The North West Coast of Australia from Camden Bay to Vansittart Bay.

Very rare, separately issued hydrographic chart of the north-west coast of Australia by Phillip Parker King, the first Australian-born hydrographer.

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 in the Dick, with his instructions to Governor Lachlan Macquarie and by December had been supplied with the 84-ton cutter Mermaid bought for £2,000. King sailed 22 December on the first of his four surveying voyages, with a company of nineteen including Bungaree, 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.

With two embossed stamps, Sold by James Wyld… at lower right and at top another, Ch. Piquet, Paris. On watermark paper (unidentified).

From 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.