The savage shore, p.23
The Savage Shore, page 23
Flinders was surprised that Baudin had not seemed very interested in what he was doing in these waters. But by the following morning, the Frenchman ‘had become inquisitive, some of his officers having learned from my boat’s crew that our object was also discovery’. Flinders had occasion to complain that his discoveries and names had been annexed by the French, who were then referring to the continent as ‘Terre Napoléon’.6
The English and French navigators separated on 9 April and Flinders continued along the ‘Unknown Coast’. He had friendly relations with the Boonwurrung people around Arthurs Seat in the Mornington Peninsula, and left paper with his ship’s name beneath a small cairn of rocks at Indented Head. Here, the ‘indians’ hid while Flinders and his boat crew slept in their village. The inhabitants remained hidden until the British rowed away.
Flinders provided his views on possible settlement of the area:
Were a settlement to be made at Port Phillip, as doubtless there will be some time hereafter, the entrance could be easily defended; and it would not be difficult to establish a friendly intercourse with the natives, for they are acquainted with the effect of fire-arms and desirous of possessing many of our conveniences. I thought them more muscular than the men of King George’s Sound; but, generally speaking, they differ in no essential particular from the other inhabitants of the South and East Coasts except in language, which is dissimilar, if not altogether different to that of Port Jackson, and seemingly of King George’s Sound also. I am not certain whether they have canoes, but none were seen.
At the end of his expedition, Matthew Flinders had circumnavigated the continent for the first time, proving that it was an island. He is also usually credited with naming it, writing to his brother in 1804: ‘I call the whole island Australia, or Terra Australis.’ Mapmakers had used the term as early as the sixteenth century7 and Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernandez de Quiros used it around 1607, though Flinders seems to have been the first to apply it specifically to the land we know by that name today. The name, however, did not find much support during Flinders’ lifetime, but was officially adopted in 1824.
The secret atlas of the Southland was now complete. Apart from a few details, the size, shape and nature of the once-mythical southern landmass was now clear to all and could be satisfactorily inscribed on sheets of paper. The continent was now ‘known’.
But apart from small communities in New South Wales, Tasmania and some outposts here and there, it was not yet settled or even much explored. Australia existed, but still only as a shape upon a map. All around the shores of that shape were many more decades of discovery and danger.
The affair of the plates
Twelve years after Baudin left the western coasts, two Portuguese sailors joined the hundreds of others who had disappeared into the southern continent. The Correio da Azia, a dispatch vessel, was wrecked near what is now known as Ningaloo Reef in November 1816, thirteen years before the Swan River colony was founded. The crew escaped in the ship’s boat, heading north and going ashore at least once on the journey. But two men were apparently left behind and although the survivors did not come into contact with any local inhabitants, there was a fear that the two had fallen victim to them or perhaps been eaten by wild animals.
The survivors in the boat were picked up by the American Caledonia, which had sailed out of Philadelphia, and so eventually reached Macau, their original destination. From Macau, a search for the lost ship was made by the brigantine Emilla in 1817. Aboard were some of the men who had been wrecked in the Correio da Azia. They were able to locate ‘the exact site of their misfortune, with a bottom of rocks and a circle of rocks similar in appearance to a salt marsh’. Despite this, the Emilla was unable to locate the wreck nor any sign of the two missing men.8 They joined the roll call of the many lost souls of the Southland.
Just two years after the Correio da Azia foundered, Louis de Freycinet was once again in Shark Bay, as master of the 350-ton corvette Uranie. This time there was no Captain Hamelin to block his desire to possess Willem de Vlamingh’s plate. He had convinced the French government to fund an ambitious scientific expedition, and left France in 1817 on a voyage that would see him visit South America, the Pacific islands, East Timor and the Southland. Aboard his ship were 120 men and more than twenty officers, including the scientifically inclined artist Jacques Arago. Without permission of the authorities, de Freycinet had also secreted his 22-year-old wife, Rose, aboard Uranie. She would conduct her own observations during the three-year voyage, though these would not see the light of day for more than a century. But in their own lifetimes, the story of Rose and Louis de Freycinet became a sensation in France and they were feted and long remembered in many of the ports they visited during their global adventures.
