Planting the World by Jordan Goodman

Author:Jordan Goodman [Goodman, Jordan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2020-04-06T17:00:00+00:00

17

1800: Not Since the Endeavour

By the latter part of the eighteenth century, Banks knew more about Australia, or New Holland, as it was still called, than almost anyone else. Politics, trade, relations with Aborigines, exploration and natural history, were all topics in which Banks kept up-to-date. The first and second governors of New South Wales, Arthur Phillip (1788–92) and John Hunter (1795–1800), both wrote diligently and at length to Banks. Other senior figures in the colony such as David Collins, the colony’s judge-advocate and William Paterson, responsible for the New South Wales Military Corps, were also regular correspondents.[1] So was David Burton, the surveyor, gardener and botanist, whom Banks had recommended to go to New South Wales as Superintendent of Convicts and who managed to send Banks some plants and seeds before fatally shooting himself by accident.

All of these contacts and their energetic communications ensured that Banks knew as much as anyone about life in the colony. The problem was that the colony of New South Wales, concentrated around Port Jackson, was only a small part of the British claim of New South Wales, which, itself, was a part of a larger land mass, then called New Holland. While the western part of New Holland had been visited and charted by Europeans since the seventeenth century, the northern and southern parts had yet to be properly surveyed. The interior was unexplored.

So, when, in 1798, Banks first suggested an expedition into the interior led by the explorer Mungo Park, he intended that Matthew Flinders, who was already in New South Wales, should command a ship to take the expedition to a convenient place on the coast from where they could start their journey. When Park withdrew from the expedition, Banks did not give up on the ‘Scheme of Discovery’, as he called it. He told Robert Moss, Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office, ‘I will readily give my assistance against the next outfit, whenever that time may come.’[2]

Banks didn’t have to wait very long. On 6 September 1800, Matthew Flinders wrote to Banks from Spithead on board HMS Reliance, which had recently arrived from Sydney.[3] Flinders had been away from England for more than five years during which time, especially on the sloop Norfolk, he had surveyed the east coast of New South Wales, north to Hervey Bay, and south to Cape Howe and, eventually, circumnavigated Van Diemen’s Land thus proving that it was an island, separated from the mainland by a narrow body of water which was given the name Bass Strait after George Bass, the naval surgeon on the expedition.[4]

Flinders was writing to Banks to report on his exploring and charting activities, but this was only one of his reasons for contacting him so soon after his return. Flinders wanted Banks’s support for an ambitious new expedition. He was convinced, as were others at the time, including Governor John Hunter, that the western part of New Holland might be separated from New South Wales by a strait or

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.