1801-1803: Matthew Flinders, Bungaree and Trim Circumnavigate Australia

Matthew Flinders (1774 - 1814) was an English explorer, naval officer and navigator from Lincolnshire, England, who became the first European person to circumnavigate Australia. 

Bungaree (born about 1775), a Kuringgai man from the Broken Bay area of New South Wales, who accompanied Flinders on the voyage, was described by Flinders as a "worthy and brave fellow". Also along for the ride was Flinders seafaring cat, Trim.

Portrait of Captain Matthew Flinders, RN, 1774-1814

Mapping Australia

On 18 July 1801, Matthew Flinders left Portsmouth, England, in HMS Investigator with the intention of exploring the "unknown coast" of Australia, which was known as New Holland at this time. 

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The Encounter

On 6 December 1801, Flinders arrived at the most south-westerly mainland point of the Australian continent, in the state of Western Australia and named it Cape Leeuwin, after the first known ship to have visited the area, the Dutch ship Leeuwin ("Lioness"), in 1622.

Continuing on, Flinders sailed along the southern coast of the Australian mainland, then stopped off at Oyster Harbour, Western Australia, where he found a copper plate that Captain Christopher Dixson had left there, only the year before, sailing on the Elligood. The plate was inscribed, "Aug. 27 1800. Chr Dixson, ship Elligood".

Whilst sailing off the coast of South Australia in 1802, Flinders came upon the French expedition, under the command of Nicolas Baudin, sailing Le Geographe. Although both expeditions believed that their countries were at war, both Flinders and Baudin as men of science discussed their findings before parting on good terms. Flinders and Baudin sailed in opposite directions and were never to meet again. Flinders did, however, name the bay in which they met, Encounter Bay.

Bungaree

Continuing along the coast, Flinders explored the site of the future city of Melbourne, before continuing eastwards, and reaching Port Jackson in May 1802. In that same month, Flinders recruited the Aboriginal man, Bungaree, who he described as having a "good disposition and open and manly conduct".

As Flinders finished the first complete map of Australia, proving that it was a single continent,  Bungaree acted as a mediator, with the indigenous people that the voyagers encountered, even though he did not share a common language with most of the other tribes.

Bungaree by Augustus Earle (1826)

Trim The Cat

Also on this voyage of circumnavigation around the Australian mainland, was Trim the cat. Trim was born in 1799 aboard the ship HMS Reliance, during a voyage from the Cape of Good Hope to Botany Bay. Flinders described the cat: "Trim as The sporting, affectionate and useful companion of my voyages during four years".

Bronze sculpture of Trim, on a windowsill of Sydney's Mitchell Library, was unveiled in 1997

Trim, the cat, in Donington, Lincolnshire. at the feet of his master, Matthew Flinders

How It Ends

The Investigator arrived back in Port Jackson in June 1803, after completing the circumnavigation of Australia.

On his return voyage to England, Flinders was accused of spying and imprisoned by the French in Mauritius. Sadly, Trim disappeared during Flinders's time in captivity.

Flinders returned to England in 1810, but he died one day after the publication of his great work, A Voyage to Terra Australis, in July 1814.

In 1814, Governor Lachlan Macquarie presented Bungaree with a brass breastplate and a large plot of land at George's Head, Port Jackson.

In January 1919, the grave of Matthew Flinders was found during excavations of a cemetery near Euston train station in London, as part of the HS2 high-speed rail project.

Books To Read


Matthew Flinders' Cat, by Courtenay, Bryce.

The Life of Matthew Flinders, by Miriam Estensen

Australia: When The Dinosaurs Lived Here

The Mesozoic era was the age of reptiles which occurred 250 to 65 million years ago. During this time, dinosaurs were the rulers of Australia. Humans did not exist.

Dinosaur Cove in Victoria, Winton in Queensland and Broome in Western Australia, are places where dinosaur remains have been found in Australia.

One of the biggest dinosaurs discovered in Australia was a giant sauropod nicknamed "Elliot", after David Elliot,  a sheep farmer who discovered the bones. 

Elliot, at 21 metres long, weighed as much as a jet airliner and was as high as a two-storey building. Elliot was a plant-eater and the rocks in which his remains were found, have been dated at 95 to 98 million years old. Strangely enough, these behemoths had beaks like those of birds or turtles.

Skeletal of Wintonotitan, Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural History, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0006190 — Image #2

Fossilized sauropod footprints on Broom Beach, WA.

A Sauropod femur at the Australian Age of the Dinosaurs Natural History Museum, Winton Queensland

Lightning Ridge Dinosaurs

Back in the 1980s, a miner named Bob Foster was working at the outback town of Lightning Ridge, where he kept finding things which looked like "horses' hooves". After finding and smashing these hoof-like specimens for a few months, Bob decided to travel to the Australian Museum in Sydney, where he was met with much excitement.

Bob had found a new dinosaur species, which was named Fostoria dhimbangunma. The four scapulae (shoulder blades), all from different sized animals, are the first dinosaur "herd" to be discovered in Australia.

Opalised skeleton of a dinosaur found in Coober Pedy (South Australia Museum)

Dinosaur Named Cooper

In 2004, a member of the Mackenzie family found a lump of rock which he thought might be a fossil, on their property, west of Eromanga in South West Queensland. The Queensland Museum determined the specimen was the fossilised remains of a 95 million-year-old plant-eating dinosaur. 

Since then, many dinosaur sites have been found on the property, including Australia’s largest dinosaur, a 95-98 million-year-old titanosaur, nicknamed Cooper, which has a long neck and tail and a massive body.

