more skilled than Europeans in finding food in their native country, but it is interesting to reflect that their communications systems were also rather better than those of the white men. We all know now that better communication could have saved the lives of Burke and Wills, and the locals could have helped with this as well:

“It was customary to send smoke signals to other groups up and down the creek advising of things such as deaths, newcomers etc. In addition to this we also sent runners up and down the creek with details to forewarn other groups of important matters, etc.”

Aaron’s forebears sent such messages as they watched Brahe’s party in their long four month wait for the return of the Gulf Party. The dialect they spoke is referred to as Thayi.Pilthirri.Nguda Yandruwandha and is the language that Wills recorded when he jotted down some native words in his diaries/journals: words like nardoo, pitchery. They sustained John King until he was found by Howitt in September 1861, and they believe that he fathered the first half caste child in the tribe. They interacted with Howitt again when he returned to the Cooper in 1862 to fetch back the bodies of Burke and Wills. On this trip, Howitt presented breastplates to senior men of the Yandruwandha in recognition of their having saved King’s life. As Aaron says, “notwithstanding our women also played an important role in the story” – the women would have done most of the work of caring for King.

The Nguthungama group of the Yandruwhanda protected King from more than starvation. When he was living with them, another clan group came visiting the area. According to Gloria’s stories:

“Not knowing why King had come there, they wanted to kill him on the spot but our clan surrounded King and warned the other clan to go and leave him alone as he was with us and under our protection.”

The other group then left King unharmed. Aaron wonders whether their hostility might have been a result of an earlier bad experience with the party in another area after their return from the Gulf.

Information from Aaron and his connections in other tribes who interacted with the Expedition will be invaluable for the project of the University of Ballarat academics, who are researching the role played by indigenous peoples in the Expedition. They have an Honours student in the School of Behavioural Sciences and Humanities who has won a scholarship from Sovereign Hill Museums Association for a project titled The Burke and Wills 1860-61 Expedition - an analysis of the expedition with specific reference to the role of Aboriginal people.

We also hope that that people from the various tribes will participate in events that take place in their country during the Commemoration Program. This time round, all offers of help from aboriginal people will be gratefully received!