txiv] 



^^^ 



INVIAH 

 OCEAhl 



AUSTRALIA 



18 (-* *~ N i 



Map 2: Robert Browns collecting places in Australia (see pp. xxi — xxiv) 



their agreement to the Admiralty's instructions to scientific explorers on 

 29 April 1801 (Historical Records of New South Wales 4: 351). 



The chief object of Flinders's voyage was to survey the southern and 

 northern coasts of New Holland or Notasia, as the area is called in 

 William Pinkerton's Modem Geography (1802), and to prove whether 

 this was one continental land mass or 'two, three or more vast islands, 

 intersected by narrow seas' running south from the Gulf of Carpentaria. 

 The Investigator was a damp leaky ship, old, patched and unsound, but 

 the Admiralty could spare nothing better at the time. All members of 

 the crew were carefully picked men, mostly young. Flinders and Brown 

 were but 27 years old, William Westall 19, when the Investigator 

 sailed from England on 18 July 1801; Ferdinand Bauer was 41. On 

 6 December 1801, after stopping at the Cape of Good Hope, they 



