He knew nothing of bush life or bushmanship, navigation, or any art of travel.
Robert O'Hara Burke was brave, no doubt, but so hopelessly ignorant of what he was undertaking, that it would have been the greatest wonder if he had returned alive to civilisation.

He was accompanied by a young man named Wills as surveyor and observer; he alone kept a diary, and from his own statements therein he was frequently more than a hundred miles out of his reckoning.

That, however, did not cause his or Burke's death; what really did so was bad management.

The money this expedition cost, variously estimated at from 40,000 to 60,000 pounds, was almost thrown away, for the map of the route of the expedition was incorrect and unreliable, and Wills's journal of no geographical value, except that it showed they had no difficulty with regard to water.

The expedition was, however, successful in so far that Burke crossed Australia from south to north before Stuart, and was the first traveller who had done so.