Download coordinates as: Burketown is an isolated outback town and coastal locality in the Shire of Burke, Queensland, Australia.

Archeologists and linguists pinpoint the area surrounding Burketown as the urheimat of Pama–Nyungan languages spoken across almost all of the continent.

[16][17] The first European settlers arrived in the local region not long after Burke and partner William John Wills' expedition.

By the mid-1860s, several cattle stations - including Gregory Downs, Floraville, and Donors Hill - had been founded inland from the present site of Burketown.

Burketown was formally established in 1865 by Robert Towns, chiefly to serve as a port and supply centre for his extensive properties in the Gulf country.

Towns chartered a small vessel the Jacmel Packet and on 12 June 1865 it arrived off the mouth of the Albert River.

Rations and grog were plentiful but already one evil was noted: prices for goods were so high that some intended settlers could not stay.

In February 1866 Lieutenant Wentworth D'Arcy UHR with 8 troopers and accompanied by William Landsborough, the first Police Magistrate, rode into Burketown where everyone carried a pistol and where a successful shop keeper could ride well, shoot well and be an able pugilist.

The pioneer spirit was indomitable and the first official race meeting was held 25 July 1866 with prize money at $200 (sic).

As the Burketown correspondent of the Port Dennison Times reported on 4 June 1868, "everybody in the district is delighted with the wholesale slaughter dealt out by the native police".

[21] Burketown was used by explorer Francis Cadell as a staging point for refitting and refuelling the steamer Eagle and collecting mail and fresh supplies during his 1867–68 survey of the Northern Territory coastline.

The vessel "Margaret and Mary" from Sydney came into port rife with "Gulf Fever" (never properly identified, but thought to be either malaria or typhoid).

By the late nineteenth century, it is estimated that Chinese people outnumbered those of European ancestry north of the tropic of Capricorn.

This law aimed to prevent the arrival of Chinese through the introduction of a £10 poll tax—an amount equivalent to six months’ wages for an average worker at the time.

To avoid this cost, many Chinese attempted to walk overland to Queensland, mostly following the coastal track through the southern Gulf Country that Leichhardt pioneered in the 1840s.

[27] Records show that Woods Lake with its excellent water supply was then the site of a flourishing market garden, where the Chinese skills in vegetable production were well employed.

This source of fresh food was very important in countering scurvy, the scourge of remote places as well as ships at sea.

No details are known of the names of the producers or of the volume of their export trade, but it seems likely that they could have been associated with the two Chinese, Lee Gee and Jimmy Ah Fin who were the local bakers in Burketown at the time.

[1] Burketown has a number of heritage-listed sites, including: Burketown has a semi-arid climate (Köppen BSh), though closely bordering on a tropical savanna climate (Aw), characterised by hot, humid summers with erratic rainfall and warm, extremely dry winters.

[38] Flooding, often associated with the passage of a tropical cyclone, often isolates the community for months, whilst failure of the summer rains can be extreme — for instance in the 1901/1902 wet season no more than 172 millimetres (6.77 in) fell[39] and the drought caused the death of millions of cattle.

From the months of August to November, a rare meteorological phenomenon known as "Morning Glory" - long, tubular clouds, some up to 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) in length - is often observed in the skies above Burketown.

[59][60][61] Burketown is believed to be the basis of “Willstown” (named after Burke's fellow explorer Wills) in the novel A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute.