INTRODUCTION.

Terra Australis: The Fifth Continent.—Dampier lands on North-west Coast.—Cook lands at Botany Bay.—Annexes entire Eastern Coast North of 38 deg. S.—Phillip annexes whole of Eastern Coast and part of Southern Coast, including Tasmania.—Fremantle annexes all the rest of the Continent.—Erroneous Impressions of Early Explorers regarding Australia.—Discovery of Bass Strait.—Completion of Coast Map of Australia.—Six Colonies constituted.—Queensland's Natal Day.—Proclamation of Commonwealth.—Inland Exploration.

Without disparagement to the adventurous foreign navigators who for centuries earlier than the British occupation had suspected the existence of "Terra Australis," the "fifth continent" of the globe, and had done their best to discover it, it may be safely contended that the honour of the delineation of the coast-line belongs to Englishmen, the chief of whom were William Dampier and James Cook. In 1688 Dampier, as super-cargo of the "Cygnet," a trading vessel whose crew had turned buccaneers, landed on the north-west coast of Australia in lat. 16 deg. 50 min. S. In the year 1699 he again visited the coast in charge of H.M.S. "Roebuck," landing at Shark Bay, and sailing thence northward to Roebuck Bay.[a] Afterwards Captain James Cook, in voyages which extended until 1777, delineated the eastern coast-line, and opened up the continent to European enterprise and settlement. On 29th April, 1770, Cook, in the little barque "Endeavour," 370 tons burthen, entered Sting-ray Harbour (Botany Bay), remaining there until 6th May, when he sailed northwards, and, not entering Port Jackson, named Port Stephens, "Morton Bay," Bustard Bay, and Keppel Islands, landing at several places for the purpose of obtaining fresh water and making observations. Thus, coasting along for nearly 1,300 miles, on 11th June he narrowly escaped the total loss of his vessel when north of Trinity Bay by striking a coral reef. After enduring great hardships, and jettisoning all surplus gear, the vessel was sailed into the mouth of the Endeavour River, and there careened. During the succeeding two months she was thoroughly repaired. In August the captain set his course again for the north; and on the 23rd of that month, after navigating among the dangerous rocks of the Barrier Reef Passage, he safely reached open water and landed on Possession Island, near Cape York. There he took formal possession, "in right of His Majesty King George III.," of the land he had discovered from lat. 38 deg. S. to lat. 10 deg. 30 min. S. Sailing through Torres Strait, Cook reached the English Channel in the "Endeavour" on 18th June, 1771[b]. It was not until 7th February, 1788, however, that Captain Phillip, as Governor-General of the vast territory then called New South Wales, read to the people whom he had brought to Port Jackson in the first fleet his commission proclaiming British sovereignty over the whole of the eastern coast of Australia and Tasmania, and also over the then unknown southern coast as far west as the 135th degree of E. longitude.[c] On 2nd May, 1829, Captain Fremantle, hoisting the British flag on the south head of the Swan River, took possession of all those parts of Australia not included in the territory of New South Wales.

Thus a new continent was added to the British Empire. It was occupied by only a few score thousand native blacks, and was believed to be uninhabitable by civilised people unless possibly along a strip of land south of the Tropic of Capricorn on the eastern, western, and southern shores of the continent. Of the north-west Dampier had written: "The land is of a dry, sandy soil, destitute of water, unless you make wells, yet producing divers sorts of trees." Cook occasionally found difficulty in getting water unless by sinking in the shore sand; he made no attempt to penetrate the fringe of coast or even to explore its inlets. It was not until 1798 that Flinders and Bass discovered the channel through Bass Strait, and the former's discoveries may be said to have completed the coast map of Australia.

By successive proclamations six colonies were subsequently constituted, the last being that of Queensland on 10th December, 1859. On 1st January, 1901, Queen Victoria's proclamation of the Commonwealth of Australia was formally made at Melbourne, the prescribed place for the sitting of the Parliament until the federal seat of government had been determined. This important step was taken 131 years after Captain Cook had annexed the eastern coast at Possession Island, and 72 years after Captain Fremantle made the possession of the continent as British territory complete by hoisting the flag at Swan River.

