The objectives of the expedition were hazy and its route, from Cooper's Creek to the Gulf of Carpentaria, was decided less than a month before it set out. Burke's instructions, sent after him because they were not ready at the time, were incoherent. The real object of the expedition appears to have been to snatch from the South Australian explorer, John McDouall Stuart, the honour of making the first south–north crossing of the continent. Sir Henry Barkly, Governor of Victoria 1856–1863, described it as the glorious race across the continent between the expeditions fitted out in this and the adjacent colony of South Australia.
