Melbourne-based family theatre group The Storey Players are following the Burke and Wills route to Mount Isa with their show ‘The Ghost of John King’.
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The Storeys departed on May 8 from Burke and Wills Memorial Cairn in Royal Park, the same spot the travellers departed from 157 years ago
This keen troupe of actors have been on the road since, passing by most of the towns on the Burke and Wills route to perform, including Swan Hill, Menindee, and Innaminka at Cooper’s Creek.
Simon Storey plays the ghost of John King, the sole survivor of the expedition.
“Not many people know that John King lived with the Indigenous people in Cooper’s Creek for three months after Burke and Wills died, and actually fathered a child with one of them.
“We actually met a relative of John King in Innaminka.
“That was quite an amazing moment for us. Having researched and lived the story for the past 18 months, that moment was really special,” Simon said.
Simon’s daughter plays a teenager who is ‘not too keen on learning history’ but gets drawn into the story as the play progresses.
The family is delighted to have been asked to perform the show at the Outback Fringe Festival in Quilpie on July 1.
They played Cloncurry Shire Hall on June 20, and will perform at Karumba Civic Centre on June 23 and the MITS theatre in Mount Isa on June 26.
Simon said taking the show on the route really brought home the hardships of the expedition.
“We’re travelling in winter, imagine what it must have have been like in the middle of summer, it would have been an absolute nightmare,” he said.
Mr Storey said from discussions in his travel some parts of the Burke and Wills legend don’t stack up.
He said when they returned to the Dig Tree their decision to travel to South Australia rather than follow the others who left that morning didn’t make sense as they had two camels.
“After so many died on the expedition, it’s possible Burke may not have wanted to survive,” he said.
For tickets to the Mount Isa show visit MITS Theatrical Society at 16 Transmission St, Mount Isa.
A note from the Storey Players – June 18:
“After nearly six weeks and over 5000 kms, we are nearing our goal – Karumba on the Gulf of Carpentaria. Burke and Wills nearly made it.
“They left John King and Charlie Gray at Camp 119 to look after the camels while they took Billy the horse and made a last, desperate dash for the coast.
“They got to within 10 kms and then had to turn back, beaten by the salt tides, mud, heat and exhaustion.
“It has been an incredible journey for us as well; performing in different places to a wide variety of people; facilitating drama workshops and seeing kids so enthused about making theatre; working along the way to create new performance opportunities; meeting some really inspiring people, and creating new projects for the future.
“We are performing tomorrow at Mt Isa Central School and adding a new part to our performance – the distribution of rations by John King after Charlie Gray was caught eating skilligolee, a thin kind of porridge, without permission i.e. stealing food from their supplies.
“This has been on our minds for some time, but we couldn’t find the right approach for this difficult part of the story. However, now that we’ve visited Cooper’s Creek, experienced the landscape they tried to conquer and learned a lot more about the expedition along the way, this scene wrote itself, presented itself to us, and from tomorrow will become a part of the show. If you have seen the show without this scene, then we guess you’ll just have to see it again when we return to Melbourne.
“We would also like to publicly thank everybody who has pitched in to help with our Australian Cultural Fund campaign – it means a lot that you believe in what we are doing enough to help us out.”
