On May 1 He Had Climbed Station Peak, One Of The You-Yang
Group Of Mountains, And Saw Stretched At His Feet The Rich Werribee
Plains, The Broad Miles Of Fat Pastures Leading Away To Mount Macedon,
And The Green Rolling Lands Beyond Geelong, Opening To The Victorian
Western District.
In May the kangaroo-grass would be high and waving,
full of seed, a wealth of luxuriant herbage, the value of which Flinders,
a country-bred boy, would be quick to appreciate.
On the other side of
the bay he had climbed Arthur's Seat at the back of Dromana, saw behind
him the waters of Westernport which Bass had discovered, and traced the
curve of the coast as far into the blue distance as his eye could
penetrate. He had warrant for saying that the country looked "pleasing
and fertile." But how did Freycinet come to select those words, "un
aspect riant et fertile"? He was not there himself, and, as a matter of
probability, it seems most unlikely that such terms would occur to a
person who was there, either as applicable to the lands near Points
Nepean and Lonsdale, with their bastions of rock and ramparts of sand, or
to the scrubby and broken coast running down to Cape Otway, which, as a
matter of fact, is not fertile, except in little patches, and, even after
half a century of settlement, does not look as if it were. The conclusion
is hardly to be resisted that Freycinet thought he was safe in
appropriating, to describe land seen from seaward, terms which Flinders
had employed to describe land seen inside the port.
Three additional facts strengthen the conviction that Port Phillip was
never seen from Le Geographe, but that the statements of Peron and
Freycinet were made to cover up a piece of negligence in the exploration
of these coasts. The French, on their maps, lavishly bestowed names on
the capes, bays, and other features of the coasts seen by them. More will
be said on this subject in the next chapter. But meanwhile it is
important to notice that they gave no names to the headlands at the
entrance to Port Phillip, which are now known as Point Lonsdale and Point
Nepean. If they saw the entrance on March 30, why did they lose the
opportunity of honouring two more of their distinguished countrymen, as
they had done in naming Cap Richelieu (Schanck), Cap Desaix (Otway), Cap
Montaigne (Nelson), Cap Volney (Moonlight Head), and so many other
features of the coast? It is singular that while they named some capes
that do not exist - as, for instance, Cap Montesquieu, to which there is
no name on modern maps to correspond, and no projection from the coast to
which it can be applicable - they left nameless these sharp and prominent
tongues of rock which form the gateway of Port Phillip. But if they knew
nothing about the port until they learnt of its existence later at
Sydney, and saw no chart of it till an English chart was brought to their
notice, the omission is comprehensible.
Another fact which must not escape notice is that the French charts show
two lines of soundings, one along the inside of the Nepean peninsula, and
a shorter one towards the north. Mud Island is also indicated. How did
they get there? It was not even pretended in the history of the voyage
that Le Geographe went inside the heads. But see how the story grew: (a)
Baudin saw no port; (b) Peron says the port was seen from the masthead;
(c) Freycinet says the entrance was seen; (d) on the charts there are
actually soundings shown inside the harbour. Further consideration will
be given to these soundings in a later chapter.
The reader who has carefully followed the argument so far, will probably
have come to the conclusion that Captain Baudin's statement to Flinders
was perfectly true, and that the assertions of Peron and Freycinet which,
if veracious, would make Le Geographe the second ship that ever saw Port
Phillip - cannot be accepted. One other fact will clinch the case and
place the conclusion beyond doubt.
In 1812 Freycinet published a large folio volume of charts. The sixth
chart in the book is most valuable for our purpose. It is called a "Carte
generale du Detroit de Bass." Its importance lies in the fact that by
means of a dotted line it marks the track of Le Geographe throughout her
course. Now, this track-chart shows clearly that the ship was never, at
any moment, nearer than six or seven miles to Port Phillip heads. On the
greater part of her course across the so-called Baie Talleyrand she was
much farther from the land than that. On no part of her course would it
have been possible for a person at the masthead to see either the
entrance to Port Phillip or any part of the port itself. It shows that
the ship, while steering across from Cape Schanck in the direction of
Cape Otway, diverted a few miles to the north-west, and then abruptly
turned south-west. From any part of this course, the stretch of coast
where Port Phillip heads are would present the appearance of an unbroken
wall of rock, the gap being covered by the overlapping land on the
western side. The sudden north-westerly diversion, and then the sharp
turn south-west, seem to indicate that Baudin thought it well to sail up
to see if there was anything worth examining at the head of the bight,
and concluded that there was not.
There can be no more authoritative opinion on the possibility of doing
what Peron and Freycinet claimed was done, than that of a member of the
Port Phillip pilot service. The pilot steamer is almost incessantly on
duty in what the French chose to call Baie Talleyrand. The pilots know
the ground intimately; they are familiar with every part of the coast;
they see it in all weathers; they observe the entrance under all
conditions of light and atmosphere.
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