The story of Australian land exploration is a long one, and it would, if complete, reveal many a startling tale of privation and death. The earliest exploring expeditions were those of Governor Phillip, in 1789, when he set out from Sydney to discover Broken Bay first, and then explore the Hawkesbury River.[d] At that time the undertaking no doubt seemed great, but to-day Broken Bay may almost be regarded as a suburb of Sydney. In the same year Captain Tench discovered the Nepean River. By the end of the eighteenth century, despite many expeditions, the total of the discoveries were the rivers Hawkesbury, Nepean, Grose, and Hunter, and the fertile Illawarra district to the south of Sydney. In 1813 Blaxland, Lawson, and Wentworth discovered a pass over the Blue Mountains, and opened the way to the interior. Later in the same year, following in their footsteps, George William Evans discovered a river flowing inland, which he named the Macquarie, and that led to the discovery of the Bathurst Plains, and other country beyond the Blue Mountains. John Oxley, who in 1817 penetrated the country until he struck rivers flowing to the south-west, found himself in shallow stagnant swamps, with no indication that the rivers reached the sea. Oxley and Evans made further discoveries to the north-west of Sydney during the next seven years, the principal result being the finding of Liverpool Plains. Cunningham, the botanist, also was in the field of exploration in 1823. In the year 1824 Hume, accompanied by W. H. Hovell, crossed the Murrumbidgee River, and some time afterwards saw the snow-capped mountains of the Australian Alps. In their progress to Port Phillip they discovered the Murray River, and ultimately reached their destination, which proved to be the seashore near the site of Geelong.

In 1828 Captain Charles Sturt discovered the Darling River. In the next year he reached the Murray near its confluence with the Darling; in 1830 he went down the stream by boat, and finally reached the sea at Encounter Bay, east of St. Vincent Gulf. In 1826 Major Lockyer founded King George Sound Settlement; in 1828 Captain Stirling examined the mouth of the Swan River, and was afterwards, in 1831, appointed Lieutenant-Governor at Perth, the settlement established in 1829 by Captain Fremantle. Other explorers traced the country for some distance to the northward, and a settlement, called Port Essington, which had an ephemeral existence, was formed on the northern coast. In 1831 Major Mitchell explored the country north-west from Sydney, and in 1845-6 he traversed the Darling Downs, afterwards penetrating as far north as the Drummond Range. Allan Cunningham had previously, in 1827, discovered the Darling Downs, and in the next year, by locating Cunningham's Gap, he connected the Downs with the Moreton Bay Settlement. A year later he explored the source of the Brisbane River, that being his last expedition.

In 1831 Major Bannister crossed from Perth to King George Sound. In 1836 John Batman landed at Port Phillip, and permanently settled there. The same year Adelaide was founded by Captain Sir John Hindmarsh, the first Governor of South Australia. In 1838 E. J. Eyre discovered Lake Hindmarsh on his journey from Port Phillip to Adelaide. Next year George Hamilton travelled overland from Sydney to Melbourne, and Eyre penetrated from the head of Spencer's Gulf to Lake Torrens.

In 1840 Patrick Leslie settled on the Condamine; in the year following Stuart and Sydenham Russell formed Cecil Plains station. In 1842 Stuart Russell discovered the Boyne River, travelling from Moreton Bay to Wide Bay in a boat. In 1844-5 Captain Sturt conducted his Great Central Desert expedition. In the same year Dr. Ludwig Leichhardt started on his first expedition from Jimbour station to Port Essington; and in the next year Sir Thomas Mitchell went on his Barcoo expedition. In 1846 A. C. Gregory entered upon his first expedition in Western Australia. In 1848 Leichhardt set out upon his last journey, from which he never returned. In the same year Kennedy made his fatal venture up the Cape York Peninsula, and A. C. Gregory explored the Gascoigne. Next year J. S. Roe, Surveyor-General of Western Australia, travelled from York to Esperance Bay. In 1852 Hovenden Hely, in charge of a Leichhardt search party, started from Darling Downs. In 1855 Gregory and Baron von Mueller started on an expedition to North Australia in the same search, and discovered Sturt's Creek and the Elsey River.