A Voyage to Terra Australis

January 1801, at Sheerness: Matthew Flinders is given command of the Investigator and the task of completing the map of a continent known only in fragments, New Holland.

On the deck of the Zealand, nearly three hundred seamen are gathered: two hundred and fifty volunteer for eleven places. Yet the voyage begins badly. The ship runs aground near Dungeness, then leaks from the first Atlantic swells. From Madeira to the Cape, the crew searches in vain for a phantom island, Saxemberg, and the astronomer, ill, abandons the expedition at Simon's Bay.

On 6 December, Cape Leeuwin rises on the horizon. At King George Sound, the observatory tents go up in full view of the local people, and an old man, a stick on his shoulder, mimics the drill of the marines. Then the Investigator resumes the south coast eastward: the islets of the Recherche Archipelago, the unexpected haven of Lucky Bay, the endless cliffs of the Great Bight. At Fowler's Bay, the already known coast comes to an end. Beyond it remain only the islands glimpsed by the Dutch in 1627.

The account of a cartographer obsessed with accuracy, this first volume leads to the threshold of the unknown. What does Flinders expect on the other side of the last map?