Saturday, March 10, 2018

THE MAN WHO PUT AUSTRALIA ON THE MAP AND THEN GAVE IT ITS NAME: The adventures of Mathew Flinders Part 1


Matthew Flinders (1774-1814), by unknown artist, c1800
Due to an education system dedicated more to left-wing indoctrination than imparting worthwhile knowledge, Australian history, shunned in schools, is a gaping black hole to most Australians.

This is of course the way globalists and multiculturalists prefer it. As the prophet Orwell saw it, "[t]he most effective way to destroy a people is to deny and destroy their own understanding of their history". Moreover, pitifully, because of television, most Australians would know far more about American history than their own.

Therefore, it may come as a surprise to learn of the truly heroic exploits of the White men who claimed this land for their own. We are speaking here of true heroes, not the dime a dozen variety sprinkled across the pages of today's tabloids. Standing out from even the cream of the heroic crop is one Mathew Flinders.

What makes a man? Many would answer, brains and guts. Flinders was both brilliant and brave. And as he so gallantly demonstrated, he was a man of honour. Male honour, something women have always struggled to understand, recedes into something of an anachronism, so this puzzle to women
will wither accordingly.

Sadly, although statues of him stand in Australian cities, streets, a university, a mountain range in South Australia, a town on the southern coast of Victoria, and two islands (a third named by Finders after his young brother, Samuel) are named after him, few Australians know little of him other than that he circumnavigated Australia, having no conception of just how monumental an achievement this was even though many would imagine he did in a rowboat named Tom Thumb. A tiny minority may know that it was Flinders who coined the name, Australia, a contraction of the more awkward, Terra Australis. 

This South Land had been merely hypothetical as early as the fifth century only because it seemed reasonable that a decent sized land mass in the southern hemisphere had to exist to balance the massive Eurasian land in the north. No confirming evidence was produced until Dirk Hartog, the Dutch navigator landed on the west coast of the fabled Terra Australis, where Marco Polo  had fantasised an El Dorado with gold causing the very landscape to sparkle, in 1616. Another tantalising hint of a South Land was provided by Abel Tasman who discovered the south west coast of Tasmania (named by him Van Dieman's Land) before sailing around its southern tip and then being persuaded by a strong wind to discover New Zealand in 1642. So by then, glimpses of land had been snapped 2,500 miles, or 4,000 kilometres apart. Was it the same land mass, or two large islands or an archipelago?

Flinders was born into a middle-class family in Donington, Lincolnshire in the UK in 1774, his father being a surgeon, envisaged a similar career, or perhaps a legal career for his son. However, a comfortable, bourgeois life was never to be for Flinders who from an early age was imagining a vastly different career. Right from his boyish devouring of Robinson Crusoe, the sea beckoned. He would be later inspired and influenced by the exploits of one Captain James Cook. So a cushioned, bourgeois life was not to be for Flinders. Rather, he was listening to the siren call of the sea and a life of derring-do - albeit a short one.

Before he was fifteen, he had attained an impressive self-education in astronomy and navigation. An aptitude for mathematics had earlier shown itself. As an example of the major part luck played in Flinders' life, mostly bad, but this time good, the ambitious boy had a cousin, Henrietta Flinders, who was serving as a governess for the family of Thomas Pasley who happened to be the commander of HMS Scipio. She was easily persuaded to put in a good word for her eager cousin and a meeting was arranged between the boy and the man who, evidently impressed, facilitated his entry into the navy, serving initially on HMS Alert. It's easy to imagine the boy's frustration at being consigned to a ship that wasn't going actually going anywhere but at least he was learning the ropes. Following a quick apprenticeship, he joined Captain Pasley on the Scipio before both transferring to HMS Bellerophon, a cannon-bristling warship.

On Pasley's recommendation he was was next assigned as a midshipman to HMS Providence  under the command of the already famous Captain Bligh. They were headed to Tahiti to complete the mission Bligh was charged with before being so rudely interrupted by an incident on board  the Bounty, that is, to collect breadfruit plants to transfer to the West Indies. It was envisaged as food for slaves who were outrageously scoffing down  more expensive victuals. In what must have been one of the sweetest ironies of history, after all the trouble gone through to obtain the breadfruit, the slaves refused to eat it.

For the boy, now barely sixteen, it must have been an adventure of which most adventurous kids could only dream, notwithstanding he had, according to history's almost unanimous verdict, the world's worse boss. Oddly however, providing some evidence that historical blackening can sometimes be grossly unfair, the boy and the man apparently shared a mutual regard - the boy was prepared to learn and the man was prepared to teach. This was no small thing given that the lessons were being provided by man who had proved himself to be one of the world's greatest navigators.

