[2] Brahe's party was finally forced to abandon the depot and trek homewards, leaving a message pointing to a cache of buried stores.

Following an education at the Woolwich Academy, the young Burke served as a lieutenant in the Austrian cavalry and later the Irish Mounted Constabulary, before immigrating to Australia in 1853.

He trained in medicine and migrated to Australia in 1853 and after a short stint working as a shepherd at Deniliquin, New South Wales, Wills assisted his father with his medical practice at Ballarat, Victoria.

Wills later studied surveying and astronomy, and accompanied the expedition as astronomer, surveyor, and third-in-command, behind camel master George Landells.

Organised by the Royal Society of Victoria and supported by the Victorian Government, the expedition's objectives were hazy, beyond the desire to make the already-prosperous colony mightier by taking the lead in exploration efforts.

The expedition would prove extremely expensive both financially and in lives, yet was ultimately successful in its bid to beat South Australia's John McDouall Stuart to the first north–south crossing of the continent.

Despite having received clear instructions that he was to establish his main base camp at Cooper's Creek, Burke pressed on quickly with an advance party of eight, leaving the remainder of the men and stores under the unreliable charge of Wright.

During their stay at Camp LXV, Brahe's party erected a timber stockade to protect themselves and their supplies from the unwanted interest of local Aborigines.

Before embarking on this four-hundred-mile return journey, Brahe carved three messages on two separate Coolibah trees at Depot Camp LXV.

[1] A week after their departure from Camp LXV, Brahe met with Wright's party, heading north and finally en route to Cooper's Creek.

After surviving on ground nardoo, which was slowly poisoning them due to their lack of expertise in its preparation in leaching out the toxins, Wills died alone on the banks of Cooper's Creek on 27 or 28 June.

The Royal Commission was told that they found the depot as Mr Brahe had left it, the plant untouched, and nothing removed of the useless things lying about, but a piece of leather.

[1] These search parties helped open up vast areas of inland Australia for settlement, as a result of the increased knowledge of the country they brought back with them.

Within a decade or so there were established homesteads on the banks of Cooper's Creek, including Nappa Merrie sheep station, taken up by John Conrick in 1873.

Prospectors working their way north of Menindee found enormously rich deposits of silver, lead and zinc at Piesse's Knob, later better known as Broken Hill.

[1] While working on the survey of the border between Queensland and South Australia, surveyor Alexander Salmond passed by Cooper's Creek and made a pencil sketch of the tree.

[4] Called in 1911 by the Sydney Mail "William Brahe's Tree", an accompanying photograph showed a "DIG" inscription on the right-hand branching trunk partly overgrown with bark, obscuring the "D".

The Dig Tree eventually came to be regarded as central to the story of the expedition, partly as a result of John Longstaff's iconic 1907 painting exhibited in the National Gallery of Victoria, The Arrival of Burke, Wills and King at the deserted Camp at Coopers Creek.

In 1937 the Conrick Plaque, erected by members of the first Anglo-Australian family to occupy Yandruwandha/Yawarrawarrka and Wanggumara land, was placed on a cairn near the Dig Tree.

In 1996-1997 further signage was prepared by the Department of Environment, in consultation with the Royal Historical Society of Queensland, Bulloo Shire Council, and the Stanbroke Pastoral Company.

The Reserve of 4,470 square metres (48,100 sq ft) is excised from Nappa Merrie cattle station, which comprises almost three-quarters of a million hectares of Channel Country.

"[5] When Alfred Howitt returned to Cooper Creek one year later (1862) so that he could collect the bodies of Wills and Burke for burial in Melbourne, a member of his team, Alexander Aitken, rode to Depot LXV and blazed another "DIG" message on the other side of the same tree on which Brahe had earlier cut his "B/LXV."

The Dig Tree is important in demonstrating the evolution of Queensland history, because the Burke and Wills expedition contributed to establishing commercial pastoral exploitation of the Australian inland.

Only twelve years after the deaths of Burke and Wills, the land encompassing the Dig Tree and depot area had been taken up as Nappa Merrie station.