Exhibition labels & didactics - National Gallery of Victoria

NAPOLEON AND AUSTRALIA:
THE BAUDIN EXPEDITION
In 1800, the coastline of New Holland (Australia) was still not
entirely known and the south-eastern part of our island continent
largely remained a mystery. The Institut de France now put before
First Consul Bonaparte the proposition to send a new expedition
to the Terres Australes, or Southern Lands. The suggestion
originally came from Nicolas Baudin (1754–1803), an experienced
seafarer who had developed a passion for the natural sciences
and for botany in particular. Napoleon approved the project,
whose principal aims were the geographical exploration of
south-east Australia and the collecting of natural history specimens.
Nearly 250 men embarked on the expedition. Mirroring Napoleon’s
Egyptian Campaign, Baudin also took with him some twenty
scholars representing every scientific discipline, including botany,
zoology and mineralogy.
Baudin’s ships, the Naturaliste and the Géographe, reached
the western shores of Australia in May 1801. Over the next
two years they researched Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania),
Kangaroo Island, and the coasts of Victoria and South Australia,
and also explored Port Jackson (Sydney) and its surroundings,
before returning to France. The Baudin expedition brought back
some 120,000 specimens, which were mostly delivered to the
Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris. Today acknowledgement of
the Baudin expedition remains insufficient. Its documentation of
Australia’s Indigenous peoples, in addition to its geography, flora,
fauna and marine life, was unparalleled for its time.
When the Baudin expedition undertook the first systematic mapping
of the Victorian and South Australian coastlines, it gave this region
of Australia its first name, Terre Napoléon – Napoleon Land.
Simultaneously charting the southern coastline of Australia from
the opposite direction, along the Nullarbor from the west, was
the British explorer Matthew Flinders. The two explorers met at
Encounter Bay (south of Adelaide) on 8 April 1802.
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