Australian History: Brilliant stories from Australia's past.
Australian histories related to Explorers.
In this final episode of the series we follow Flinders as he attempts his return to England in the hope of acquiring a better ship to more thoroughly complete his valuable explorations around the newly circumnavigated Australian coast. But on the way the Great Barrier Reef gives him one last...
After a quick resupply in Port Jackson Flinders again heads out to undertake the second leg of his circumnavigation. This time they began by traveling north, through the Great Barrier Reef and into the tropical north. This journey would prove to be much more challenging for Flinders and his crew....
This episode we see Bass undertake his speculative business ventures, no longer in the company of Flinders, but his timing meant his returns were not as lucrative as he’d hoped. Flinders set off on the mammoth task of circumnavigating the New Holland-New South Wales. This first leg of his mission...
George Bass and Matthew Flinders undertake an important mapping journey to confirm the existence of what will soon afterwards become known as Bass Strait, a body of water between the mainland of ‘New South Wales’ and the newly recognized island of Van Diemens Land. But afterwards their future aspirations diverge,...
George Bass and Matthew Flinders arrived in New South Wales in September of 1795, with grand plans to “explore more of the country than any of [our] predecessors in the colony”. In part 2 we look at how their plans progressed. As naval men, they had work to do when...
Naval men who arrived in NSW in September 1795, Bass & Flinders were both intent of undertaking exploration and charting sections of New Holland, still largely unknown to the British. They became well known as navigators, explorers and map makers, charting the Australian coasts, and will likely be names known...
We talk about ‘Telegraph Todd’ and the construction of the Overland Telegraph Line, built through the largely unsurveyed and vast centre of Australia. Only one group of British explorers had, to date, survived a trek all the way from the south to the north and returned, but using the information...
Lady Jane Franklin was an unusual woman. In the late 1830s, as the wife of Van Diemen’s Land Governor Sir John Franklin, she took the opportunity to explore the new settlements and wilds of Tasmania, and undertook an overland trek from Melbourne to Sydney, astounding the public with her drive...
Douglas Mawson’s Australasian Antarctic Expedition concluded, and the last of the expeditioners arrived back in Adelaide in February, 1914. A lot had happened, both on the frozen continent and across the world, in the years they had been away. We wrap up the “Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration” in this...
Douglas Mawson’s expedition was well underway, and the teams from the Cape Denison base had returned after completing their various research programs. All except Mawson and his team. They had undertaken the most ambitious and distant trek, and were now overdue. We turn our attention to the trek Mawson, Ninnis...