Penneshaw, Kangaroo Island
- The Gateway Information Centre

What a strange place it must have seemed all those years ago. When the English explorer Matthew Flinders cruised these waters in 1802 in the Investigator he was struck by the eerie stillness of a place he was to name Kangaroo Island. There was not a camp fire to be seen as he charted the coast, no sign of human habitation. And with the English and French at war at the time, Flinders and his Gaelic counterpart, Nicholas Baudin, sailing in a vessel called Le Geographe, were involved in what was really a triumph of science over politics. "They met at a place now called Encounter Bay. Flinders himself had surveyed the North coast of the Island but once he discovered it was an Island he sort of lost interest in it and was going to move on. After that he met up with Baudin. Baudin said I'll go and have a look. So he came along and he was quite keen to put a number of French names... and actually right around the whole island which he circumnavigated... he left French names some of them stuck some of them didn't." "Hence Cape du Couedic?" "Hence Cape du Couedic, Cape Borda, Maupertuis Bay, Vivonne Bay, quite a number." In fact Flinders told Baudin where he could get water on the island near what is now modern day Penneshaw. "Some time later Baudin's expedition stopped at Penneshaw to take on water and one of his sailor's left his inscription on volcanic rock at the site of this important spring." A replica remains at Frenchman's Rock and it reads, "Expedition of Discovery by Captain Baudin in the Geographe 1803."

The original rock now takes pride of place in the Gateway Information Centre at Penneshaw which gives a fascinating insight into these voyages of discovery. Baudin named the Island Isle Decres, a French Admiral at the time. And his naturalist Francois Peron thought this fascinating creature the now extinct pygmy emu, was in fact a cassowary, hence the name Ravine de Casoar, for a impressive escarpment on the western end of the island. In fact the more you browse through the Penneshaw Centre you realise how different our lives might have been had Baudin sailed here a little earlier. "The gulf that we now know as Gulf Spencer and Vincent Gulf were known as Golfe Josephine and Golfe Bonaparte two that didn't stick." For more information on this close encounter of a French kind and Flinders' journey through Investigator Strait, call into the Gateway Information Centre at Penneshaw on your next trip to Kangaroo Island. It's situated on the outskirts of the town on the road to Kingscote. Entry is free and its open Mon - Fri 9am to 5pm and Sat-Sun 10am -4pm.

For more information you can email info@postcards.sa.com.au