Australian Explorers

Friday, August 26, 1768. :   James Cook departs Plymouth on the journey during which he sights the east coast of Australia.

In 1768, Lieutenant James Cook was commissioned with the task of observing the transit of Venus across the sun from the vantage point of Tahiti. The transit occurs when the planet Venus passes directly between the Earth and the Sun, and its unlit side can be seen as a small black circle moving across the face of the Sun. Transits of Venus occur in pairs, eight years apart, approximately once every 120 years. This expedition was originally commissioned by the Royal Society of London as a scientific mission. However, when the British Admiralty became aware of Cook’s expedition to the Southern Hemisphere, he was assigned secret orders to find the Great South Land, a ‘Land of great extent’ that was believed to exist in the Southern hemisphere.

Cook’s ship, HM Bark Endeavour, departed England, on 26 August 1768. On board were 71 crew, 12 marines, 11 scientists and their servants, 17 sheep, a small herd of cattle, poultry including four ducks and five chickens, a boar, a sow and her piglets, three cats, Joseph Banks’s greyhounds and one goat. Cook reached Tahiti in time for his crew and scientists to set up their instrumentation necessary to observe and report on the transit, which occurred on 3 June 1769.

After observing the transit of Venus, Cook opened his secret orders in which he was instructed to search for Terra Australis Incognita. It was shortly after observing the transit of Venus that Cook came across New Zealand, which had already been discovered by Abel Tasman in 1642. He spent some months there, charting the coastline. Nearly a year later, he set sail west for New Holland, which he was later to name New South Wales. Although Cook was not the first to discover Australia, as he was preceded by numerous Portuguese and Dutch explorers, he became the first to sight and map the eastern coastline.

Australian Explorers

Wednesday, August 26, 1818. :   Explorers John Oxley and George Evans discover the fertile Liverpool Plains in New South Wales.

John Oxley (1785?-1828) was an English naval officer who, shortly after arriving in Australia in 1802, was made Surveyor-General of the New South Wales colony. George Evans was Deputy Surveyor-General, and went on numerous expeditions, both in his own right and accompanying Oxley.

In 1818, Oxley and Evans set off from Bathurst with 15 men to follow the Macquarie River. The previous year they had encountered many obstacles while attempting to follow the flooded Lachlan River, so this time they were prepared, having taken along boats. However, numerous shallow marshes, thick forests and areas of quicksand forced them to abandon their boats and any hope of making further progress in that direction. Turning east, on 26 August 1818 they climbed a hill and saw before them rich, fertile plains which they named the Liverpool Plains after Lord Liverpool, the British Prime Minister. This countryside is now some of the richest in New South Wales.

Australian Explorers

Monday, August 26, 1867. :   Work resumes on the Burke and Wills memorial project in Ballarat, with the laying of a second foundation stone.

The Burke and Wills expedition was the most expensive and well-equipped exploration venture of the 1800s. Robert O’Hara Burke and William Wills left Melbourne in August 1860 on a journey that was intended to bring fame and prestige to Victoria: being the first to cross Australia from south to north and back again. They set out with preparations, supplies and equipment costing almost 5,000 pounds, to the accolades of thousands of Victorians. However, through a series of miscommunications and poor choices by Burke, who had no exploring experience, the expedition ended with the tragic deaths of both Burke and Wills, as well as that of two other men.

Burke and Wills both died in late June 1861. A rescue party led by Alfred Howitt was despatched from Melbourne around this time, and when the party reached Cooper Creek in September, they found that John King was the only surviving member of the small expedition group of four who made the trek to the Gulf of Carpentaria. King had been cared for by local Aborigines, and although in poor health, he was able to return to Melbourne and eventually explain what had happened before a Commission of Enquiry.

Many communities in Victoria sought to commemorate Burke and Wills in the aftermath of the tragedy. In December 1861, the Councils of Eastern and Western Ballarat met to discuss a memorial. An ornate clock tower to the value of £1000 was proposed by architect Canute Andersen. However, by the end of 1862, only £370 had been raised. The initial foundation stone was laid by Sir Henry Barkly at the corner of Sturt and Lydiard Streets. Unfortunately, council debt forced the suspension of further work and the foundation remained incomplete.

In March 1866, the Western Municipal Council sought to complete the project. On 26 August 1867 a second foundation stone was laid. At the same time, a time capsule was removed, refurbished with new items, then reburied. By 4 November, the monument – not a lavish clock tower, but a fountain – was finished.

