KEY POINTS:
There can be few places more remote than Plant Camp.
Lost for more than 140 years, the anonymous pinpoint on the vast and fatally barren Queensland Outback marked one of the last acts of desperation in the tragic bid by Robert O'Hara Burke and William John Wills to cross Australia from south to north, and back.
The two unlikely and inexperienced explorers died after a series of misadventures in which they missed salvation by nine hours, arriving the evening after the main body of their party began its trek back to Melbourne.
At Plant Camp, Burke, Wills and their two companions, John King and Charles Gray, buried the bulk of their equipment following the deaths of their camels and the realisation they had no chance of surviving if they tried to carry it with them to the base camp at Cooper Creek, in South Australia.
Only King, aided by local Aborigines, survived to return to Melbourne.
Now a Melbourne academic claims to have found the site of Plant Camp, described as the holy grail for Burke and Wills enthusiasts, and to have recovered much of the equipment listed as being buried in a letter Wills left in a tree at Cooper Creek.
Frank Leahy, principal fellow at the University of Melbourne's geomatics department, reported the discovery in the Journal of Spatial Science, and told the Age that he had discovered the cache last year after a hunt of more than two decades.
The site has also been visited by a former Victorian surveyor-general, Ray Holmes, who recovered a spirit bubble believed to have been used by Wills for astronomical observations.
Equipment found at the site also includes belt buckles, rifle and revolver bullets, a paperweight and a canvas and leather sewing kit.
Other equipment known to have been left by the explorers, such as Wills' sextant, have not so far been found, but in the 147 years since the gear was buried it had been scattered across an area up to 2km from the tree used as a marker.
The discovery of Plant Camp - although not yet accepted by all Burke and Wills enthusiasts - closes one of the most important remaining gaps in one of Australia's most epic and tragic early journeys.
Sponsored by the newly-formed Royal Society of Victoria, the Victorian Exploration Expedition left from Melbourne's Royal Park on the afternoon of August 20, 1860, to the cheers of a crowd of about 15,000.
Its leader was Irish-born Burke, a former Austrian Army officer and police superintendent who had no experience of the Australian bush.
Wills was a surveyor and meteorologist, placed third in command after George James Landells of a party that included 16 other English, Irish, German, Indian and American explorers.
They took with them 27 camels, 23 horses, six wagons and about 20 tonnes of stores that included food for two years and six tonnes of firewood.
In the journey that followed Burke split the team twice, first to push ahead with nine men to Cooper Creek, and then again after establishing a base camp there.
In the brutal heat of December Burke, Wills, King and Gray set off north by themselves, reaching the swamps fringing the Gulf of Carpenteria and beginning their return as the monsoon began.
With food running critically low, unnecessary equipment was abandoned, camels began dying, Gray perished of dysentery, and the survivors finally reached Cooper Creek just hours after the main party had left.
Burke, Wills and King set off to cross the Strzelecki Desert to a pastoral station called Mount Hopeless after leaving a note at Cooper Creek detailing their plans. Two weeks later a rescue party arrived, did not find the note, and returned.
Later, defeated by the desert, the explorers turned back to Cooper Creek. Despite help and food from local Aborigines, Burke and Wills died, leaving King to finally be found by a search party from Melbourne.
Leahy told the Age he had discovered the probable site of Plant Camp by using spatial analysis to follow Wills' recorded co-ordinates, corrected for errors calculated from known sites recorded by Wills.
In 1986 Leahy found a marked tree in country similar to that described by King during his evidence to the commission of inquiry that followed his return to Melbourne.
"By using astronomical records made by Wills and descriptions in his journals of camps along the route, I decided this had to be the place," he told the Age.
Leahy said one of the key outcomes would be the rehabilitation of Wills, whose abilities as a surveyor had been discredited. He told the Age that Wills had used a combination of dead reckoning, a magnetic compass and astronomical observation to keep exhaustive records that ultimately showed a high degree of accuracy.
"Wills was a great surveyor, there is no doubt about that. His reputation suffered very unfairly."
The Age said there could be another outcome from the discovery.
It said a lucrative market in Burke and Wills artefacts had mushroomed, with a water bottle selling for A$286,000 ($356,000) two years ago, and a breast plate connected to the expedition fetching A$180,000 at auction last month.
