A flippant expose of the country and people who will host the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. This week Senior Correspondent Mike Osborne gets out his compass to discover the failed French efforts to colonise Australia.
With a little more luck and determination much of the western and southern regions of Australia could have been French.
A trip to Perth could have been an international flight and Australians could have been bilingual. Plus the wines and cheeses from the Margaret River region could have been vins and fromages from the Marguerite Riviere.
It’s no accident that about 260 places in Western Australia have French names including the town of Esperance, Cape Peron and Cape Naturaliste, Lesueur and D’Entrecasteaux National Parks, Geographe Bay, the Recherche Archipelego and Jurien Bay.
It was about a century after the famed Dutch explorers including Dirk Hartog (1616), Abel Tasman (1642) and William Dampier (1688) sighted, set foot on, or claimed the southern land mass as New Holland (Australia), when the French were making their own moves.
Only a year after Captain Cook’s first voyage in 1770, two expeditions left France in 1771 in search of the great southern land.
One was led by Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne who made it to Van Diemen’s Land and even as far as New Zealand. But these territories had already been “discovered” by Tasman.
The other voyage was a two-ship expedition led by Y.J. de Kerguelen with second-in-command Francois Alesne de St Allouarn captaining the second vessel. These ships separated and Kerguelen, upon discovering what he thought to be the great southern land, hurried home to announce the discovery of what he called France Australe. Later, it proved to be some barren islands midway between Africa, Australia and Antarctica that now bear his name.
Meanwhile St Alouarn sailed-on in search of the great southern land, finding Dirk Hartog Island at Dampier’s Shark Bay in WA, where he promptly annexed the continent’s west coast for France in March 1772.
Many of the French expeditions named and illustrated various Australian species and took more than 18,000 specimens of flora, fauna and other objects back to French museums – 10 times the number brought back to Britain by Cook’s expeditions.
A few years later in January 1788, just as the British First Fleet was relocating to Port Jackson, two French ships commanded by Jean-Francois de Galaup Comte de la Perouse arrived in Botany Bay.
After seven weeks of rest and restocking, La Perouse’s ships, La Boussole and L’Astrolabe, sailed out of Botany Bay and disappeared. Curiously a young Corsican named Napoleon Bonaparte had enlisted, but just missed out on joining La Perouse’s ill-fated voyage that resulted in both ships being wrecked on reefs in the Solomon Islands with all the crew lost.
When La Perouse failed to return by 1791, and with the French Revolution looming, an unsuccessful search party was sent out commanded by Rear Admiral Joseph Antoine Bruni d’Entrecasteaux with two ships, Recherche and Esperance.
A second search party led by Nicolas Baudin was sent in 1801 – funded by new French leader Napoleon. This voyage chartered much of the southern coastline of Australia, helping to determine that the continent was a single island. It also includes the description of “La Terre Napoleon”, covering much of what is now Victoria and South Australia.
Baudin also had a chance meeting with his better-known English counterpart Matthew Flinders at Encounter Bay in South Australia in 1802. It was a cordial meeting between the explorers despite France and England having recently been at war.
It appears Napoleon’s many expensive wars in Europe and a focus on the American colonies were the main reasons why the French did not try harder to colonise the areas they claimed in the south (La Terre Napoleon) and the west of New Holland, leaving the way open for the British to take control.
Instead of introducing coffee and croissants, the English colonists brought convicts. As a result no French wine is served on trans-Australia flights. Quelle horreur !
NOTE – This is the latest in a weekly series of “Frivolous facts about France for Olympic bon vivants”. You can read other Frivolous Facts stories by clicking on these topics: Art, Architecture, Sportscars, Language, Wine.
Michael Osborne has been a journalist for more than four decades including 35 years with the national news agency Australian Associated Press, rising from junior reporter to Editor.
He was AAP Editor for 11 years and served four years as Head of Sport and Racing. He was also posted to London and Beijing as AAP’s Bureau Chief and Foreign Correspondent.
He has worked at six Olympics and five Commonwealth Games, covered tennis grand slams, golf majors, international cricket, rugby world cups and numerous sporting world championships. He also co-ordinated and managed AAP’s teams and coverage at three Olympic Games in Athens 2004, Beijing 2008 and London 2012.
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