The time capsule was recovered 150 years later, still containing several gold and silver coins, other memoranda, and a copy of the ‘Tribune’ newspaper, dated 36 August 1867.

Australian History

Wednesday, August 26, 1835. :   Governor Bourke declares John Batman’s treaty with Aborigines, which enabled the founding of Melbourne, to be invalid.

John Batman was born in Parramatta, Sydney, in 1801. As a native born Australian, Batman was interested in opening up new pastureland and promoting the growth of the colonies. He applied for land in the Westernport Bay area of southern Australia, now Victoria, but was not granted any. In May 1835, he led a syndicate calling themselves the ‘Port Phillip Association’ to explore Port Phillip Bay, looking for suitable sites for a settlement. He claimed to have signed a ‘treaty’ with the Aborigines, giving him free access to almost 250,000 hectares of land.

On 26 August 1835, Governor Bourke declared Batman’s treaties invalid, that he was not legally renting the land, and issued a proclamation warning off him and his syndicate as trespassers on crown land. Despite the attempts at government intervention, the foundling settlement of Melbourne remained, and flourished.

Batman’s place in Australian history is unique for several reasons. He was the only 19th century white to acknowledge that Aborigines owned land. He set out to undertake an annual rental for what was then a reasonable amount of food and goods, rather than buy it from them for a pittance. Further, he is the only native-born Australian to have founded a state capital city.

Australian History

Sunday, August 26, 2001. :   A Norwegian cargo vessel responds to a request for help from Rescue Coordination Centre (RCC) Australia regarding a boatload of illegal immigrants, sparking the infamous Tampa affair.

In 1992, Australia’s Labor Government under Prime Minister Paul Keating established a policy of mandatory detention of unauthorised arrivals, more commonly known as illegal immigrants. Australia remained committed to accepting genuine refugees, but the policy was designed to dissuade those determined to circumvent legal avenues. After John Howard and the Coalition Government gained power in 1996, the issue of illegal immigration gradually gained prominence as the numbers of immigrants seeking asylum illegally by boats increased. It became particularly controversial following the Tampa incident.

The MV Tampa was a Norwegian cargo vessel travelling in international waters of the Sunda Strait off the north Australian coast in 2001. Australia’s Rescue Coordination Centre (RCC) had for some time been aware that a fishing vessel ‘Palapa 1’, carrying over 400 Afghans seeking asylum, was in distress. Under international law, immigrants must be taken to the nearest port for medical attention. The port at Christmas Island was not large enough to receive the Tampa, which meant that the next closest port was Merak in Indonesia; however, the Indonesian authorities did not respond. On 26 August 2001, the MV Tampa heeded a request for assistance from the RCC to rescue the passengers aboard the sinking fishing vessel. After rescuing the refugees, many of the refugees became aggressive and agitated, demanding to be taken to Christmas Island. Captain Arne Rinnan of the Tampa attempted to comply but the ship was refused entry into Australian waters. Instead, the government sent members of the Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) to render the necessary medical assistance.

The incident ultimately led to the establishment of the Pacific Solution, under which asylum seekers were transported to centres in the Pacific Ocean for offshore processing, rather than on the Australian mainland. Detention centres were built in the tiny Pacific nation of Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island, while Australia’s territory of Christmas Island and thousands of other coastal islands were excised from Australia’s migration zone, meaning that asylum seekers who did not reach the Australian mainland could not automatically apply for refugee status. Australia received international condemnation for its refusal to allow entry of the vessel, which was eventually accepted in New Zealand. However, during the remainder of Prime Minister John Howard’s time in office, numbers of illegal boat arrivals did drop dramatically.

World History

Sunday, August 26, 1883. :   The first of four major volcanic explosions occurs on the Indonesian island of Krakatoa.

Krakatoa, or Krakatau, is a volcano near the Indonesian island of Rakata in western Indonesia, in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra. After being inactive for almost 200 years, rumblings were heard from the Krakatoa volcano early in 1883. On 26 August 1883, Krakatoa erupted with an explosion that was heard over 4000 km away. This would be the equivalent of an explosion in Sydney being heard in Perth. Fine ashes from the eruption were carried by upper-level winds as far away as New York City and debris was scattered across the Indian Ocean as far as Madagascar, whilst volcanic dust blown into the upper atmosphere would affect the earth’s weather for several years. More destruction was yet to come (see August 27).