490 THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



" added a number of particulars which had escaped Captain 

 Cook, and will always escape any navigator in a first 

 discovery unless he have the time and means of joining 

 a close examination by boats to what may be seen from 

 the ship." He noticed the famous Kiama " blow-hole," 

 " a deep ragged hole of about twenty-five or thirty 

 feet in diameter, .and on one side of it the sea washed in 

 through a subterranean passage with a most tremendous 

 noise." He discovered the lovely Shoalhaven valley, 

 with " many thousand acres of open ground, whose soil 

 is a rich vegetable mould " ; but he thought, unwisely, 

 that " the difficulties of shipping off the produce must 

 ever remain a bar to its colonization." He entered Jervis 

 Bay, and described it as "a wide open bay of a very 

 unpromising appearance upon first entering it " ; but 

 he found an anchoring place where, he thought, ships 

 " might at most or all times ride in safety." Bateman's 

 Bay he thought ill of ; " there is," he writes, " no shelter 

 except merely from Northerly winds." " Barmouth 

 Creek " (Bega River) he described as " the prettiest little 

 model of a harbour we had ever seen," but the shallow 

 bar made entrance almost impossible. He discovered 

 Twofold Bay, which, he says "Ynay be known by a red 

 point on the South side, of the peculiar bluish hue on a 

 drunkard's nose." " The nautical advantages of the Bay, 

 notwithstanding the anchorage is but small, seem to be 

 superior to any we have been in " ; but, he has to add, 

 " we had the mortification to find that the same sterility 

 we had almost everywhere witnessed upon the coast 

 still attended it." l 



At Point Hicks where he failed to distinguish the 

 " Point " he passed the Southernmost limit of Cook's 

 survey, and began the exploration of unknown coast. 

 Here, comments Flinders, " began the harvest in which 

 Mr. Bass was ambitious to place the first reaping-hook." 



1 Flinders wrote later : " Twofold Bay is not of itself worthy of 

 particular interest ; but as nothing larger than boats can find shelter 

 in any other part of this coast, from Jervis Bay round to Inlet Corner 

 (near Wilson's Promontory) or to Furneaux's Isles, it thereby becomes 

 of importance to whalers and to other ships passing along the coast." 





