Jean Fornasiero, Peter Monteath and John West-Sooby - Encountering Terra Australis
Jean Fornasiero, Peter Monteath and John West-Sooby,
Encountering Terra Australis:
The Australian Voyages of Nicolas Baudin and Matthew Flinders
Kent Town, SA:
xii + 411 pp. Hardback 1 86254 625 8
Since this is a book about encounter and observation, it is appropriate to begin by noting its superb physical appearance and comfortable ‘feel’. This is a volume that belongs in the smart bookcase in your sitting room, not among the paperbacks on the machined planks of your office. It is profusely illustrated with contemporary maps and prints which almost form a parallel text. One of the few presentational lacunae is the absence of a convenient list of its excellent colour pictures. The main part of the text interweaves two voyages of exploration around the Australian coastline between 1801 and 1803, one by the Englishman Flinders and the other by the Frenchman Baudin. Flinders won the historical battle of memory, publishing an influential memoir and even fixing a name upon the continent which he had circumnavigated. By contrast, Baudin’s narrative has to be reconstructed from fragments. Part I of Encountering Terra Australis brings together extracts from their two accounts, Baudin’s in translation, and those from Flinders with some modernisation of spelling. Part II offers five reflections on the theme ‘Legacies’, looking at the role of the two expeditions in shaping our image of