On 13 September 1818, de Freycinet ordered his men to Inscription Point to recover de Vlamingh’s plate. They returned with it a few days later, much to de Freycinet’s satisfaction. He wrote later in justification of this deed:
That such a rare plate might again be swallowed up by the sands, or else run the risk of being taken away and destroyed by some careless sailor, I felt that its correct place was in one of these great scientific depositories which offer to the historian such rich and precious documents. I planned, therefore, to place it in the collections of the Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres de L’Institut de France.9
On reaching Shark Bay, Rose de Freycinet ‘saw the low and arid coast of New Holland; there was nothing in the sight to ease our minds, for we knew we would find no water in this miserable land’. Her first contact with the local people came after she had to be carried ashore by two sailors because the beach waters were too shallow for their landing craft. A group of around ten Aborigines threatened the English with weapons and unmistakable signals to go back to their ship. ‘I was afraid, and would willingly have hidden myself,’ she wrote home.
But nothing happened and the natives retreated. Rose, de Freycinet and some officers were then able to lunch on the beach beneath a canvas shade. As well as the food provided for them from their ship, they enjoyed local oysters ‘far tastier than all those I had, sitting at a table in comfort, in Paris’. What those who declined to welcome them made of this scene we can never know. Perhaps they thought that the picnicking strangers were not much of a threat after all. Some days later, contact was made with the local people when ‘after much hesitation, they had come up to the men in the first camp and had exchanged their weapons for tin, glass necklaces and so on’.10
Despite this exchange of arms for gifts, quite commonly experienced during first contacts, relations could quickly turn difficult. On one occasion, the ship’s artist, Jacques Arago, defused some intercultural tension by rhythmically clacking a set of castanets together. The Aborigines were at first taken aback but then responded in kind with a traditional dance.
A few days later, Uranie sailed for Timor and eventual shipwreck in the Falkland Islands. But both Louis and Rose de Freycinet survived the wrecking and returned to France with their observations and artefacts, including de Vlamingh’s plate. Louis de Freycinet faced a court martial for the loss of his command but was acquitted. Even the king was impressed with Rose’s loyalty and daring. The couple had no children and were inseparable until Rose died in the Paris cholera epidemic of 1832.
The precious plate brought back by de Freycinet was duly delivered to the Académie Française. It then disappeared from public view until 1940 when it turned up in the basement of the building, tossed together with a collection of other metal items. The artefact is now housed and displayed in the Western Australian Maritime Museum after being gifted by France to Australia in 1947.
Settling parts unknown
There was more French activity in the southern seas at this time, motivating the British to confirm their control of the land they called ‘New Holland’. Louis Duperrey served with de Freycinet as a marine hydrologist and in 1822 was back again with his own command. In 1824 Hyacinthe de Bougainville was also in southwestern waters during an around-the-world trade and diplomacy mission. His father, Louis Antoine de Bougainville, had reached the Great Barrier Reef in 1768 but was forced to turn back, narrowly failing to discover the east coast of Australia. Neither the Duperrey or Hyacinthe de Bougainville expeditions seem to have landed, but another French voyager between 1826 and 1829 did make contact—of sorts.
Dumont d’Urville, commanding L’Astrolabe, was in King George Sound in October 1826, receiving a welcome from the King Ya-nup who were happy to take his gifts. However, it was not only indigenous people they met. Eight English-speaking men rowed out to the French ship. They were escaped convicts, deserting or marooned sealers, and were offered passage to Port Jackson.11 Their numbers suggest how busy this stretch of coast had become, well before the settlement of the Swan River from 1829.
