Landsborough Looking For Burke and Wills

In 1861 Landsborough was chosen by the Victorian and Queensland governments to lead a search for Burke and Wills from the Gulf of Carpentaria southwards. In the same year he applied for 15 runs of 100 sq. miles (259 km²) each and with Buchanan and Edward Cornish and formed the Landsborough River Co. to stock the new ‘Plains of Promise’, which he named Bowen Downs. Critics in the Brisbane press had claimed that his search for Burke and Wills was a secondary objective because he had been commissioned by graziers to find good land.