The views of the first Europeans to explore the coast off Ballina From before 1788, the year authorities claimed the Australian continent on behalf of the British Crown, European discoverers and explorers imagined it to be lush and fertile.7 Later, several European navigators made closer observations of the coast off Ballina (later named), from either directly off the coast or when exploring the Richmond River and North Creek. First, from on board the Endeavour when Captain James Cook navigated and mapped sections of the east coast in 1770 – he passed Ballina on Wednesday 16 May – amid a fresh gale and fine weather. Cook’s mission was to explore the entire east coast and so had no intention of scouting each of the many estuaries that spilled into the sea along it. When nearto the location of Ballina, however, Cook did observe the Bundjalung occupying their territory – between the Richmond River and Cape Byron he recorded ‘People and smook’ in various places.8 In 1799 and 1802, Matthew Flinders whose mission it was to circumnavigate the continent, also mapped the eastern coastline. Despite historians, to date, arguing that Flinders did not ‘discover’ the Richmond River he did record its location, as his map shows a gap where the mouth of the Richmond River lay; and he did the same at Evans Head in the case of the Evans River. He further noted that the land encompassing the Newrybar ridge was: ‘A woody rising country of pleasant appearance.’ Like Cook he also saw smoke rising from the fires of Bundjalung camps, south of the river mouth. While Flinders didn’t stop at the Richmond he anchored at Cape Byron and at Point Danger (Tweed Heads), where he made linear profile sketches of the landscape from the sea.9 The features that veiled the mouth of the Richmond did not attract Flinders’
attention in the same way other locations close by did. The nature of the scenery at Ballina, with its unassuming views of low hills (not mountain peaks), modest sea-facing rocky outcrops, and flat, sandy and alluvial floodplains, was of lesser interest. The European mindset of this time was drawn to noticing supposedly more remarkable landforms. Moreover, off Ballina the coastline was relatively straight and did not harbour sheltered bays in which to safely anchor, as was known of the coastline near-to Cape Byron and Point Danger from Cook’s records. From both of these secure vantage points also were pleasant or picturesque views of mountain peaks, of which Wollumbin, or Mount Warning as it was named by Cook, had, in the minds of Europeans, already gained the status of being among the colony’s most majestic natural features. In 1823 John Oxley also sailed past the Richmond River enroute his mission to explore Moreton Bay (Brisbane), along the way he ‘discovered’ and named the Tweed River. Though he travelled to the Moreton Bay region to assess its usefulness as a penal settlement he also recorded the characteristics of the landscapes he passed, noting their suitability for settlement, or farming – which was of great interest to European settlers. The original vision that NSW would be annexed and developed as a selfsufficient penal colony was fading and a new picture was emerging of it being the land of opportunity for willing migrants. Five years after Oxley, Henry John Rous sailed along the east coast in 1828. He has been widely celebrated as the first European to explore the Richmond River; he named both the river and the northern headland at its mouth (now part of the landscape referred to as Lighthouse Hill). Though Rous dubbed the northern headland ‘Lennox Head’ it was later
7 Richard White. Inventing Australia: images and identity 1688-1980, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1981. 8 Cook, James, and J. C. Beaglehole. The Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery / Edited from the Original Manuscripts [by J. C. Beaglehole]. Volume 1, The Voyage of the Endeavour. Hakluyt Society, 317. 9 Flinders, Matthew, William Westall, and Robert Brown. A Voyage to Terra Australis: Undertaken for the Purpose of Completing the Discovery of That Vast Country, and Prosecuted in the Years 1801, 1802, and 1803, in His Majesty’s Ship the Investigator ... / by Matthew Flinders. London: G. and W. Nicol, 1814.
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