A voyage from England to Tahiti, visiting Terra Australis, then to the West Indies and back to Britain entailed a three year circumnavigation of the planet. On the return to England in 1794, war had broken out with revolutionary France. Still only 19, Flinders was sent into action aboard the HM S Bellerphon which became involved in a panorama of a naval battle fought off the coast of France  that would become known long-windedly as the Battle of the Glorious First of June, obviating any schoolboy need for memorising its date. A still excited Mathew would later include narrations of the battle in letters to his sisters but delicately omitting scenes of men being shredded by wood-shrapnel, the most consistent agent of death and mutilation in duels between sailing ships, men's heads being removed by cannon balls, ships still blasting away defiantly even while sinking, and his own captain, the irrepressible Pasley, losing a leg and apparently berating his crew for making too much of a fuss about it. Evidently carried away by the drama of it all, the young sailor in his baptism by fire earned a rare castigation for crossing a line of demarcation and trying to operate a cannon on his own.

He'd had his taste of war and acquitted himself honourably, but as the man of science he would become, he would always be aghast at the seemingly irremovable closest approximation to hell on Earth.

The next year, Flinders, still as a midshipman, was sent to the infant colony at Port Jackson (Sydney, Australia) on HMS Reliance which also carried the man who would relieve Arthur Phillip as Govenor of NSW, John Hunter. It was on this voyage that Flinders met the man who would become his boon companion, George Bass, three years his senior, who was serving as a ship's surgeon.  

Flinders was becoming noticed.  It's not likely that Bligh had  kept his protege's navigational ability and attention to cartographical detail secret, thus doing no harm to his career. His growing reputation evidently preceded him to NSW.

Arriving there, the new Governor was keen to harness the young man's skills in shedding some light on more of the of coast and hinterland of NSW, the name basically given to all of the known land of eastern Terra Australis except Van Diemen's Land where Abel Tasman had beaten the British to the punch by naming it after Anthony Van Diemen, the Governor General of the Dutch East Indies.

The equally adventurous George Bass was keen to join his friend in the exploration of the coast south of Port Jackson, including Botany Bay. But they needed a third crew member to bail water. They found him, a youth named Martin, standing idly at the seaside looking out to sea. When asked if he'd like to join them in a boat ride, evidently omitting the inherent danger, the answer could easily be imagined as, "yeah, s'pose so". It would have been difficult to claim he was too busy.

So the trio set sail through what's now called Sydney Heads in what was essentially a rowboat with a sail named Tom Thumb, and turned south to explore Botany Bay and what they would name, the George's River, in modern times minus its possessive apostrophe. They also named Port Hacking after Henry Hacking, the colony's primary game hunter. Hacking had served as quartermaster on the Sirius when it was part of the first fleet.

After an interlude which saw Flinders briefly visiting Norfolk Island a more ambitious journey south was made to what is now Lake Illawarra, passing and noting a hint of what would become a massive coal-mining industry at Port Kembla, was made in Tom Thumb 2, of similar dimensions to the original. Again needing a water bailer, the two explorers found Martin standing in the same spot in which he was originally sighted. The two journeys involved rough weather, being overturned, miles of sheer cliff allowing no chance of a landing, and where landing was possible, being joined by curious but unpredictable and well-armed Blacks. Notwithstanding all these tribulations, Martin appeared to enjoy the second trip as much as the first.

With the colony desperately short of food, Flinders then rejoined the HMS Reliance for a voyage to the Cape of Good Hope to procure livestock.

The next ship Flinders, now a lieutenant, would join was the HMS Francis sailing to the Furneaux Islands, originally sighted by Tobias Furneaux in 1773 off the north east cape of Van Deimen's Land. The islands were to be further explored as Furneaux had never actually landed here. Flinders would also be doing valuable hydrographic work, the description and measurement of coast line as an aid in navigation.

The most intriguing question of the day was the status of Van Diemens Land. Was it an island or was it part of NSW? Flinders and Bass were commissioned to find out once and for all. To do this they were provided with the  35 ft sloop Norfolk, built on Norfolk Island as a link between the two colonies but unceremoniously commandeered by Governor Hunter  on its first appearance at Port Jackson. A crew of eight volunteers joined the two men whose names history would meld together. Well suited to the task, the Norfolk handled like a sports-car, but in a notoriously wild part of the oceanic world, would have been frighteningly vulnerable. It was small enough to be equipped with extra long oars, providing additional dexterity. Sailing west through the strait named after his partner in adventure, giving a nod to Bass's earlier probing, and turning south to follow a coast fortified by towering cliff walls, Flinders knew that the conundrum had been vanquished - Van Diemen's Land was a stand-alone land mass which was being circumnavigated for the first time.

This was a break-through of epic proportions. Now with the knowledge that a safely navigable strait existed between the two land masses, the journey between Britain and Port Jackson could be shortened by days.

To be continued






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