A REVOLVER belonging to explorer Robert O’Hara Burke — lost for 155 years — will return to Beechworh.
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Indigo Council bought the revolver, pictured left, for $18,000 — some community raised — at an auction in Dublin, Ireland on Sunday.
The Burke Museum’s Linda Peacock learnt on Thursday that the pistol, given to Burke when he left Beechworth in November 1858, was to be auctioned.
It is inscribed “Presented to R. O’Hara Burke Esq. Supt. of Police by the Officers of the district on his transfer from Beechworth, November 1858”.
Ms Peacock said the museum had feared museums with “much deeper pockets would buy the pistol after national media published the story of it at the weekend, but the locals had won out.
“It’s an iconic piece of Australian history,” Ms Peacock. “We believe Beechworth is the right place for it to be.”
