The Encounter - Postcards Special Feature
For Centuries sailors crossed the Indian Ocean and touched an unchartered continent. Sometimes by accident, sometimes by design - they added small slivers of understanding of this great Terra Incognita - The Unknown Land.
Early four hundred years ago, wayward Dutch expeditions in search of new spices and trade called it New Holland. The Portuguese added a strip of northern coast to the early maps - the French Navigators filled in the south west corner.
By 1770 Captain Cook had chartered the east coast and claimed it for Britain. But thirty years on - as a new century dawned - one mystery remained.
When you look closely at the maps of the time you soon realise the one missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle of discovery is our coastline.. pretty much from near Streaky Bay on the West Coast all the way to the Victorian border and beyond
It was a mystery that attracted two great seafarers. And in 1801 the race was on.
“HAUL AWAY”
“So we have Matthew Flinders representing science and the great British naval power coming one way and Nicholas Baudin representing science and Napoleon coming the other. They both sailed into triumph and tragedy. We’re on board South Australia’s sail training ship - the one and all. And she’s about the same length as ‘The Investigator’ and not a lot shorter that ‘Le Geographe”.. trying to get a sense of what it was like for them to sail trackless into the ocean blue and literally put South Australia on the map.”
It’s a story which extends thousand of kilometres across the globe…t to the splendour of Georgian England and the opulence generated by British naval power…. During its long and protected battle with the arch enemy.. the French.
It’s a tale which extends across the channel to Republican France and the rise of Napoleon and the city of Paris.. which will forever bear his mark.
It’s an epic saga ending in tragedy on the Island of Mauritius.. then Isle de France… a French outpost in the Indian Ocean…
… and a story which centres on some of the most spectacular coastal scenery to be seen anywhere in the world… the coastline of South Australia, where - amazingly, the two captains met.
“STANDBY TO SET THE MAIN”
Today on board One and All, Captain Ian Kuhl gives the order to hoist sail in what the English explorer Matthew Flinders name Investigator Strait… after his vessel which has left Portsmouth in July 1801.
Flinders has left in great haste. The British Admiralty - aware that a French Voyage of Discovery under Captain Nicholas Baudin had already left the port of Le Havre… was determined to counter the French threat.
Baudin had sailed passed these familiar shores on the Normandy coast n October the previous year… passed historic fishing ports like Honfleur… on a hazardous two and a half year mission to the unknown underbelly of the globe.
“Well this part of the world was really the last frontier as far as map making went. The southern coast of Australia was the last really extensive part of any inhabitable continents to be mapped. And Napoleon has a prior interest in Australia he tried to come to Australia with La Perouse some twenty odd years before, and Flinders has arrived with Captain Hunter and realised that here was an incredible field for exploration.. and he’d taken off in an eight foot longboat to explore the New South Wales coast in his youth.. and he was determined to return with a full scale expedition.”
By the end of January 1802 The Investigator had reached the head of the Great Australian Bight.. a term Flinders used years later when completing his charts.. the first time the description “Australian” had appeared on any map of the world. Soon The Investigator had passed the limit of Dutch discovery. They were now sailing into unchartered waters.
“As a lad Matthew flinders was inspired by a literary character and he ordered as special copy of ‘The Strange surprising adventures of Robinson Crusoe.Mariner’. And by the age of just twenty seven he was off our west coast and living it”.
For Flinders this was a compelling and mysterious place... and so too now for those of us who come each winter to marvel at these leviathans of the deep…. Like rangers Sonny Pepper and Ken Bourgoyne.
“Ever get sick of seeing those cliffs Sonny”.
“Nah.. I like to come and see them every time”.
“It’s like a magnet or something”.
“Yer it’s a magnet”.
The naturalists on board the Investigator missed the annual pilgrimage of the Southern Right Wales by a matter of months, but they were keen to record all that they saw.
And as Flinders charted the magnificent West Coast the artists on board captured South Australia’s marine life in captivating water colours.
Ferdinand Bauer’s depictions reveal a true fascination with all that he encountered on the rugged coast.
Cape Bauer near Streaky Bay.. now bears the name of the man who painted this.
To us it’s a blue swimmer crab… a bluey… just one of the reasons families head off to Streaky each simmer holiday. Like young Zack and his family…
“How many this time Zack? Three Six-we Got to have a six pack. Just the one. Is that a bluey is that a sand”.
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