Two months after d’Urville’s visit, Major Edmund Lockyer established a military and penal settlement at what is now Albany. Bearing secret instructions describing what he should do in the event of a confrontation with the French, Lockyer arrived aboard the brig Amity on Christmas Day 1826. He was accompanied by twenty soldiers from the 39th Regiment and twenty-three convicts. His main task was to let the French know that ‘the whole of New Holland is subject to His Britannic Majesty’s Government, and that orders have been given for the Establishment at King George’s Sound of a Settlement for the reception of Criminals accordingly’.
Lockyer went ashore on Boxing Day and established initially friendly relations with the King Ya-nup. These did not last long. A few days later a party fetching water was attacked by Aborigines, who severely wounded a convict. Despite this, a more or less peaceful interaction was established between white and black. This was based to some extent on the generally favourable relations the indigenous people had experienced with earlier European visitors. Some of these must have introduced the custom of shaking hands to signify peace and friendship, as one of the King Ya-nup leaders, Mokare, retold a traditional account of friendship between his people and those voyagers who had come long before.
With a largely positive precedent like this, the settlers were able to push on with setting up camp, planting gardens and generally establishing themselves on the land. In early January a crew of sealers arrived. Under questioning they revealed that they had been abducting and even murdering local inhabitants. One of the Aboriginal men who had attacked Lockyer’s watering party suffered deep wounds to his neck from the thrust of a sealer’s cutlass. The British now knew why they were not welcomed by at least some of the local people.
The murderous sealers also reported the presence of d’Urville a few months earlier, giving Lockyer further incentive to establish a claim over the country of the King Ya-nup. To the sound of musketry, the British flag was raised over the little garrison on 21 January. The settlement was named Frederickstown after Frederick, Duke of York and Albany. By this ritual of possessioning, the land was formally claimed and occupied by a small detachment of the British army and a handful of convicts. But as the unexpected arrival of the sealers had proven, they were not there without diverse company. As well as visits from the now dispossessed local Aboriginal groups, they would experience ever-increasing numbers of whaling and sealing ships.
Sealers, pirates and settlers
The voyages and discoveries of Dutch, French and English navigators eventually led to European occupation and settlement of the southern continent from 1788. This was followed by the development of trade and commerce as the initial colony at Port Jackson grew and was followed by colonies around the country. But long before these events, visitors from many parts of the world were exploiting its abundant natural resources.
On a passage from Lima in April 1675, an English merchant trader was blown far south of his planned route around Cape Horn. He sheltered in the bay of a previously unknown island far to the south. He did not land. But exactly 100 years later, Captain James Cook did. He took possession of the island in the name of the British monarch and, patriotically, named it Georgia after the reigning king, George III. Cook’s description of Georgia—now South Georgia—was not positive but he did note the presence of large numbers of fur seals. British sealers were the first to officially arrive in 1786, followed rapidly by the Americans. By the early 1790s it is estimated that more than 100 ships were actively engaged in the southern ocean trade in seal fur and oil. The French entered the trade in 1802.
Although the French were not active in whaling until the 1830s, the industry was well established by then, adding further to the shipping activity in the region of the still largely unknown western and southern shores. It was not long before some of these ships began to visit. British and American sealers and whalers were along these coasts in the 1790s, all seeking the valued products of new waters. In 1792 the American whalers Alliance and Asia put men ashore at Dirk Hartog Island in search of water and food, while King George Sound and the surrounding waters were also popular, as well as the islands around Tasmania.
Sealing and whaling crews often established colonies of goats and rabbits on suitable islands, as well as vegetable gardens. They planned to return to these the following year, so ensuring access to vital supplies of meat and greens. Sometimes the animals and plants did not survive. Sometimes they flourished, forming colonies of European animals long before Europeans settled most of Australia. The notoriously desperate whalers and sealers were sometimes responsible for hostilities between the indigenous inhabitants and the settlers who arrived later. The oral traditions of these communities still hold tales of narrow escapes from one such identity known as ‘Black Jack’.
