However, the meeting was cordial and Flinders told Baudin about food and water available on Kangaroo Island.įlinders then set sail for Sydney, which he reached on. In April 1802 Flinders came across Baudin in what he named Encounter Bay where the Murray River empties into the Great Australian Bight.īaudin was dismayed to find that Flinders had already mapped the nearby coastline. He then explored Kangaroo Island, the Spencer Gulf and Gulf St Vincent. He headed east and arrived in Fowler Bay in South Australia on 28 January 1802. Though the voyage was expected to take four years, the couple were not to see one another for nine.įlinders sailed from England on 18 July 1801 and less than six months later arrived at Point Leeuwin – Australia’s south-western tip. However, permission was refused and Ann stayed in England.
Three months before sailing for Australia, Flinders married Ann Chappell whom he had hoped to take with him. Her flat bottom made her suitable for exploration work, as she could navigate shallow waters and would remain upright if she ran aground.įlinders arranged improvements for the Investigator, ensuring that more of her hull was copper-coated and that she was provided with additional boats. The Investigator was a collier, like James Cook’s vessels. The following year he published the findings of his expeditions, Observations on the Coasts of Van Diemen's Land, on Bass's Strait and its Islands, and on Part of the Coasts of New South Wales. Flinders named the strait between the mainland and Van Diemen’s Land after his friend.Īfter exploring part of the Queensland coast, Flinders returned to England in 1800. In 1798 Governor John Hunter gave Flinders, now a lieutenant, command of the sloop Norfolk and in this he and Bass circumnavigated Van Diemen’s Land, proving it to be an island. The boats they used for each of the expeditions were no more than three metres long.įlinders also spent time on Norfolk Island and was sent to Cape Town to bring back livestock. The men, both in their early twenties, explored Botany Bay and the Georges River, and later Lake Illawarra. In 1795 Flinders sailed to Sydney from where he made two short expeditions with the naval surgeon George Bass.
It was here that Flinders honed the navigation skills that mark him as one of Britain’s most accomplished explorers. He served on William Bligh’s second (and successful) voyage to Tahiti. Inspired by reading Robinson Crusoe, Matthew Flinders (1774–1814) joined the Navy as a midshipman in 1789 at the age of 15.
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