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The Adventures of Captain Cook: The "Aussie" Founder

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Australia

After Cook's voyage that lead to the discovery of Australia, Matthew Flinders (c1774-1814) completed the first circumnavigation of Australia in the Investigator in 1801–03.

On his return voyage to England, he was arrested and detained by the French at Mauritius until 1810. This prevented him from publishing his detailed charts of Australia before the French, who issued Louis de Freycinet’s first complete map of Australia in 1811.

Back in London, Flinders set about preparing his account of the voyage for publication. A Voyage to Terra Australis was published by G & W Nicol on 18 July 1814, the day before his death.

Flinders’ charts of Australia were considered so accurate that they were used for over a century by the British Admiralty.

Click below to to download a zoomable PDF of this map (1.68MB)

The "Aussie" Founder

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"Let's call this Young Nick's Head."

Sailing across uncharted seas in October 1769, Captain Cook offered a reward of rum to the man who first sighted land, and promised that ‘that part of the coast of the said land should be named after him’. The sighting was made by the surgeon’s boy, 12-year-old Nicholas Young. He had probably come aboard the ship in the retinue of the botanist, Joseph Banks. It is not recorded if Young Nick was given the rum, but the headland below the high hills which he first saw from the masthead was named Young Nicks Head after him.