Dr. Becker, Stone, Purcell, and Patton were the others whose lives were sacrificed on this expedition, so marked with disaster. These victims received no token of public recognition of their fate, although a public funeral was accorded to Burke and Wills, and a statue has been erected to their memory in Melbourne.
Burke and Wills Monument Statue, Melbourne.
The foolish and unaccountable oversight of Burke and his companions in not marking a tree, or otherwise leaving some recognisable sign of their return at the depot, seems to have led Brahe astray completely. He states his side of the case as follows:--
"Mr. Burke's return being so soon after my departure caused the tracks of his camels to correspond in the character of age exactly with our own tracks. The remains of three separate fires led us to suppose that blacks had been camped there...The ground above the cache was so perfectly restored to the appearance it presented when I left it, that in the absence of any fresh sign or mark of any description to be seen near, it was impossible to suppose that it had been disturbed."
The story of the lost explorers created intense excitement throughout the other colonies. Queensland, as the colony wherein the explorers were supposed to have met with disaster, sent out two search parties. The Victoria, a steam sloop, was sent up to the mouth of the Albert River in the Gulf of Carpentaria, having on board William Landsborough, with George Bourne as second in command, and a small and efficient party; another Queensland expedition, under Fred Walker, left the furthest station in the Rockhampton district; and from South Australia John McKinlay started to traverse the continent on much the same line of route as that taken by the unhappy men.