page_title: Matthew Flinders
section_title: Surveying the southern coast
hierarchical_section_title: Matthew Flinders / Exploration of the Australian coastline / Surveying the southern coast
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of the voyages of Matthew Flinders in the Investigator. Drawn using Inkscape. Base map AUS_locator_map.svg by user:Yarl.* Adapted from illustrations in Australian Navigators by Robert Tiley ISBN 0731811186
context_page_description: Captain Matthew Flinders was an English navigator and cartographer who led the first inshore circumnavigation of the landmass that is now known as Australia. He is also credited as being the first person to utilise the name Australia to describe the entirety of that continent including Van Diemen's Land, a title he regarded as being "more agreeable to the ear" than previous names such as Terra Australis.
  Flinders was involved in several voyages of discovery between 1791 and 1803, the most famous of which are the circumnavigation around Australia and an earlier expedition where he and George Bass confirmed that Van Diemen's Land was an island.
  While returning to England in 1803, Flinders was arrested by the French governor at Isle de France. Although Britain and France were at war, Flinders thought the scientific nature of his work would ensure safe passage, but he remained under arrest for more than six years. In captivity, he recorded details of his voyages for future publication, and put forward his rationale for naming the new continent 'Australia', as an umbrella term for New Holland and New South Wales – a suggestion taken up later by Governor Macquarie.
context_section_description: Aboard Investigator, Flinders reached and named Cape Leeuwin on 6 December 1801, and proceeded to make a survey along the southern coast of the Australian mainland. The expedition soon anchored in King George Sound and stayed there for a month exploring the area. The local Aboriginal people initially indicated that Flinders' group should "return from whence they came", but relations improved to the point where one resident participated in musket-drill with the ship's marines. In nearby Oyster Harbour, Flinders found a copper plate that Captain Christopher Dixson, on Elligood, had left the year before.
  While approaching Port Lincoln, which Flinders named after his home county of Lincolnshire, eight of his crew were lost when the small boat they were attempting to get to land with, capsized. Flinders named nearby Memory Cove in their honour. On 21 March 1802, the expedition reached a large island where many kangaroos were sighted. Flinders and some crew went ashore and found the animals so tame they could walk right up to them. They killed 31 kangaroos with Flinders writing that "in gratitude for so seasonable a supply [of meat], I named this southern land Kangaroo Island." The seals on the island proved less docile with a crew member receiving a severe bite from one.
  On 8 April 1802, while sailing east, Flinders sighted Géographe, a French corvette commanded by the explorer Nicolas Baudin, who was on a similar expedition for his government. Both men of science, Flinders and Baudin exchanged details of their discoveries, despite believing that their countries were at war. Flinders named the bay in which they met Encounter Bay.
  Proceeding along the coast, Flinders explored Port Phillip (the site of the future city of Melbourne), which, unknown to him, had been explored only ten weeks earlier by John Murray aboard HMS Lady Nelson. Flinders scaled Arthur's Seat, the highest point near the shores of the southernmost parts of the bay, and wrote that the land had "a pleasing and, in many parts, a fertile appearance". After scaling the You Yangs to the northwest of Port Phillip on 1 May, he left a scroll of paper with the ship's name on it and deposited it in a small pile of stones at the top of the peak.
  With stores running low, Flinders proceeded to Sydney, arriving on 9 May 1802.
caption: Flinders in Investigator
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