EARL Y A USTR. I I.I. I \ I'Xl'I.ORA TION. 



105 



of a reported river, which proved a miserable brook. They proceeded south-west past 

 Red Point in safety, but were nearly drowned when making the return voyage in the 

 night. As described in the graphic language of Flinders : " The shade of the cliffs 

 over our heads, and the noise of the surfs breaking at their feet, were the directions 

 by which our course was steered parallel to the coast." While Bass held the sheet of 

 the sail in his hand, 

 occasionally drawing it 

 in a few inches when 

 he saw a more than 

 usually heavy sea com- 

 ing; Flinders, steering 

 with an oar, had to 

 keep the little boat 

 from broaching to ; in 

 his own words, "a 

 single wrong move- 

 ment, or a moment's 

 inattention," would 

 have sent them to 

 the bottom. The boy's 

 duty was baling out 

 the water, which not 

 all their care and 

 dexterity could prevent 



from breaking over their tiny skiff. At a 

 favourable moment they shipped their mast and 

 lay to at U'atta - Mowlcc (Providential Cove), 

 about three or four miles southward of Port 

 Hacking or Dccban. Eight days from setting 

 out, and after a voyage of a most perilous 



character, the Tout Thumb was safely brought to its moorings alongside H.M.S. 

 Reliance in Port Jackson. Near Red Point, Tom Thumb's Lagoon commemorates 

 the voyage, and preserves in its name a memento of this preliminary expedition of the 

 adventurous voyagers, whose future exploits were to surpass anything previously attempted. 



During the following year, while Flinders was occupied with his duties on shipboard, 

 Bass made several excursions into the interior, one such resulting in the survey of the 

 course of the Grose. About this time the Svctncv Grr was wrecked on the Furneaux 

 Islands ; and it was in the September of the same year that Lieutenant John Shortlancl, 

 while returning from a chase after some runaway convicts who had seized a boat with 

 the intention of reaching China discovered the Hunter River, upon the shores of which 

 the settlement of Newcastle was afterwards established. 



On the 3rd of December, 1797, Bass sailed southward in a whale-boat, manned by 

 six m:-n and provisioned for six weeks. In this boat he discovered Twofold Bay, 

 doubled Cape Howe, and found himself on New Year's day of the following year 



13ASS 



