Since playing the part of the great Robert O’Hara Burke in the 1980s film, ‘Burke and Wills’, I have been inspired by the grandeur of the landscape through which these brave explorers traversed and have harboured a yearning to help preserve this important tract for future generations. Having started my working life as a jackaroo outback, I learned a lot about our beautiful but fragile interior during my film-making career and also worked alongside environmentalists and Indigenous Australians I became a committed conservationist many years ago.

The Royal Society of Victoria’s 150th anniversary of history’s first heroic crossing of the continent thus provides us with a marvellous opportunity to draw popular attention to the environmental damage wrought to this tired track in the intervening 150 years and also gives us all a timely chance to fix up some of the many problems along the original route.

As patron of the 150th anniversary Burke and Wills Environmental Expedition I look forward to re-connecting with the spirit of our precious land and guided by Indigenous rangers and conservationists already working along the track, doing what I can to publicize the most pressing issues. There may be a wide range of environmental problems stretching all the way from Victoria to the Gulf of Carpentaria - but if we use the iconic status of the historic Burke and Wills expedition to galvanize government, corporate and grassroots action, we could go a long way towards stitching it all together.

Jack Thompson
Patron Burke & Wills 150th Anniversary