John King

In 1861 an Irish-born explorer emerged from the Australian outback, sole survivor of the country’s greatest expedition. John King from Moy, Co. Tyrone had crossed the arid continent and discovered vast tracts of rich, fertile land. Seven explorers died on the expedition and with King’s triumph in completing one of the world’s great feats of endurance, on his return to Melbourne thousands gathered to crown him Australia’s first hero. Yet within weeks the handsome 22-year-old had been airbrushed from popular history. It was determined that King – an ‘Irish working man’ – was an unsuitable champion and the two dead leaders of the party, the Anglo-Irish gentleman, Robert O’Hara Burke and English scientist William Wills, would be history’s heroes. Mentally and physically, King was a better-equipped explorer than Burke or Wills. Educated at a Quaker primary school, King lived through the Great Famine, graduated after seven years at a tough Dublin military college, fought in the Indian Mutiny and was a teacher, linguist, musician, army sharpshooter, horseman and camel handler. This story reveals the string of injustices done to John King by powerful contemporaries and subsequent historians, and 150 years after his survival, seeks to give him his rightful place in the Burke and Wills historiography. June 2012 Ulster history and biography, Australian history, exploration, military history, local and family history, Irish-Australian studies, history of migration and settlement, Irish Quaker studies.