The Storey Players,  have re-written history with their telling of the Burke and Wills Story. Few people know the full account of the Burke and Wills expedition, so Simon Storey and his travelling family of players decided to research and create a show for schools, that tells the full account of the expedition from the perspective of the only survivor John King.

The Burke and Wills myth in Australia that is often taught in schools is told from a very European point of view and tends to omit many factors of the journey, the foolishness of the original mindset of the party and the real heros of the tale. What really happened and what this meant for white settlement across the vast Australian landscape.

In 2013 ex pat Simon and his German wife Tina, moved with their two children back to Australia, taking up residence in The Patch, right in the middle of the Dandenong Ranges. Dazzled by the enormity of the country, they decided to use their talents as theatre makers to develop a show focused specifically on explorers of this enormous land.

“We started talking about the first Europeans who arrived here, the distances travelled by ship, and then the conversation turned to the first explorers. We decided that we wanted to create theatre about some of these brave souls and researched many of them, but kept coming back to Burke and Wills because it’s one of the best known in Australia. Everybody knows Burke and Wills, but hardly anybody knows the untold story.

When we started our research, we were surprised to learn about John King and Charlie Gray. Most people, including myself, thought it was just the two of them, Burke and Wills, who undertook this dangerous expedition and then perished at Cooper Creek. The more we researched, the more we wanted to tell John King’s version because he was the only survivor and seemed the most interesting from all the characters. We discovered that after Burke and Wills died, King lived for three months with the Yandruwandha people at Cooper Creek and fathered a child with one of the tribe members. We were flabbergasted, why wasn’t this story being told? Who decided that Burke should be the hero and not John King? There are many unanswered questions about this expedition and we are trying to excite and inspire people to investigate further and begin to think about the deeper meaning of this adventure. ” Simon Storey.

The show is a mix of simple story telling and theatre. A teenage girl does not want to do her homework and the play begins with her reading about the Burke and Wills expedition. She unwittingly calls the ghost of John King and slowly becomes engrossed in the wider truth.

The family have taken the show on the road literally retracing the expedition across Australia and performing along the way. An exciting, adventurous  and highly successful concept.

The show is available to be performed in schools. Contact The Storey Players for further details and bookings.

http://www.thestoreyplayers.com/

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