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Map Matters 1 www.australiaonthemap.org.au I s s u e Map Matters 1 Issue 24 August 2014 Inside this issue Welcome to the Autumn-Winter 2014 edition of Map Matters, the newsletter of the Australia on the Map Division of the Australasian Contents Hydrographic Society. News ................................................................ ................................ ......................................................................................................... 1 Publishing Texts by Rupert Dear Readers, Old Chinese Coins found Putting Australia on the Map This issue is a combined autumn/winter issue. Apologies for this, Fate of the Vergulde Draeck but I've still been suffering various computer problems, in spite of Survivors having bought a new PC. I'll save you the sorry saga, suffice it to say that at the beginning of winter I was about three months Hydrographers v Historians – the truth behind with various projects, mostly due to the lack of a about Point Hicks functioning PC. Lack of contributions was the other reason. But, now we have One Fine Day In gathered together some material, and I hope you will find it of Encounter Bay interest. Individual events versus Trevor Lipscombe, now an overseas member, seems to have become a regular contributor, slow developments , and for which we thank him. Our Secretary, Peter Reynders has also been doing his best. And the arrival of a possible we even have a story from the hand of Rupert Gerritsen which Peter sent me. pre-first fleet Please note that we are always open to material from new contributors. If you have any contributions or suggestions for Map Matters, you can email them to me at the address at Flinders 2014 the bottom of this newsletter. A Window on Australia And last but not least, AOTM is now on facebook: http://on.fb.me/1pbrjpQ. Marianne Pietersen AOTM Monthly Mtgs Contacts ................................................................Editor ................................................................................................................................. 16 News Publishing of texts by Rupert Gerritsen An AOTM project to publish a series of fourteen stories by the late Rupert Gerritsen, our former AOTM Chair, in a small book is likely to get traction. The journalistic ''easy read'' stories were written in the lead up to the 2006 ''Australia on the map 1606-2006'' commemorations, to help promote the commemorative events and increase awareness of the individual early explorer arrivals. Rupert Gerritsen Some of them did feature in the media then. The Netherlands Embassy in Australia has indicated that they would subsidise the production of the publication, with AHS likely to cover the balance. Trevor Lipscombe has already carried out a preliminary edit. The AOTM Executive Committee has carriage of the project. Peter Reynders Secretary A listing of publications by Rupert is available on his website, http://rupertgerritsen.tripod.com Old Chinese Coins found in Elcho Island Trevor Lipscombe drew our attention to an ABC Online report (10 August) which stated that: A coin hundreds of years old was found in July on a remote island off the Northern Territory coastline by a group of heritage enthusiasts. This may be the first evidence of contact in the 1700s between Aboriginal people and traders in China, The brass coin has been identified as coming from the Qing Dynasty and was minted between 1736 and 1795. To see the ABC article: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-10/old-chinese-coin-found-in-arnhem- land/5660382. Peter Reynders commented: It is my view that finding a coin is not evidence that the people from that country were at the finding place closely after the date the coin was made. It could have been placed there yesterday. When a VOC coin was found on Bondi beach- it had been lost by somebody there, recently. But Makassans were known to have traded with the Chinese in trepang (see also our landings list) , indeed that's what the article states too. That trading will have involved them getting their hands on Chinese coins. They, the Makassans, are known to have been in N Australia in the 17th or 18th century to harvest the trepang. The article does not refer to evidence about Chinese people being here then, or for them trading directly with Aborigines, even though they vaguely suggest this. Putting 'Australia' on the Map Professor Philip Clarke of Melbourne University drew my attention to the website, The Conversation, where an article by him and Jacqueline Clarke of the University of Adelaide shows use of the word "Australia" on maps predating Flinders. Gemma Frisius’s truncated cordiform world map. This map is from a 1545 Latin edition of Cosmographia. An identical map was published in the French edition of 1544. From P Clarke personal collection. The article shows maps by Frisius and Mercator. In the above Frisius map the