English subtitles for clip: File:Flinders and Baudin's race to map Australia.ogv

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[Music plays]

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(Dr. Martin Woods) The British and
French were the greatest among

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many European nations to establish
footholds in The Pacific

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and East Indies or South
East Asia during the 1700s.

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The two expeditions to New Holland,
the French one under Baudin,

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the other a more modest affair
coordinated by Flinders

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for the British Admiralty
were launched at almost

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identical moments, but
for different purposes.

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For Baudin, New Holland was part
of a much broader scientific

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interest in The Pacific. Flinders
was a more focused brief

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to accurately chart the
coast of New Holland.

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In one sense Matthew Flinders
was the first person

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to chart the coast of Australia.
With time on his hands on Mauritius

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he set about drawing up his charts in
preparation for his ultimate release.

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He drew the first map of
the Australian coast,

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but spent the next six or seven years
on Mauritius, a guest of the French.

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 His cartographer rival Louis de
Freycinet published the first map

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before Flinders could
do anything about it,

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but in one sense neither
Flinders nor Freycinet

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actually charted
the whole coast.

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While they both charted
much of the Southern

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and Eastern parts of Australia
and much more closely

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than had the Dutch, both had
access to the Dutch charts

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of Northern and Western
Australia and made use of

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these to complete the job and rush
the first map of Australia to print.

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It’s long been held that the
British first used the name

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‘Australia’ as a derivation of
‘australis’, the Greek word for

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south when they charted its
coast in the early 1800s.

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Flinders added the name to his
general chart drawn in 1804,

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though it wasn’t officially adopted
by the British until the 1820s.

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But this wasn’t the first time
‘Australia’ appeared on the map.

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About ten years ago The National
Library acquired a rare and rather

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battered looking German book on
astronomy published in 1545,

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about 250 years before the
British ventured the name.

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In it a map of the World
based on Greek cartography,

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shows the southern
continent at the top

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and named it ‘Australia’,
probably just a coincidence.