King George's Sound being chosen as the place to prepare themselves for the examination of the south coast of Terra Australis, they anchored off Point Possession, on the south side of the entrance to Princess Royal Harbour, previous to wind and water being favourable for entering the harbour to refit and procure wood and fresh water.
Many excursions were made by the naturalist, botanist, and artist, and a new survey of King George's Sound made.
"On the east side of the entrance to Princess Royal Harbour we landed, and found a spot of ground six or eight feet square dug up and trimmed like a garden, and upon it was lying a piece of sheet copper bearing this inscription:—
"'AUGUST 27TH 1800. CHR. DIXON. '—SHIP ELLEGOOD.'"
This answered the finding of the felled trees on Point Possession, also of the disappearance of the bottle left by Captain Vancouver in 1791, containing parchment that Flinders had looked for on landing.
In Flinders' description of the country in the neighbourhood of King
George's Sound he says:—
"The basis stone is granite, which frequently shows itself at the surface in the form of smooth, bare rock; but upon the sea-coast hills and the shores on the south side of the sound and Princess Royal Harbour the granite is generally covered with a crust of calcareous stone, as it is also upon Michaelmas Island. Captain Vancouver mentions having found upon the top of Bald Head branches of coral protruding through the sand, exactly like those seen in the coral beds beneath the surface of the sea—a circumstance which would seem to bespeak this country to have emerged from the ocean at no very distant period of time.
"This curious fact I was desirous to verify, and his description proved to be correct. I found, also, two broken columns of stone, three or four feet high, formed like stumps of trees, and of a thickness superior to the body of a man, but whether this was coral or wood now petrified, or whether they might not have been calcareous rocks worn into that particular form by the weather I cannot determine. Their elevation above the present level of the sea could not have been less than four hundred feet."
On January 4th, 1802, a bottle containing parchment, to inform future visitors of their arrival and departure, was left on the top of Seal Island, and on the morrow they sailed out of King George's Sound to continue the survey eastwards. They anchored on the 28th in Fowler's Bay—the extremity of the then known south coast of Terra Australis.
Off Cape Catastrophe, a cutter, with eight men, was sent on shore in search of an anchorage where water could be procured. Nothing of the boat and crew was again seen but the wreck of the boat showing that it had been stove in by the rocks. After a careful but hopeless search for the men, their pressing need for water caused them to abandon further delay, and they left to examine the opening to the northward.