Day 2

Our night next to the river was peaceful – except for me snoring apparently (but I can hardly believe that). In the morning Spikey and I had a long walk through this rather beautiful park which chases a series of lakes and billabongs along the Georges River. Matthew Flinders and his young mate George Bass first charted these upper reaches of the river for the whitefellas in about 1795. They were in their tiny, 8’ long boat, the Tom Thumb in which they also mapped a fair chunk of the NSW South Coast.  Then a bit later, in a bigger boat, they crossed a big and nasty body of water to reach Tasmania, naming that Straight after young George. They were 21 years old and full of pluck but probably lacked the frontal lobes to understand the risks they were taking. But then, that’s how things get done. Eventually the pushy Flinders talked the Government into giving him a ship to circumnavigate and chart the continent. The story is pretty well known. 

Most of his associates agreed that Flinders was a certified pain in the arse. He was haughty, arrogant and a bit of a tyrant. He tried this “You don’t know who I am” stuff on the commandant of the jail he found himself in on the Island of Madagascar. The Frenchman was unimpressed and so continued to keep him locked up – for seven years. The general view is that if Mathew had eaten a bit of humble pie he could’ve been out in a year. 

When he eventually got home, with his health shattered, he set about putting together his brilliant and epic work, “A Voyage to Terra Australis”. He had carefully charted almost every bay and point around the continent, only to discover that the log tables with which he had been provided were wrong, and as a result, all of his work had to be recalculated. He did this with his long-suffering wife, Ann. She was supposed to have been on the great voyage with him but the Admiralty got wind of it and had her removed from the Investigator just hours before the ship sailed. 

There were more difficulties in getting the book completed and the story goes that as the first copy was laid on Mathew’s barely rising chest, Ann folded his hands over the magnus opus and he promptly kicked the bucket. It was Mathew of course who insisted that the land known variously as New South Wales, New Holland and Terra Australis Incognita should henceforth be known as Australia. He convinced Governor Lachlan Macquarie and that was that.

Now we are about to make prawn pasta in the Lakeview Caravan park, Anna having completed a stirling effort over many mountains to get us well and truly launched on our quest. Like lots of parks these days, the money seems to be in permanent residents rather than travellers like us. Most of the ladies and gentlemen here have mobility scooters, complete with Australian flags. I have the impression that the NDS might be the biggest contributor to the local economy. The population compared to our last stop, is older, whiter and slower growing than the NSW average. Sixty Two percent of people here report that both their parents were born in Australia.