Burke and Wills week began in Swan Hill on Saturday 4 September with the opening of the special Exhibition at the Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery and a showing of the 1985 film Burke and Wills. It ended with a family day full of events in Riverside Park (the site of Camp 15) on Sunday 12 September. Or almost ended: find out about the Library's holiday activity "Walk to the Gulf". For details of the past week, read news reports and see the pictures from the Swan Hill Guardian or

In between there were a host of events: Swan Hill really turned it on for Burke and Wills. Sunday offered a golf day at Lake Boga, or an ecumenical church service. During the week there were book club meetings, choral and drama competitions, historical tours of town and cemetery on foot, and bus tours around the Swan Hill region and to Tyntynder Homestead.

By the end of the week women were noting that Sunday would be the first at home meal for days. They had attended the Bush Tucker evening at Spoons on Thursday, the Charley Gray dinner at the Pioneer Settlement on Friday, and the formal dinner at the Town Hall on Saturday, usually dressed to kill in period costume. The entertainments with the dinners were varied, entertaining Australian songs and poems on Friday with Geoff Walker Graham, classical music from the Burke and Wills era on Saturday, beautifully performed by Ian Lowe, Sue Goessling, Paula Coster and James Dong.

The splendid period costumes were out in force again on Saturday for the street procession, headed by “Burke” on his white horse. As the Victorian Exploring Expedition found, horses are freaked by camels, so there was a large gap in the procession between the horsedrawn vehicles and the camels pacing down the main street underneath the banner.

In addition to lending the Burke and Wills film and a collection of art which is part of the Exhibition at the Art Gallery, the Royal Society contributed to the week by holding “Science along the Track” events: a “Why do Science” careers talk at Swan Hill Secondary College and a public lecture on science on Saturday morning followed by a “Meet a Scientist” lunch (with a suitable gap so we could all watch the procession).

The exhibition at the Art Gallery continues, but only until 19 September. In addition to the art you have a unique opportunity to see two of the breastplates presented  by Alfred Howitt to the aborigines who cared for John King, exhibited together for the first time.

Even if you missed Ray Liversidge’s performance of Seeking Fabled Waters at the Swan Hill Library, it’s still worth dropping in there. They have a Burke and Wills display set up with a very interesting collection of books about the Expedition, and you can meet the members of the Expedition on a “Walk to the Gulf”, following the camel tracks around the bookshelves, on display until the end of September.