word 'Australia' is used as denoting "southern latitudes", circled on the left. In the Mercator map below the phrase “climata australia” is on the top right hand corner. Enlargements of these maps can be seen on the internet. The Conversation website provides links. Mercator’s 1538 World Map on Double Cordiform Projection The word 'Australia' also appears in a rare book on astronomy by Cyriaco Jacob zum Barth published in Frankfurt-am-Main in 1545, and on a map by Hendrick Doncker from the end of the 16th century. As the article acknowledges, Flinders was the first to place the name Australia on the charted Island-Continent. And the 16th century maps put that word on theoretical, unknown and invented land, on a fairytale in other words. So the word was not placed on the same land. There is no continuum between the theoretical southland and Australia, as after Tasman our continent was agreed NOT to be that southland. It can be argued to have been a continuum between the theoretical southland and Antarctica, because that continent is big (-ger), includes the south pole and is more south than other continents, as the theoretical southland did. (South America also reaches further south than Australia.). Peter Reynders Marianne Pietersen For more detail see https://theconversation.com/putting-australia-on-the-map-29816 New Light on the Fate of the Vergulde Draeck Survivors Robert Sheppard, Archaeologist and Heritage Consultant and WA Museum Associate will present a discussion about new evidence of what happened to the 68 missing survivors of the Vergulde Draeck (1656), on Friday 12 September, 6pm, at the WA Maritime Museum, Fremantle. Bookings before Wednesday 10 September, by sending an email to [email protected], or call 1300 134 081. http://museum.wa.gov.au/museums/maritime/pluto-s-realm-new-light-on-fate-vergulde-draeck-1656- survivors Hydrographers v Historians – the truth about Point Hicks Controversy has long surrounded the whereabouts of Lt. James Cook’s Point Hicks, his first named feature on the coasts of Australia.1 On today’s map you will find Point Hicks on the far eastern coast of Victoria. Had you looked at a map of Victoria in 1969, or indeed any time after 1852 (before which it was unnamed by Europeans), the point would have borne the name Cape Everard. In 1970 to commemorate the bicentenary of Cook’s first voyage, the Government of Victoria renamed Cape Everard as Point Hicks. The decision to do so was based on the opinions and lobbying power of a succession of historians who convinced themselves, and first the Commonwealth Government, then later the Victorian Government, that Cape Everard was Cook’s Point Hicks. This decision flew in the face of nearly 200 years of evidence from a succession of hydrographers and land surveyors. Together they clearly demonstrate that Cook certainly did not give the name to the today’s Point Hicks. The reason for this is that Cook’s Point Hicks does not exist anywhere as a topographical feature. What Cook and the crew of Endeavour saw and named was a cloudbank. Even a cursory examination of Cook’s data from his logs, journals and charts reveals that Cook placed his Point Hicks way out to sea to the south west of the Point Hicks of historians’ imagination. The map below by Barker (1933) shows Cook’s plotting of the coast, the modern coastline, and Endeavour’s track with allowance for currents etc. There are other earlier and later attempts to take Cook’s data and, after making various allowances, plot the track of Endeavour on a modern chart - see Fowler (1907), Ingleton (1970) and Hilder (1970), who all come up with very similar results.2 As will be evident from the map, Cook’s actual landfall on real land would have been near today’s Point Hicks. However the point itself would have been below the horizon and he would have seen the hills behind. Cape Everard on the Victorian coast, Barker, 1933 After Cook, George Bass, then Matthew Flinders sailed this coast. They could not find Cook’s Point Hicks and it does not appear on their charts. It seems most likely that they realised Cook’s mistake, as did later navigators, but these men’s reverence for Cook would not allow them to state it publicly. Indeed the first published statement of the error would not appear until 200 years after Cook, by Flinders’ biographer Geoffrey Ingleton in 1970. Lieutenant John Lort Stokes in 1843 came to the same realisation, as did Philip Parker King (grandson of Governor King) in 1880. But again they could not bring themselves to state that Cook had made an error. It is likely that most of these navigators would have had the same experience as Cook and mistaken a cloudbank for land. It is a meteorological phenomenon well known in this area and Flinders records his own experience of it here. Cook and his crew record ‘seeing’ an arc of land from NE to W 1/4 S at 6 a.m., and it was still apparent at 8 a.m.
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