In 1860, Robert O’Hara Burke and William John Wills set out to lead the first expedition across the Australian continent — from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria. Backed by public funding and national attention, their journey was supposed to be historic.

Instead, it became a slow-motion disaster.

This episode tells the true story of how miscommunication, bad decisions, and cruel timing turned a moment of promise into one of the most tragic chapters in exploration history. From missed rescue by just hours to buried journals no one found in time, this is the heartbreaking fate of the Burke and Wills expedition — and the one man who made it out alive.

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In 1913, the Karluk set sail on a bold Arctic expedition. Within months, the ship was locked in ice and abandoned — left to drift helplessly across the Chukchi Sea. This is the true story of survival, leadership, and betrayal in one of the coldest and most brutal environments on Earth.Led by Captain Robert Bartlett, the crew fought to survive frostbite, starvation, and the madness of isolation, while their expedition leader, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, walked away — not once, but twice.From the freezing deck of a ship crushed by ice to the desolate shore of Wrangel Island, this is a survival story few have heard… and one history nearly forgot.