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Updated: June 26, 2025
In the summer months, that is, December, January, February, and sometimes March, east winds are prevalent through Bass Strait and round Cape Leeuwin; but owing to a vast amount of ice drifting up from the Antarctic, this was all changed now and emphasized with much bad weather, so much so that I considered it impracticable to pursue the course farther.
I left Melbourne after ten days' stay there. We lay at Adelaide two days, and got to Albany in a howling gale of wind. Leaving it we got a worse snorter round Cape Leeuwin. But after that things improved till we caught the south-west monsoon, which blew half a gale, and was like the breath of a furnace. We reached Colombo, and I had no money to spend.
The deck is fresh scraped as well as the mizen-mast, and the white paint-pot has been used freely. 9th May. We are now in Australian waters, sailing along under the lee of Cape Leeuwin, though the land is not yet in sight. Australian birds are flying about our ship, unlike any we have yet seen. We beat up against the wind which is blowing off the land, our yards slewed right round.
My intention was now to sail around Cape Leeuwin direct for Mauritius on my way home, and so I coasted along toward Bass Strait in that direction. There was little to report on this part of the voyage, except changeable winds, "busters," and rough seas. The 12th of December, however, was an exceptional day, with a fine coast wind, northeast.
Through calms and wind they had much difficulty in doubling Cape Leeuwin, and on the 10th of January, 1802, they sighted the southern coast of Van Dieman's Land, and devoted some time to the examination of that island, finding many discrepancies in the chart of D'Entrecasteaux.
Therefore, instead of thrashing round cold and stormy Cape Leeuwin, I decided to spend a pleasanter and more profitable time in Tasmania, waiting for the season for favorable winds through Torres Strait, by way of the Great Barrier Reef, the route I finally decided on.
If one looks at the west coast of Australia one is struck by the large number of Dutch names which are jotted down the coast. There is Hoog Island, Diemen's Bay, Houtman's Abrolhos, De Wit land, and the Archipelago of Nuyts, besides Dirk Hartog's Island and Cape Leeuwin.
But winds and currents should have been considered rather than bare distance; and the simple result of bad seamanship was that Baudin's vessels occupied one hundred and forty-five days on the voyage from Havre to Mauritius, where they stayed to refit, whilst Flinders brought out the Investigator from Spithead the whole way to Cape Leeuwin, where he first made the Australian coast, in one hundred and forty-two days.
There they were met by Captain Flinders, who, on H.M.S. "Investigator," had been exploring the coast between Cape Leeuwin and the great gulfs which he named after Lords St. Vincent and Spencer. Flinders was returning towards Sydney, when, in the long desolate curve of the bay which he named from the incident Encounter Bay, he saw the French ships.
In 1627 the first discovery of the south coast was made by the Gulde Zeepard, and the land then explored, extending from Cape Leeuwin to the Nuyts Archipelago, on the South Australian coast, was named after Peter Nuyts, then on board the ship on his way to Batavia, whence he was sent to Japan as ambassador from Holland.
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