[1] Bourke was born in Nundle, New South Wales, on the Peel River diggings, New South Wales, the son of William David Bourke, butcher, and his wife Jane, née Shepherd.
He was a writer of vigorous prose and verse which gave him a local reputation, but he was comparatively little known away from the gold-mining towns.
He visited the eastern states of Australia for medical advice and to seek a publisher for his books in 1913.
In his own phrase they were "singers standing on the outer rim, who touch the fringe of poetry at times".
Murphy wrote more and had the larger audience, but Bourke was the more musical and more often did succeed in touching the fringe of poetry.