History of South Australia - European Exploration

European Exploration

The first recorded European sighting of the South Australian coast was in 1627 when the Dutch ship 't Gulden Zeepaerdt (The Golden Seahorse), skippered by François Thijssen, examined the coastline. Thijssen named his discovery "Pieter Nuyts Land", after the highest ranking individual on board.

In 1801-02 Matthew Flinders led the first circumnavigation of Australia aboard the HMS Investigator, a Royal Navy survey ship. French Captain Nicolas Baudin was also on a survey mission in 1802, independently charting the southern coast of the Australian continent with the French naval ships the Géographe and the Naturaliste.

The British and French expeditions sighted each other, and despite France and Britain being at war at the time, they met peacefully at Encounter Bay, on the Fleurieu Peninsula.

Baudin referred to the land as "Terre Napoléon". On the same voyage, Baudin named the Fleurieu Peninsula after Charles Pierre Claret de Fleurieu, a French explorer and statesman. In 1802 Flinders named Mount Lofty but recorded little of the area which is now Adelaide.

Charles Sturt led an expedition from New South Wales in 1829, which followed first the Murrumbidgee River into a 'broad and noble river', which he named the Murray River. His party then followed this river to its junction with the Darling River and continued down river on to Lake Alexandrina, where the Murray meets the sea in South Australia. Suffering greatly, the party had to then row back upstream hundreds of kilometers for the return journey.