French Explorateurs of New Holland

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On the question of early explorers of Terra Australis Incognita Aussies and Brits are fully across the names of early English explorers who made contact with the great southern continent before 1788, men like William Dampier and James Cook. But what the Anglophone reader with a casual acquaintance of this period of Australian pre-white settlement history would be less likely to know is the surprising number of French explorers who were also in on the act.

The name La Perouse would be familiar to many especially those live in Sydney, the name of a southern Sydney suburb on the coast, named after probably the best known of Gallic explorers to grace Australian shores. Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse, turned up in Botany Bay/Sydney Harbour at precisely the same time as Arthur Phillip’s pioneering First Fleet (a surprise encounter for both parties!) Lapérouse was only on a very long scientific worldwide expedition for France but the aristocratic naval commander was neither the first or the last French navigator to encounter New Holland while sailing the Southwest Pacific❂. 

Another French navigator with an association with pre-European Australia is Louis Antoine de Bougainville. His main claim to fame was in being the first Frenchman to circumnavigate the globe, during the three-year expedition (1766-69) Bougainville got as far the Great Barrier Reef without actually sighting the Queensland coast. A thorny ornamental vine native to South America and the easternmost island of New Guinea is named after Bougainville.

The earliest known European sailors to make contact with Australia were Dutch (Willem Janszoon, Cape York Peninsula, Nth Qld, 1606/Dirk Hartog, Shark Bay, WA, 1616) and Spanish (Luís Van de Torres, Torres Straits, Nth Qld, 1606)◘. On the other hand the first explorer from the Old World to stake a claim to having  discovered the Australian landmass was in fact French, and he did so 100 years before the Dutch and Spanish arrived. Binot Paulmier de Gonneville rounding the Cape of Good Hope in 1504 thought he had found the Great South Land...in truth he had probably sighted the island of Madagascar. Nonetheless his faux discovery of Terre Australe inspired various French expeditions over the following two centuries, such as Bouvet de Lozier (1738), Marion du Fresne and François St Alouarn (separate expeditions, 1772) all looking for something named “Gonneville’s Land”.

The next French expedition to Terra Australis was authorised by First Consul Napoleon in 1800. Nicholas Baudin was chosen to lead the voyage whose primary purpose was to map the coast of New Holland. Consequently, from Baudin’s expedition we get the first printed maps to chart almost the entire continent of Australia. A small squadron of scientists accompanied the expedition and collected over 2,500 new specimens of flora and fauna. Unfortunately Baudin himself didn’t make it back to France, dying on the voyage while in Mauritius, a fate that befell most of the French explorers who visited New Holland in this era.

Baudin expedition

Footnote: French intentions ஜஜ ஜஜ Speculation has long lingered about whether the French at any point in their explorations of the South Pacific eyed off New Holland as a potential colony. Certainly, after the foundation of the Sydney settlement, the British harboured concerns about French (and Napoleonic) designs on what was still a new, embryonic and relatively feeble Pacific outpost. This sense of disquiet was not entirely without foundation as zoologist on the Baudin expedition, François Peron, was on a secret mission, spying on the British colony to determine its strength in the event of a French invasion of Sydney town. What seems unlikely however is that France was serious about following up any claims tentatively made on New Holland, it being far too preoccupied with revolution at home and Napoleon’s wars with the European powers to embark on a colonising drive at this time.

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❂ Lapérouse’s mysterious disappearance after leaving Botany Bay prompted the French government in 1791 to send an expedition led by Bruni d’Entrecasteaux to find him. D’Entrecasteaux combed the coast from modern-day West Australia to Van Diemen’s Land, finding no trace of the lost sailor but managing to name half-a-dozen geographical features in New Holland after himself

◘  theories suggesting that Portuguese explorers, especially Mendonça, visited Australia prior to the 17th century have not been supported by conclusive evidence