The Reader Can Perform The Experiment With That.) It Will Be Noticed That A Clear View Into The Port, Except From A Particular Angle, Is Blocked By The Land On The Eastern Side (Point Nepean) Overlapping The Tongue Of Land Just Inside The Port On The Western Side (Shortland's Bluff).

Not until a vessel stands fairly close and opposite to the entrance, so that the two lighthouses on the western side, at Queenscliff, "open out," can the passage be discerned.* (* Ferguson, Sailing Directions for Port Phillip, 1854 - he was harbour-master at the time - says (page 9):

"Vessels having passed Cape Schanck should keep a good offing in running down towards the entrance until they open out the lighthouses, WHICH ARE NOT SEEN BEFORE BEARING NORTH 1/2 EAST OWING TO THE HIGH LAND OF POINT NEPEAN INTERVENING." Findley, Navigation of the South Pacific Ocean, 1863, has a remark about the approach to the port from the west: "In approaching Port Phillip from the westward, the entrance cannot be distinguished until Nepean Point, the eastern point, bears north-north-east, when Shortland's Bluff, on which the lighthouses are erected, opens out, and a view of the estuary is obtained." A Treatise on the Navigation of Port Phillip, by Captain Evans (a pilot of thirty-six years' experience), has also been consulted.) Indeed, a pilot of much experience has assured the writer that ships, whose captains know the port, are sometimes seen "dodging about" (the phrase is the pilot's) looking for the entrance. Yet it may be allowed that if Le Geographe had sailed close in, with the shore on her starboard quarter, and the coast had been examined with care, she would hardly have missed the port; and, her special business being exploration, she certainly ought not to have missed it.* (* In Appendix B, at the end of this chapter, are given quotations from the journals of Murray and Flinders, in which they record how they first saw the port.)

But although Baudin said he had seen nothing "to interest," both Peron and Freycinet, in their volumes - published years later, after they had learnt of the discovery of Port Phillip by Lieutenant John Murray in January 1802 - stated that it was seen from Le Geographe on March 30. Peron wrote that shortly after daybreak, the ship being in the curve of the coast called Baie Talleyrand on the Terre Napoleon maps - that is, between Cape Schanck on the eastern side of Port Phillip heads, and Cape Roadknight on the western side - the port was seen and its contours were distinguished from the masthead.* (* The matter is sufficiently important to justify the quotation of the passages in which Peron and Freycinet recorded the alleged observation, and these are given at length in Appendix A to this chapter.) Peron did not say that he saw it himself. He merely recorded that it was seen. Freycinet did not see it himself either. He was at this time an officer on Le Naturaliste, and was not on the Terre Napoleon coasts at all until the following year, when he penetrated St. Vincent's and Spencer's Gulfs.

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