Strait,

Bass

Unknown

Sea

Australia is, on the whole, a flat dry country with nothing in the way of vast mountain ranges to conquer; off her coasts the seas do the normal things that seas do everywhere but not ferociously so.

Yet, it took about 40 years for the first Europeans to find their way I across the low, Blue Mountains from Sydney to the vast plains beyond; and a good decade for seafarers to find that there was a navigable strait between what is now Victoria and the island State of Tasmania.

The strait is now called Bass, after -Surgeon George Bass, a member of the establishment of Governor Hunter of NSW, who was the first person to have got near it, but Dr J. S. Cump ston has now produced a small book called First Visitors to Bass Strait which catalogues other men and ships who braved this unknown in the late 18th, early 19th centuries It was the practice of sailing ship masters, after rounding the Cape of Good Hope, to cross the Indian Ocean well down in the Roaring Forties and to pass south of Tasmania before turning north past the Furneaux Group off Tasmania’s NE tip, to Sydney. Many came to grief in the Furneaux Islands but the passage through Bass Strait, also studded with rocks and islands was hardly less dangerous for sailing ships and really came into its own as a shorter route only after the introduction of steam ships. . Cumpston’s book gives some interesting information on early Aus tralia history and discovery, repro duces some valuable old maps and charts and has a picture section mostly covering present day conditions on

Bass Strait islands.-

JT.

(First Visitors To Bass Strait.

Roebuck Society Publication- available from 42 Araba St, Aranda, Canberra ACT 2614.)