The Voyage d’Entrecasteaux: Part 5 Tasmania Revisited

Abstract

Once the reprovisioning and the repair of both frigates was underway, Entrecasteaux sent a party to inspect the area of their of their anchorage the previous year in North Port. Their former watering-station was found to be completely dry, and Delahaye’s garden had not suceeded. The General then asked Delahaye to visit the site to determine the cause of the failure. Had the garden been planted in the wrong season? or had the seeds not preserved their fertility? Labillardière now had the exceptional opportunity to collect again plants already known to him but in a different season of their development, as well as to find species overlooked in 1792. When he went ashore on 22 January 1793, however, his most memorable initial find was a skillfully-built aboriginal hut, its covering of tree-bark so arranged that even the hardest rains could not penetrate. From all appearances, it was a shelter where natives came to sleep at night. The desire to observe the interior of the hut led several in the party to enter it. The vermin inside they picked up on their clothes soon began to sting them, an unpleasant first lesson in the facts of aboriginal life.