The true story of two men, Burke and Wills, who set off from Melbourne in 1860 to conquer the "ghastly blank" of central Australia, but were never to return. Alan Moorehead describes what happened to them on that fated expedition and the physical and mental torments as the men pushed themselves to their furthest limits. Alan Moorehead was awarded the OBE for his war correspondence during World War II and has written "Gallipoli" which won the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize in 1956, "The Blue Nile", "The White Nile", "Fatal Impact" and "Darwin and the Beagle".