Early Navigators of South Australia
Dutch & Portugese Navigators Discover the West Coast 1616 The first Englishman to sight Australia was the Master of the Leeuwin in 1622. In the same year, 46 English sailors, survivors of the ship The Trial, reached Batavia (Jakarta). They were the first Englishmen to actually land on Australia.
Pieter Nuyts in the Gulde Zeepaard January 1627 Abel Tasman Discovers Tasmania and New Zealand 1642 Tasman then proceeded eastward and discovered the New Zealand coast. He had in fact sailed completely around mainland Australia without sighting the coastline. Tasmania was not officially named after him until 1855.
In 1770 Captain Cook in the Endeavour sailed along the eastern coast claiming the land for the British and naming it New Wales.
James Grant in HMS Lady Nelson 1800 Grant did not land or map the coast of South Australia, but he did name Mt. Gambier after a Lord of the Admiralty (3 December), Mt, Schank after the inventor of the sliding keel, Cape Banks, Cape Northumberland and Portland Bay.
Flinders and Baudin
Flinders in the HMS Investigator, a sloop with 80 souls on board, had sailed eastward mapping the southern coast. After spending 6 days on Kangaroo Island re-supplying, he proceeded on his journey but was surprised to meet the French corvette Le Geographe, under the command of Nicolas Baudin. Baudin had sailed west after exploring the south-east coast of Tasmania.
Captain Pendleton was killed on the 30th September of the same year by the natives of the Island of Toongataboo, one of The Friendly Islands (Tonga).
In 1815, Captain Dillon from Van Diemen's Land, went sealing on Kangaroo Island taking 500 seals. He took on board 7 tons of salt from the lagoons near Nepean Bay. Salt and seal skins were South Australia's first exports.
Captain Goold, master of HMS Dryad, made two voyages to Kangaroo Island from Sydney in 1827 and 1828. Captain Goold also went sealing and whaling at Pt. Lincoln in the Snapper and Jackass.
Captain Collet Barker April 1831
Barker swam across the river with the compass strapped to his head to make an observation from a sandhill. He never returned. It was later discovered that he had been speared by the natives and his body carried out to sea. His name is perpetuated in the town of Mt. Barker and by Barker's Inlet at Port Adelaide.
In 1831, Captain John Hart in the schooner Elizabeth of Launceston, visited Kangaroo Island.
Dirk Hartog in 1616 at Sharks Bay and Houtman at Houtman's Albrolhos in 1619 had sighted the west coast of New Holland.
The first sighting of the South Australian coast was by the Dutch explorer Pieter Nuyts in the Gulde Zeepaard. Sailing along the southern coast from the Leeuwin, he reached an eastern point naming the Islands of St. Francis and St. Peters - off present day Ceduna - now known as Nuyts Archipelago. St. Peters Island is the second largest island of South Australia being 13k long.
Tasman, sent out by the Dutch East India Company in two ships called Heemskerk and Zeehaen, had sailed south of the continent striking the west coast of Tasmania. This he named Van Diemen's Land after the Governor-General of Java (Indonesia) who had sent him on the expedition. At this time it was believed that Van Diemen's Land was the southern tip of The Great South Land.
Lieutenant James Grant was the next known navigator to sail along the southern coast of Australia. The Lady Nelson of 60 tons was the first British ship to be built with a sliding keel.
She also has the distinction of being the first ship to make passage to Sydney through Bass Strait which separates Tasmania from the mainland.
Encounter 8th April 1802
After a gap of 160 years since Tasman's exploration, two different scientific expeditions from Britain and France; countries which were at war with one another, met off the southern coast near a spot Flinders later named Encounter Bay.
Whalers and Sealers on Kangaroo Island
The next recorded mariner in South Australian waters was Captain Pendleton of New York, in the 120 ton brig Union, who spent 4 months on Kangaroo Island on a sealing expedition in 1803. While on Kangaroo Island, he built a small vessel of 35 tons, named Independence. The place where the ship was built has been known since then as American River. He had met the French Captain Baudin off the west Australian coast in January 1803, who had directed him to the island.
Governor Darling stationed at King George's Sound (Albany) in Western Australia, commissioned Barker to proceed to southern Australia in the Isabella to follow up on Sturt's 1829-30 exploration of the Murray. Barker and his first officer John Kent, crossed the Mt. Lofty Ranges and proceeded along the shores of Lake Alexandrina to the Murray Mouth. (See map inset)
In November 1833 he actually landed on the plains of the future city of Adelaide. He was interviewed about his knowledge of the coast and soil by the founders of South Australia in England in 1835 later giving sailing directions to Colonel Light about to leave in the Rapid.