[AUSTRALIA-NT] Groote Eylandt to Cape Ford

Rare, hydrographic chart of northern Australia extending from Anson Bay to Groote Eylandt by Phillip Parker King. Originally issued as Plate 4 from, Charts of the coast of Australia / King, London, Hydrographic Office, [1824-1826]. This edition has had the title changed from Chart of the North Coast of Australia Sheet IV and moved from top right to lower centre. This new edition was first issued October 1884, this issue 16th April, 1913, with small corrections 1918.

In 1817 the British government decided that ‘circumstances consequent upon the restoration of Peace … rendered it most important to explore, with as little delay as possible, that part of the coast of New Holland … not surveyed or examined by the late Captain Flinders‘, and appointed Lieutenant King to undertake the survey. The Admiralty instructed King to discover whether there existed a strait or river ‘likely to lead to an interior navigation into this great continent’. The Colonial Office also sought information about the climate, topography, fauna, timber, minerals, the natives and the prospects of developing trade with them. The search for access to the interior was stressed above all else ‘indeed, all gulfs and openings should be the objects of particular attention, as the chief motive for the survey is to discover whether there be any river on that part of the coast likely to lead to an interior navigation into this great continent’. King arrived at Port Jackson September 1817 on the Dick, with his instructions to Governor Lachlan Macquarie and by December had been supplied with the 84-ton cutter the Mermaid, bought for £2,000. King sailed on  22 December, on the first of his four surveying voyages, with a company of nineteen, including the Sydney aboriginal, Bungaree. Also on board were Allan Cunningham, the botanist and John Septimus Roe, later Surveyor General in West Australia. On this first voyage, King surveyed the Western Australian coast from North West Cape to Van Diemen’s Gulf, returning to Sydney July 1818. He made three further voyages and on his return to Port Jackson from his last voyage on 22 April, he found instructions waiting for him to return immediately to England. King who was now recognised as one of England’s foremost hydrographers, spent the next three years preparing the results of his extensive surveys for publication; Charts of the coast of Australia  Hydrographic Office, 1824-1826.

References;
Prescott 1826.A08, Spate p.80, Map 1, Tooley 816, Wantrup p.159-161.

Collections:
National Library of Australia; Bib ID 2483385 (1826 edition), Bib ID3770023 (1868 edition),  Bib ID253646 (1876)
State Library Victoria: APS 100 AJ 1795- (1044) (new ed. 1925, large corrections 1929, small corrections 1933 -1943)