The Encounter - Postcards Special Feature
“Crab”
On The Investigators voyage along the West Coast there was plenty for the naturalists to record.. like the colony of Australian Sea Lions and New Zealand Fur Seals on Olive Island. In just a couple of years after the ships voyage along the Unknown coast the sealers would be on their way.
But for now Flinders was in desperate need of water.. hence the name Denial Bay for this pristine inlet. Now it produces succulent oysters for markets around the world.. but back then it denied Flinders the river he so desperately sought.
Taking readings form the masthead, the navigator meticulously added the “jigsaw pieces” of the west coast.. like spectacular Flinders Island - named after his brother Samuel who was on board as second lieutenant.
Soon flinders would pass the opening to Coffin Bay.. named after Sir Isaac Coffin… a patron back home. He sailed on by … never venturing into the tranquil and protected waters of what is now an idyllic holiday retreat.
And as they rounded the bottom of the peninsula.. the treacherous and aptly named Point Avoid with its nearby Golden Island.
Closeby, they encountered a hazardous meeting of tides. Flinders and his crew were excited. Could this be a major strait extending all the way to the Gulf of Carpentaria.. and fresh supplies for his crew?
They were so wrong… for around the bend lay catastrophe.
SEGMENT 2
For Brian Lawrie…………this is merely another day at the office. The Global Positioning System is his constant companion……….telling him where he is at all times as he checks on his craypots off the limestone coast.
“I mean there is some pretty serious breaks that come through here at times I mean well you’d never we have certain days of the year where you wouldn’t get out of here…………out of this Bay Guichen Bay……..You’d have to stay in”.
Brian has the security of the GPS…….No such technology for French Commander Nicholas Baudin………and the locals who fish these waters know what he was up against as he headed west along this coast.
“Oh, he would have experienced probably horrific conditions. I mean we have some of the worst reef breaks around this bay area in front of Guichen Bay that you would experience in big seas. There’s a lot of people who have come to grief here and certainly I would not have liked to have been in his position back then”.
Baudin first spotted these jagged ridges of limestone off the coast of Robe back in early April 1802. His English competitor would later name them Baudin Rocks in honour of the Captain who chartered this section of the Unknown Coast. From west of Mount Gambier the French had become true explorers. …..the first Europeans to sail this coast. And where they swept by……..the ancient middens……….with their discarded shells and cutting stones are reminders of the feasts which the local Baondik people enjoyed. From here they had the perfect vantage point from which to follow Baudin’s progress.
“That’s it……..keep slacking it off”.
On board The One and All you get a sense of the teamwork required to bring Le Geographe in close enough to map the southeast coast. The charts reveal their progress with names like Baye De Rivoli and Cape Jaffa. Ever watchful of the winds ………they were quick to make for deeper water and safety……..and when they did……no doubt these playful creatures followed them.
With France and England at war at the time……..both The Investigator and Le Geographe had been given passports from their rival governments to complete their voyages of discovery. And while the French described theirs as a scientific mission………their maps of Terre Napoleon……as they called it……suggest the journey to the Unknown Coast may have harboured some imperial ambitions as well.
Our map and our history may have been very different had the dice fallen differently for Baudin…Remember the Frenchman had set out with several months head start on his English Rival.
“He’d been held up in Mauritius. On arrival of Cape Leuwin on the South West Coast corner of Western Australia he was running very late….. Winter gales were almost there……..he had no idea of what the Coast was like to the east………..so he decided to turn north and went to Timor to Winter there, rest his crew and reprovision the ship”.
This was to be another crucial delay which prevented Nicholas Baudin from being the first to reach the Unknown Coast.
“He could have been six months ahead of the time he actually made the voyage……….in which case the discoveries would have been his”.
Baudin finally left Timor……..but by now Flinders was already off the West Australian coast……..and heading towards the unchartered prize. Baudin passed within just two hundred miles of The Investigator…..near King George Sound……but instead of making straight for the Unknown Coast he followed his original orders and sailed to Van Diemen’s land.
It was here that the French naturalists and artists set about recording all they could about this nation’s original inhabitants.
The water colours by Nicholas-Martin Petit and Charles-Alexandre Lesueur record their contact with the Tasmanian aborigines and captured their sense of wonder.
“The first sketches of meeting with the Tasmanian aboriginals are full of fear on both sides. You can see the artist is doing a quick sketch……..he doesn’t know if he’s going to get speared through the ribs……….or if this guy is going to stay there or not. The aboriginal is also fearful……there’s these forced smile sometimes on the faces and somehow during the process of producing the art works of the expedition that smoothed out and you get these kind of more classic kind of more noble savage type you know illustrations produced”.
There was a pioneering anthropological study……and the work of the naturalists took precious time.
These men of science were the bane of Nicholas Baudin’s life. Many’s the time he remonstrated with naturalists like the exuberant but undisciplined Francois Peron….his nemesis. Peron was responsible for delay after delay…..as he collected specimens from the beach. Those hold-ups….combined with sickness….and the internal squabbling on board Le Geographe……help to explain what must have seemed to the crew like a French Revolution at sea.
“So up goes the outer jib on The One and All…….now Baudin didn’t need anymore sail. He just needed to use his nine month head start a lot better. As his navigator Freycinet said to the Englishman Flinders much later…….”Captain if we hadn’t spent so much time picking up shells and catching butterflies in Van Diemen’s land then you wouldn’t have discovered the south coast before us Frenchmen”.
