Google Earth Community: Matthew Flinders

The Voyages of Captain Matthew Flinders in Australia, including its circumnavigation.

Last updated 4th of February 2008.

NOTE: this should be viewed as a Google Earth tour - the results in Google maps are disappointing as all the placemarks are placed in alphabetical order rather than date order as per the kmz file.

Portrait of Matthew Flinders, aged 27

This kmz file contains a tour of most of the Voyages in and around Australia by the explorer Captain Matthew Flinders R.N. Matthew Flinders was the explorer who literally put Australia on the map. In his voyages between 1795 and 1803 he managed to create the first complete map of the outline of the whole Australian continent. He was also the major force behind choosing the name "Australia" for the entire continent.

This chart was published in 1804 a year after Flinders circumnavigated Australia.
The continent's true shape was shown for the first time.

Although virtually unknown in Britain, Flinders is lauded in Australia with a huge number of statues, streets, islands, Universities, schools, mountain ranges and other monuments named after him. There is even a statue to his ships cat "Trim" in Sydney.

These journeys include the following (in separate folders):

Flinders and Bass' voyage to the Illawarra and Port Hacking in the Tom Thumb II
The circumnavigation of Tasmania in the Norfolk, with George Bass.
The circumnavigation of Australia - part 1 - The South Coast of Australia to Port Jackson.
The circumnavigation of Australia - part 2 - Queensland, Gulf of Carpenteria, top of Arnhem land. Flinders had to abandon the survey due to The Investigator being found rotten. The circumnavigation was completed back to Port Jackson.
The disasterous return to England - shipwrecked in the Coral sea, desperate return to Sydney, rescue of the survivors, imprisoned in Maritius for 7 years, home again in England, his untimely death at age 40.
The Flinders Legacy - a tour of various monuments and other places dedicated to the legacy of Captain Flinders

The contents of this file do NOT attempt to create a perfect day by day tour of his journeys. Important discoveries are Placemarked - and each Placemark has an extract from Flinder's journals regarding that particular place, discovery or event.

You can Play the entire tour of all of the voyages - or just play the one in which you're interested. You can switch off folders such that all the placemarks for that voyage disappear. Each voyages' set of placemarks are colour coded.

There is also a folder at the bottom called Image Overlays. In that folder you can choose to view the portrait of Flinder superimposed on Australia; or his famous map which showed the outline of Australia - also superimposed over Australia - and it is an AMAZINGLY good fit. (Please don't try and zoom in on the map - it's a relatively low resolution image and you won't see much.)

This work is non-commercial and may be distributed FREE for educational purposes. No attempt should be made to modify it or bundle it for sale. It is provided on an as-is basis. I have attempted to be as accurate as possible - and if you do find errors or points of dispute over dates or places - please contact me as per below such that they can be corrected.

All journal entries and their images have been extracted or linked from the public domain texts at Project Gutenberg Australia. They are extracted under the Project Gutenberg Australia Licence.

The image overlay of Flinders over Australia is from this public domain image at Wikipedia. To read all of the journals, here are the links:
A Voyage to Terra Australis, Volume 1
A Voyage to Terra Australis, Volume 2

Other resources which might be of some interest are:

The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders R.N., a biography of Flinders by Ernest Scott, 1914
The Flinders Collection an online resource at the State Library of New South Wales.
The Flinders Papers, an online archive at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwhich, UK
Matthew Flinders Maps, downloadable high resolution images of the maps of Matthew Flinders, from The State Library of South Australia
A hi-res zoomable version of Flinders' map of Australia, from the State Library of Victoria
A replica of the Tom Thumb II at the Sydney Heritage Fleet site.

This work has been provided by Stephen Nicholson, Sydney, Australia. Please feel free to e-mail me ogbo@optushome.com.au.

Change History:

31 Aug 2007 - First Alpha release v0.1
31 Aug 2007 - Fixed Red Point Dating errors with Tom Thumb II voyage
31 Aug 2007 - Fixed formatting problems in report to Flinders re the rotting state of the ship
31 Aug 2007 - Added extra commentary from Flinder re 'threading the needle' when in the Great Barrier Reef
6 Sep 2007 - Alterations based on feedback: Fixed default folder structure (everything off), colour-coded all Placemarks to indicate the different voyages. Also fixed some views to be less confusing.
6 Sep 2007 - Release v0.2 to GE Community
6 Sep 2007 - Tidied up Placemark description for the death of Flinders - added reference to the biographical excerpt.
8 Sep 2007 - Complete re-jig of kml to remove redundant Style copies and create new Balloon styles.
9 Sep 2007 - Added new Flinders Legacy folder with Placemarks of common places named after Flinders.
10 Sep 2007 - More Flinders Legacy places added. Moved Donington placemark to this folder. Added more images and links, and tidied up formatting in Balloons.
15 Sep 2007 - Hyperlinked many explorers names in the Flinders Legacy placemark descriptions. Release version 0.3
6 Nov 2007 - Fixed broken link to main image of Flinders. Fixed coordinates of Thirsty Sound. Release version 0.4
4 Feb 2008 - Changed name of placemark for D'Entercasteaux Channel to Frederick Henry Bay which is more accurate - thanks to David "Ockker" Mitchell. Moved all images into self-contained folder so as not be to reliant on availability of sites on the net. Release version 0.5

Edited by Stephen_Nicholson (02/03/08 07:44 PM)