Hidden Hunter links with famed British explorer Flinders

The famed British explorer who put Australia on the map, literally, is being reburied today, July 13, on the other side of the world, in England.

So, it's a timely reminder that more than 100 landmarks are named after him in Australia, including a Melbourne railway station, prominent mountain ranges and Flinders Island in Bass Strait. Often, many places just commemorate his name or mark coastal features where Flinders sailed past on his voyages. There are statues galore from Sydney to Port Lincoln in SA honouring Flinders (often with his sea-going black cat, Trim).

And yet, everyone seems to forget the maritime links the Hunter has with this cartographer extraordinaire, whose life was tragically cut short, aged only 40. For not one, but two craft closely associated with Flinders were wrecked at the mouth of Newcastle harbour, and mostly forgotten.

Today's yarn concerns that "unknown" link, but more about that shortly.

The remains of legendary navigator Flinders (1774-1814) are being laid to rest under flagstones inside a church in the English village of Donington, Lincolnshire, where he was born. The resting place of the scientist/hydrographer was miraculously identified among thousands of graves being exhumed in January 2019 by a lead plate on his coffin.

Flinders was long thought lost when his headstone was removed from a graveyard in the 1840s, disappearing with more than 40,000 other graves under London's Euston station. About 1000 archaeologists were involved in moving graves to accommodate the UK's latest multibillion-dollar high-speed rail project HS2. More than 40,00 bodies had to be unearthed. The pandemic put reburials on hold for more than five years.

But why is Flinders so famous? Well, the adventurous surveyor led the first circumnavigation of Australia (in 1802-03), when Newcastle was a penal colony and the whole continent was called by the Dutch name of 'New Holland' or Terra Australis.

Earlier, Flinders was also the first person to map the island of Tasmania (with George Bass) and later is credited with being the first to promote the name "Australia", arguing for its official adoption, which came about in 1817 soon after his death. (The word was derived from the Latin 'australis', meaning south (or Great South Land). A Spaniard called Quiros had even recorded the name 'Austrialia' on a calendar in 1606, long before Dutchman Abel Tasman coined the term 'New Holland' in 1643.)

But nothing came easy for Flinders. The colonial era of exploration was a race against the clock. After all, it was the impudent French, not the English, who finally published the first chart of the Australian coastline in 1811. Flinders was furious to learn rival French explorers had named an entire stretch of the southern Australian coastline as Napoleon Land (Terre Napoleon). An initial 1807 first volume of French discoveries had claimed a stretch of Aussie coastline discovered and charted by Flinders was French! By then, Flinders had been detained by the French in Mauritius as a suspected spy. He was kept there for seven years until 1810.

He'd also been married in England in 1801 just before he left for Australia again, so was separated from his wife for nine years. In ill-health, Flinders finally returned to England determined to publish his (now classic) book on his exploration (with meticulous charts). But the day after he received the first proofs from his publisher, he died. Flinders had charted almost the whole continent. Some of his maps are so accurate they are still in use. Newcastle historian Suzanne Martin was the first to recently alert me to Flinders' reburial, singing his praises for his outstanding nautical achievements.

Now, let's return to Newcastle Harbour and its intriguing links with the intrepid mariner. In 1798, Flinders went with the schooner Francis to salvage cargo from a shipwreck on Furneaux Island off Tasmania. The same 40-ton vessel is then believed to have ended up wrecked on Newcastle Harbour's once notorious Oyster Bank in early 1805.

Meanwhile, NSW colonial Governor Hunter, impressed by early voyages of Bass and Flinders, dispatched them in the 25-ton sloop Norfolk to sail around Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) in 1798-99 to establish if it truly was an island. It was.

And that's where the Norfolk becomes relevant to Newcastle maritime history. Not long after, the revamped longboat was hijacked on the Hawkesbury River by escaped convicts and sailed north. The felons, however, miscalculated the ferocity of ocean storms. The Norfolk went aground near the start of the present northern breakwater in 1800 with the convicts fleeing. The site is still marked on Stockton maps as Pirate Point. On January 26, 1999, Stockton residents had a special plaque attached to a foreshore rock there to remember the loss of the Norfolk.

Enter here another adventurer, Hobart sailor Bern Cuthbertson. Just months before, he had re-enacted the epic circumnavigation of Van Diemen's Land in his own Norfolk, a 10.3 metre replica built of Huon pine. Cuthbertson attended the Stockton ceremony but didn't bring his beloved replica. He decided it was far too risky to bring the vessel up to such a dangerous, exposed position at the Hunter River mouth in case history repeated itself.

It's no use looking today for timbers from the original Norfolk. Stockton locals say that, due to harbour dredging in the 1960s, up to nine metres of shoreline was lost before rock dumping stabilised the waterfront there.

And here's another hidden Hunter link with Flinders. Trailblazing sailor Peter Hibbs was the sailing master on the Norfolk when Bass and Flinders circumnavigated Tasmania in 1778-79. He once helped build the sloop while on Norfolk Island using timbers salvaged from the flagship HMS Sirius wrecked there. Hibbs is buried near Wisemans Ferry, on the Hawkesbury River.

Just out of interest, I noticed that a 49 metre former Royal Australian Navy ship was being refitted up Yamba way six months ago after being converted into a private yacht in recent years. Decommissioned by the RAN in 1998, the vessel was built in Victoria in 1973 as a hydrographic survey ship used to carry out work off northern Australia and New Guinea.

Her name then was HMAS Flinders.