Innamincka is an outback settlement located in the far north-east of outback South Australia, 1065 km from the state capital, Adelaide, and 340 km from Tibooburra in New South Wales . It is situated within Innamincka Regional Reserve on the banks of Coopers Creek in South Australia's Channel Country, which adjoins that of far south-west Queensland around Birdsville. Innamincka is surrounded by three deserts: the Strzelecki Desert, the Tirari Desert, and Sturt's Stony Desert. Innamincka currently has a population of approximately 15 inhabitants.
Prior to European settlement, the Innamincka area was the traditional home of the Dieri, Yandruwandha and Yarrawarrka Aboriginal groups. Charles Sturt was the first European explorer to visit the area in 1845, followed in 1858 by A C Gregory in and then by Burke and Wills in 1860.
Originally named Hopetoun, Innamincka was proclaimed a township in 1890. While never very large, Innamincka had a hotel, a store, a saddler's shop, a Chinese eating house and a police station which, prior to Federation in 1901, also served as post for collecting customs duties on cattle brought overland from Queensland into South Australia. The Australian Inland Mission (a part of the Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia) built a hospital in Innamincka in 1928, known as the Elizabeth Symon Nursing Home. Staffed by two nurses, radio contact was maintained with the Flying Doctor at Cloncurry in western Queensland using a pedal radio.
A combination of severe drought and poor access to the settlement eventually resulted in the closure of Innamincka's hotel and the hospital, with the town being abandoned altogether with the closure of the police station in 1951.
This decline was reversed in the late 1960s when the discovery of gas and oil reserves and increasing tourist interest and saw the formation of Cooper Creek Hotel Motel Pty Ltd. This company opened a hotel, a store and accommodation in the formerly abandoned Innamincka, and the Elizabeth Symon Nursing Home was restored in 1994 by entrepreneur Dick Smith and Australian Geographic. The home now serves as an information centre for the surrounding Innamincka Regional Reserve.
The Burke and Wills expedition traversed the Innamincka area in the course their historic journey across Australia from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria. They established a Depot Camp on Coopers Creek at a location now known as the Dig Tree from December 1860 to April 1861. An expedition sent by the Victorian government to determine their fate and led by Alfred Howitt found the remains of Robert O'Hara Burke and William John Wills and buried them close to where Innamincka is located today. The sole survivor of the ill-fated expedition, John King, was returned to Melbourne. In 1862 Howitt returned to the Innamincka area, establishing a depot camp at Cullyamurra Waterhole before exhuming the bodies of Burke and Wills and transporting them to Melbourne for a State Funeral.
Today, the locations of Wills' grave and King's site on Coopers Creek can be visited downstream of Innamincka, while Burke's grave, Howitt's camp and the Dig Tree on Coopers Creek can be visited upstream of Innamincka. A monument to Sturt and Burke and Wills was erected in Innamincka in 1944.