The African-American John ‘Black Jack’ Anderson probably arrived in King George Sound in 1826 aboard the American whaler The Vigilant. Although the settlement at Albany was small, it had grog and, so the story goes, Black Jack and his crew soon got drunk. There were others like themselves ashore in this sailortown and it was not long before a fight broke out. One man died and Black Jack was said to have been the killer. He escaped with his gang to the maze of islands that make up the Recherche Archipelago, eventually settling on Middle Island, from where he operated until well into the 1830s. He and his crew of cut-throats and rapists hunted seals, living off their meat and selling their skins. They were also said to have murdered a number of Aboriginal men and abducted their women.12
Piracy was an important part of Jack’s lawless repertoire. Passing ships bound for Sydney or Hobart were robbed and he and his gang were rumoured to have carefully hidden away a horde of treasure in caves on their island. Legend has it that, despite the softening company of an English lover named Dorothea, Black Jack was almost as brutal towards his own men as he was to his victims. Eventually the gang members became sufficiently aggravated by this ill treatment and shot their leader in the head while he slept. But despite frantic searching, the murderers were unable to find where Jack had stashed his loot and so another lost treasure tradition began, attracting at least one modern-day hunt for his booty, believed to lie somewhere in ‘Black Jack’s Cave’ on Middle Island.13
Apparently providing no hindrance to Black Jack’s many felonries,14 the garrison at King George Sound operated for almost five years. But the newly arriving Swan River settlers, 400 kilometres to the north, did not wish to have convicts in what was supposed to be a free colony. The recently appointed Governor James Stirling was also unhappy with even a small corner of his enormous territory being under the thumb of New South Wales—the start of ongoing colonial and state frictions between the east and west coasts. Stirling’s influence in Britain and the fact that settlement of the west was now established at the Swan River led to the garrison being placed under his command, followed by a complete withdrawal in March 1831.15
Over the same period and beyond, the British made attempts to settle the northern coast. Fort Dundas was established on Melville Island in 1824. It was abandoned after four years of unhappy relations with the Tiwi, illness among soldiers and convicts, and the difficulty of sustaining itself. In 1827 James Stirling founded Fort Wellington at Raffles Bay. Under the sensible and sensitive management of Captain Collett Barker, the enterprise did well, with Barker managing to balance the tensions between the colonists, local people and trepangers. But the garrison was closed in 1829. Another military settlement began at Port Essington in 1838. This was also promising at first, but after a troubled eleven years was abandoned. Then an ill-judged and badly managed settlement attempt at Escape Cliffs lasted for only three years to 1867. Two years after the closure of Escape Cliffs, though, the settlement that would become modern Darwin was finally planted on the continent’s vast northern shores.
By the 1830s, the western coast was secured against threats from the French, or anyone else, though military defences were quickly constructed in Fremantle in case of attack. The northern approaches were settled, if shakily, by the 1860s. The southern and eastern seaboards were also in various stages of development. There was no more ‘unknown coast’ of the unexplored character that Matthew Flinders had been commanded to confirm. But there remained large distances between settlements—and between those distances would grow legends that still perplex us.
12
The last legend
Through the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the great southern continent came more clearly into focus through charts, maps, journals and ever-increasing first contacts. It could, at last, be comprehended by the rational perceptions of the era. But it never completely emerged from its wreaths of myth and mystery. Legends of all kinds were spun from half-remembered events, lost and disappearing wrecks, and the persistent mysteries surrounding the fate of those Europeans known to have walked upon the continent long before its colonial settlement.
Fables and legends are cultural quicksilver. They form, fragment, join with other traditions and stubbornly persist as ephemeral stories that are as difficult to contain as they are to debunk. Often they are difficult to believe. Nevertheless, they live on stubbornly in the minds and mouths of many, mingling always with facts—where these can be found—yet providing a continual background of speculation and possibility that intrigues us across generations. Australia has produced many such myths through its pre-existence and into its eventual European settlement. Some of the most potent of these meld indigenous and settler traditions in legends that still whisper loudly to us. None are more compelling than the stories of the lost white tribes and the white Aborigines. Over time and space, these tales have had an existence of their own, as well as running together in surprising ways, as they did in the 1830s, and may one day do again.
