Journey Jottings

Is this what awaited Mr Whelan upon arrival in Australia?

“Columbus Buggy Co.

Standard.

World over.

Columbus, Ohio, USA.

Distributing Ship Cargo of Standard Buggies, Coast of Australia“

Chromolithograph poster (published in the United States) circa 1880, advertising the Columbus Buggy Company’s ‘standard’ buggy, being driven away from the Australian port, pulled by four giant ostriches with two Aboriginal boys riding postilion!

The inset lower left portrays the perception of life in Australia at this time, compared to the inset lower right depicting the Columbus Buggy Co. factory in the USA belching smokestacks.

“A grand sea on today; one moment we are in a valley & the next on a mountain. It is also considerably colder now. Our friend was quite near us this morning & we found by looking through the glass that she had got a lot of horses on board. Yesterday afternoon Ada had a fit of some sort or another (I suppose through the change in the weather) & is now in her bunk not feeling over bright. Daisy is helping Sails while the guv’nor is lying down for a rest, Clara & Brown are doing a little in the spooning line & I am enjoying myself by watching Joey write his diary from my bunk. Of course not much can be done but play cards etc of which luckily we have a small stock as we brought our box of games with us. After a smoke we turned in at 10.

We saw the southern cross to-night for the first time but it is nothing grand.”

Extract from A.Whelen’s journal aboard the Hesperides sailing from England to Australia in 1878

Living by the sea I’ve become very aware of the ever changing tides… their times and their heights.

Governed by the moon the two high tides and two low tides, in each twenty-four hour period, follow the lunar cycle of a twenty-nine and a half-day month. This means that each day the tide occurs 50 minutes later than the same event on the preceding day.

Moon Map by Johannes Hevelius dated 1645

When the moon is full, and then two weeks later when we have a new moon, the gravitational pull due to the moon, the earth and the sun all being aligned results in a much higher high tide and a much lower low tide.

Alignment of Sun, Moon & Earth create Spring tides

These tides are called Spring tides. This is nothing to do with the season, but is rather from the old English word ‘springan’ to well up.

The Bay of Fundy in Canada has the claim to fame of having the largest range between its high and low spring tides, which reaches nearly 16 metres. Avonmouth in the Bristol Channel, UK comes in second with a range in excess of 15 metres.

Here, in the bay off Brisbane the difference between high and low spring tide is a mere 2.5 metres but at low tide on these weeks the bay looks as though someone has pulled out the plug as the water drains far away exposing the silty sand.

In North-Western Australia where the spring tidal range reaches 10 metres it creates a natural phenomenon called ‘Staircase to the Moon’. For three nights each month between March and October, when the full moon creates an exceptionally low spring tide, it then reflects off the exposed mudflats of Roebuck Bay, Broome to create a beautiful optical illusion of a stairway reaching up to the moon!

Staircase to the Moon, Western Australia

On alternate weeks between the full and new moon, when the sun, earth and moon are at right angles to each other resulting in a less intense gravitational pull there are Neap tides. Neap is derived from the old English word ‘nep’ meaning to nip in the bud. On these weeks, here in Queensland, there is then only a metre difference between our high and low tide so happily there is nearly always something left to paddle in!

For the time and height of tides here in Australia:

http://tide-times.com.au/

Time and tide wait for no man

While there is no dispute that Aboriginals have inhabited the Australian continent for at least 40,000 years, it is another matter as to which western nationality was the first to ‘discover’ Australia and put it on the map.

Ptolemy's World Map 150AD

Terra Australis Incognita ~ The Unknown Land of the South ~ appeared on Ptolemy’s maps circa 150AD.

Ptolemy’s 8-book atlas ‘Geographica’ was the source of information upon which maps were based during the age of discovery in the late 1400 – 1500’s. It was with this limited data, which had changed little in nearly 1,500 years that sea explorers set off to ‘discover’ the world. Columbus setting off for India across the Atlantic in 1492 when he  ‘discovered’ America; Magellan, the Portuguese born, and Spanish national who made the first circumnavigation of the world via the Spice Islands in 1522, followed by Drake who was the first Englishman to circumnavigate in 1580.

Woodcut of Ptolemy map by Johane Schnitze 1482

The first records of Europeans landing in Australia are:

• 1606 Willem Jansz, the first recorded Dutchman to set foot on the western shore of Cape York Peninsula.

• 1616 Dirk Hartog, the first Dutchman to set foot in Western Australia

• 1688 William Dampier was the first Englishman to visit Australia, yet…

• 1770 Captain Cook has the credit for officially claiming Australia in the name of the British.

The map below is the first map from the western world depicting Australia and was published prior to any of these official landings, in 1593.

Map of Australia by de Jode 1593

It shows the east coast of Australia with New Guinea to the north. The land hosts an archer taking aim at a griffin, which is a mythical creature with an eagle’s head and a lion’s body. A lion and writhing snake also inhabit the landscape.

This map ‘Novae Guineae Forma, & Situs’ was part of a major work entitled ‘Speculum Orbis Terrarum’

It had been initiated by Gerard de Jode (1509 – 1591) a Dutch born cartographer, engraver and publisher who died in Belgium leaving the atlas uncompleted and which his son Cornelis de Jode (1568 – 1600) finally published 2 years after his father’s death in 1593.

With its whimsical sea monsters, mermaids, sailing ships & sense of discovery I think this is my favourite antique map