The French sailed along the forbidding breakers of the Coorong. Baudin was unimpressed. “The coast, he wrote, inspires nothing but gloom and disappointment”. And as he and his crew ventured forth they were oblivious to the fact that they were only a few days late in claiming the prize of charting all of the Unknown Coast. Flinders was aware of their mission and despite giving them a massive head start. The Investigator had made up lost time……..and taken the honours. 33333333 One look at the French voyages and you soon realise how our history might have been very different had he made straight for our shores.
After the break……..memories of home for Matthew Flinders …….as catastrophe strikes The Investigator.
SEGMENT 3
Out here in Lincoln National Park it’s strictly four wheel drive country……as tour guide Steve Pocock makes his way through the giant sand dunes at the eastern edge of Sleaford Bay.
This spectacular and dangerous stretch of coast was named by Flinders after a little piece of his home land back in Lincolnshire England.
It’s an area which has long held a fascination for the Postcards crew….but he warned……..you need to have your wits about you when venturing into country like this.
“Anybody coming out here needs to have a fair degree of knowledge. One of the down sides of running a tour business like this is that I’m forever getting people out of situations simply because they’ve never taken the time to learn how to handle the machinery they’re in”.
This is how many visitors access this stretch of coast these days………but back in 1802………Matthew Flinders sailed around the tip of Eyre Peninsula……with the northerly tide pushing him through Thorny Passage and the islands at the opening to Spencer gulf.
“Pull Pull Pull Pull”
Buoyed by the prospect of discovering a major strait all the way to the Gulf of Carpentaria…….the crew passed on…….but their first concern was water.
As we disembark off Memory Cove………the eerie stillness of this sheltered bay belies its tragic past. The Investigator’s master John Thistle……a close friend who had sailed with Flinders for many years……set off in a cutter with seven other men in search of water.
On the 21st of February, 1802…..they were sighted in the dusk returning to the ship - and then they disappeared.
The search throughout the night and following days proved fruitless……they were never to be seen again.
For Steve Pocock….this brooding stretch of coastline..is confirmation of the dangers faced by these first European visitors to our shores.
“They were on a thirty foot long boat which is probably half the size of the crayboat out there and they…you know…...they didn’t make it…..the first people the first Europeans to recorded to visit this area didn’t get home….so it says a bit about the area……….its pretty dangerous”.
“Two centuries on this is a happy camping place in a national park……but there must have been fathomless despair on board the investigator as it came in and anchored in Memory Cove about where One and All is now. They searched the coast here for three days……they found bits of the boat….they found their footsteps along the beach here but no sign of the men. Flinders had a copper plate engraved about the incident. He knew this was a distincly tranquil place….Nautici Cavete he said……sailors beware…..and out there the islands he named for his men”.
Thistle Island for John Thistle, the ship’s master, Taylor…..for William Taylor midshipman, and other islands for the “active and useful young men” as Flinders described them…….Williams, Lewis, Hopkins, Grindal, Little and Owen.
For Thistle this was a long way from home……..but the story has it that a fortune teller in a Portsmouth Tavern had warned of his death and that of several others on board The Investigator just prior to their departure.
The tradegy left its mark on Flinders and on the map of South Australia…..with Flinders naming this treacherous spot Cape Catastrophe.
“It was a devastating loss for him…….the first men he’d lost while in command of a ship…….he had a close personal friendship with Thistle…..the shipsmaster in particular…..he’d lost one of his midshipman……and it affected him very deeply at a personal level.”
“He’s gone up here”.
On board The One and All we follow Flinders charts through the aptly named Thorny Passage……and the thorny issue for the captain was still freshwater……and as his vessel sailed into what is now Boston Bay he would eventually find it near Port Lincoln.
“Just a few nautical miles North Flinders sailed into a huge harbour dominated by Stamford Hill. He climbed to the top if this Granite Peak to get his bearings. He came in from the Gulf passed the coves and islands and sailed in for miles. The monument at the top was erected by someone who was with him, midshipman John Franklin….he became the Lieutenant Govenor of Tasmania”.
“By now Flinders was desperate for water and he eventually found it right down at the end of the bay. They had to dig for it in clay pits….and they took on sixty tonnes of it…it took them days and during that time the aboriginal people here…..the Nao people, showed themselves and then disappeared. Flinders wrote about that in his journal and he called them the Australians…….that’s the first time ever that term was used”.
“Port Lincoln” was not named at the time. It was shown on Flinder’s first charts as Bay No10. Years later he created an antipodean Lincolnshire on the map of his discoveries along the Unknown Coast.
Perhaps these lonely shores……and the tragedy of only days before…..stirred in this Englishman a longing for home.
“It was a thinking of home in the midst of this terrible catastrophe”.
Hence Boston Bay…..named after Boston in Lincolnshire. Flinders described it as a fine harbor……and so it is…..but not for ships of the line as Flinders imagined….but the largest tuna fleet in the world.
The Navigator named this Spalding Cove………after another town in his beloved homeland. A cove…….which he wrote was capable of sheltering a fleet of ships.
And here thousands of birds………thousands of miles from Flinder’s home. And for this cape another recollection of old England…..with the Navigator naming it Cape Donnington….after the town of his birth.
The charts recreate in infinite detail…..the Sir Joseph Banks Group of Islands…named after his major patron back in London.
And here more connections with home. Partney Island…….named after the village where Matthew Flinders married his sweetheart Anne Chappelle.
“Well, it’s a remarkable story of the marriage……because they were married and lived together for three months….and then he sailed on Investigator and unbeknown to both of them, they would not see each other again for nine years”.
His love for his young wife would both sustain and torment him as he continued his voyage around the Australian coastline…..and later….in the dark days to follow.
Coming up……a welcome haven for both captains on Kangaroo Island.
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