TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 445 
subject is liberal. Of late years, a feature of the teaching has been the con- 
necting of the physical features of the continent with those who discovered, 
explored, and named them, and of the towns with their founders and early 
residents. The map has thus become invested with a human interest that 
serves to give an attraction to the acquirement of topographical details which 
it did not formerly possess. This mode of connecting history with geography 
has also been to the benefit of the former. The strongly established subject, 
geography, has helped to place the weak subject, Australian history, on its 
feet. Another effect of adding humanity to geographical nomenclature has 
been to direct the minds of Australian children, and through them of their 
parents, to the early Australian geographers. The value to the nation of these 
intrepid men is rapidly obtaining recognition; and when you add to that 
recognition the result of the giving over of a day annually on which the 
exploits of the explorers and pioneers are made the sole topic of instruction in 
the schools (as is the case in Victoria), you will see that the time is ripe for 
the erection of historical monuments and for the proper appreciation of those 
already erected. 
Of the many men deserving of recognition at the hands of Australians 
three stand out prominently, the navigators, James Cook and Matthew Flinders, 
and the surveyor, Thomas Mitchell. The geographical work of these men was 
of immense importance to Australia. 
There is no record of any visit to the eastern shore of the continent before 
that of Cook, who charted the coast-line for some 2000 miles with an approach 
to accuracy that astonishes the hydrographers of the present day when they 
consider the disadvantages under which he carried it out. 
Among Australian explorers he is easily first in public estimation, some- 
times, indeed, being credited by those whose enthusiasm is greater than their 
historical knowledge with being the discoverer of the island-continent. Public 
admiration has been shown in the memorials erected to him. At Botany Bay, 
where he first landed on the Australian soil, there is a tablet affixed to a rock, 
and also an obelisk. Sydney possesses a fine statue. At Cooktown, Queens- 
land, where the ‘ Endeavour’ was careened at the mouth of a river that bears its 
name, is another obelisk, and a tree is still reverently preserved as that to 
which the ship was tied. An admirer at Bendigo, the ‘Quartzopolis’ of 
Victoria, has placed a statue of the great navigator in immediate proximity to 
the principal Anglican church. And, soon, the St. Kilda Esplanade, Victoria, 
will be graced by a replica of the fine statue at Whitby, Yorkshire. 
Next to Cook comes Captain Matthew Flinders, who did a greater amount 
of surveying along the coast of Australia than any other man. In 1792 he 
began it with Bligh in Torres Strait, to which he returned ten years after- 
wards. In 1795 he ventured forth with his intrepid companion, Surgeon Bass, 
in a boat south from Sydney, with the result that he was able to show to the 
Governor, Captain Hunter, a chart that won his admiration. Then, with 
joyful enthusiasm, he went round Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) in the 
sloop ‘ Norfolk,’ and, after that, from Sydney to Moreton Bay. Lastly, in the 
‘Investigator,’ fully accredited by the Admiralty, he began to chart the coast 
of the continent. Starting at Cape Leeuwin, he worked his way patiently along 
the coast to Sydney, and thence to the north-east of Arnhem Land, at which 
point the rotten state of his ship made it imperative for him to bring his survey 
to a close. His charts are so good that subsequent surveyors have had little to 
do in the way of amending them. 
The first of Australia’s memorials to Flinders was erected in 1841 by the 
Governor of Van Diemen’s Land, Sir John Franklin, who had been a midship- 
man on board the ‘Investigator.’ It stands overlooking the fine harbour of 
Port Lincoln, South Australia. The people of that State have not forgotten the 
good example then set them. They have erected a monument on Kangaroo 
Island to commemorate its discovery by Flinders, a column on Mount Lofty for 
a similar purpose, and to the Bluff, in the Encounter Bay district, have affixed 
a plate to recall to mind the meeting of Flinders and the French explorer, 
Baudin. Victorians have recently awakened to a recognition of the debt they owe 
to the man who spent a week in Port Phillip Bay in 1802, and whose excellent 
chart was used by the early explorers of their State. On Discovery Day, 1912, 
