In 1793 a French expedition to the South Pacific landed in the far south of Van Diemen’s Land, at Recherche Bay. They began a garden, and their contacts with the Tasmanian Aborigines were—on this occasion—amiable. Traces of that fleeting presence—neither the first, last nor longest by the French in Tasmania, nor on the mainland of Australia—abide, but they are in jeopardy. According to one of those protesting, my friend, local resident and historian Bruce Poulson, the lands of the North East Peninsula of Recherche Bay are under threat from logging. A decision on whether this will proceed, or whether the contested territory will be heritage-listed because of its historical significance is due soon. In the meantime a shed full of research materials at the back of Poulson’s home at nearby Hastings was burned down earlier this year.
Fortunately he was able to complete and publish an excellent short study, Recherche Bay: A History, which ranges from the arrival of the French in the district to the present-day controversy over land use. He notes that here the first Catholic masses were celebrated in Australia, here the first white woman came ashore in Tasmania. Disguised as a male, Louise Girardin even fought a duel on a beach at the bay.
Poulson moves engagingly through the history of European settlement, discussing the logging, mining and fishing in the region and the decline of these industries and of the communities which they supported.
The French presence in southern and eastern Tasmania is commemorated in place names along the coast, but the French explored from the southern island as far north as modern-day Darwin, as well as east to New Zealand. The first expedition of 1772 was led by Marion Dufresne, the last in 1839 by Durmont D’Urville. Not 1939, as Colin Dyer’s The French Explorers and the Aboriginal Australians has it. Dyer—as his title suggests—focuses not so much on the geopolitical motives for French exploration, the first half century of which took place during intermittent war with Britain, but with the anthropological discoveries and speculations concerning the natives, les sauvages, of those voyages.
No permanent French settlement was made, although one was contemplated in the strategically placed islands of Bass Strait. Perhaps fate decreed that the French were never to be more than visitors. Dufresne and a number of his crew were killed and eaten by Maoris; Laperouse and his ships vanished without trace