This photo is on the wall of the Eromanga Natural History Museum of the dinosaur nicknamed, Cooper, Australia's largest dinosaur, walking by the Royal Hotel

Things To and Places To Go


The Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum

Australian Dinosaur Trail

Eromanga Natural History Museum

1796: Complaints About John Macarthur's Behaviour

With the benefit of hindsight, it would appear that John Macarthur (1767 –1834) the wool pioneer, politician and rebel suffered from bipolar disorder.

Portrait of John Macarthur, wool pioneer in Australia., State Library of NSW

Steam Engine Power

Whist making such a claim about Macarthur's mental health hundreds of years after he has lived and died seems problematic, it is evident that Macarthur experienced cycles of "steam engine power" and periods of terrible depression. In 1832 he was declared insane and two years later, he died on 11 April 1834.

Drawing of the penal transportation ship "Neptune" that operated between England and Australia

On The Hellship

As a British army officer,  John Macarthur arrived on the hellship, the Neptune, with his wife Elizabeth, part of the Second Fleet, in New South Wales in 1790. 

Unlike the First Fleet which arrived in Sydney with a mortality rate of 5.4 per cent and which had largely been organised and administered by Arthur Phillip, the Second Fleet had been contracted out to a former old slave-trading company named: Camden, Calvert and King.

The Second Fleet became known as "The Death Fleet" as there was a 40 per cent mortality within six months of arrival in Sydney.  The words of the First Fleet’s Chaplain, Reverend Richard Johnson, described the scene of the Neptune's Sydney arrival:

“I beheld a sight truly shocking to the feelings of humanity, a great number of them laying, some half, others nearly quite naked, without either bed or bedding, unable to turn or help themselves.

“Spoke to them as I passed along, but the smell was so offensive that I could scarcely bear it…. The landing of these people was truly affecting and shocking; great numbers were not able to walk, nor to move hand or foot; such were slung over the ship side in the same manner as they would a cask, a box, or anything of that nature.

“Upon their being brought up to the open air some fainted, some died upon deck, and others in the boat before they reached the shore. Some creeped upon their hands and knees, and some were carried upon the backs of others.”

Fighting Duels

Before the Neptune, the "worst ship in the worst of Australian fleets" had even departed Plymouth, John Macarthur became embroiled in various disputes. One of these disputes was his fighting a duel with Captain Gilbert, the Master of the Neptune. The pair met at the Fountain Tavern, Plymouth Docks and fought a bloodless duel. 

Two protagonists clash gun before three witnesses

It must be said in Macarthur's defence that the Neptune would become famous as a hellish death ship and he was travelling in cramped conditions with his pregnant wife and young child, to the other side of the world. 

Soon afterwards, Macarthur fought another duel with Captain Gilbert's successor, after which, Macarthur transferred his family to another ship, the Scarborough.

In NSW, Macarthur was appointed paymaster and Inspector of Government Works and Francis Grose granted Macarthur large areas of land, including the land on which Macarthur and his wife established Elizabeth Farm at Parramatta.

Elizabeth Farm, Rosehill, NSW, built 1793

The Great Perturbator

But Macarthur was developing a reputation as being outspoken and argumentative.

Macarthur was challenged to another duel, this time by surgeon and landholder, William Balmain, in February 1796. 

Balmain called Macarthur a, "base rascal and an atrocious liar and villain", after Macarthur had become incensed when Balmain had given advice in his role as a magistrate, to John Baughan, whose house had been wrecked by soldiers of Macarthur's company of the New South Wales Corps.

Then things got worse when Macarthur became involved in a dispute with the Judge-Advocate, Richard Atkins, who Macarthur declared "a public cheater living in the most boundless dissipation". For various reasons, Governor Hunter passed over Macarthur's complaints and sided with Atkins. 

Captain John Hunter, Governor of New South Wales, 1801. State Library of New South Wales

So, Macarthur became involved in a campaign alleging that Governor John Hunter’s administration (1795-1800) was ineffective and trafficking in rum. Which led to Governor Hunter being recalled to England to defend these charges and his reputation.

After 1796 Macarthur, known as "the great perturbator", continued to be at the centre of complaints. Or in the words of Governor King "sowing discord and strife". 

In 1801, Macarthur tried to organise a social boycott of Governor King, but Colonel Patterson refused to boycott the governor, which resulted in Paterson challenging Macarthur to a duel in which Paterson was severely wounded in the shoulder.

Rum Rebellion

In 1808 Macarthur was a lead agitator in the Rum Rebellion, which led to the NSW Corps, led by Major George Johnston, overthrowing Governor Bligh in a military coup on 26 January. Macarthur served as Colonial-Secretary in the rebel administration, until he was removed by Governor Macquarie.

The arrest of Governor Bligh, 1808, artist unknown, watercolour drawing, Attached to the left hand wall in the image is a sheet with text, "O what can the matter be", Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

Macarthur who is often remembered as a pioneer of the Australian wool industry, along with his indomitable wife Elizabeth, was a complex character. He is described as having a magnetic personality and a sense of his superiority. He could be unscrupulous and yet, undoubtedly, he possessed talent and drive. Sometimes too much drive, which became mania. 

Elizabeth Macarthur (1766-1850) State Library of NSW

John Macarthur was confined in this room as he became more mentally ill

In the end, Macarthur went mad. He became "so wild and incoherent" and was thought to be "completely deranged" as he experienced paranoid delusions involving his sons. 

John Macarthur died in April 1834, aged 65. He buried at Camden Park.

Books To read


Bedlam at Botany Bay, by Dr James Dunk - a book about mental illness in the early NSW colony.

The Timeless Land, Eleanor Dark - historical fiction about the European settlement and exploration of Australia.