Introduction
This

Page 44

In a state so cut off from civilisation, their arts have not been able to perfect them­selves very much.

Although the inhabitants' country has infinite inlets, their canoes are still of an extremely defective construction.
We have seen and measured many of them which all had the same dimensions and were built in exactly the same way.

We have seen many who believe and measure the same dimension, deriving their an absolutely similar way.
Three rolls of eucalyptus bark in composed whole framework.
The main room had 4 .55 m  long and a thickness of a meter ; the other two, 3.9 m [12 ft] long by 0.3m
These vessels, that everyone has taken apart, resembled the yardarm of a vessel and were bound at their ends, which meet at a tip resembling that of a canoe.
They were solidly assembled from a type of a grass or reed.

In this state, the boat had the following dimensions:

Length inside	2 m	95	= 9 ft 1"
Width outside	0 m	89	= 2ft 9"
Total height	0 m	65	= 2ft 1"
Depth in the middle	0 m	22	= 0ft 8"
Thickness at the extremities	0 m	27	= 0 ft 10''

Five or six savages can man these canoes; but more commonly they hold only three or four at-a-time.
Their paddles are simple pieces of wood from  2.5 m [ 7 ft 8"] up to 4 or 5 meters long [11 ft 6" or 15 ft 5"], with the thickness varying from 2 to 5 centimeters [d].

Page 45

Sometimes, when the water is not very deep, they use these sticks to push against the bottom, as we do with our Blunder (boats?)
They usually sit to manoeuvre their boats, using bundles of hay as seats.
At other times they stand.
We have only seen them cross the channel in fine weather: such frail and makeshift vessels could neither advance nor even stay up in a rough sea.
Mr Peron has presented, in the collection of plates accompanying the historical part of our voyage, a very exact drawing of the boats of the savages of Diemen's Land under no. XIV. (below)

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Lesueur: Campfire and rolled-bark or reed fishing canoes, Tasmania, 1803. Nicholas Petit: View of Schouten Island, Van Diemen's Land, 1803 - Museum d'Historie naturelle, Le Harve. - Muekee and Shoemaker: Aboriginal  Australians (2004) page 13. - Burnum: Burnum Burnum (1988) page 267.

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Page 46

(We never been scope to examine the manner in which is their sins;? but as an example of their industry in this respect, I borrow the details here?); the women advances and then dives among the rocks into the sea, and the they will venturer to the bottom of the waters to find crustaceans and shellfish.
As ladies were long time, we were concerned about their fate because they had dove in the middle of a great length marine plants.
We worried that they will be found entangled, and that they might not return to the surface.
Finally they reappeared, and we noted that their stay underwater two times longer than our most skilled divers.

A moment sufficed them to breathe; then they dove again until their task was completed.
Most were equipped with a small piece of spatula-shaped wood; which served to detach them from the cracks in the rocks at great depth under water, and returned with very large abalone and lobsters.
 
At the sight of these large lobsters that fill their baskets, we were afraid that these crustaceans may harm these unfortunate women with their huge claws; but we were not long in seeing us they had the precaution of killing them when caught.
They return from the water to give their husbands the fruits of their work, and often they were returning to dive almost immediately, until they had made a rather abundant supply to feed their families.
At other times, they relaxed facing the fire and grilling the catch, with other small fires to warm up in every direction.
It seemed they regretted staying only a moment; because while reheating, they were still busy grilling the shells they moved on the coals with great caution; but they gave much less care for lobsters they prepared.

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Page 78

 Canoes
The native people also carried fire in their canoes.
Banks had noted that ''in the middle of [the] canoes was generaly [sic] a small fire upon a heap of sea'weed'', which he guessed was ''to give the fisherman an opportunity of Eating fish in perfection by broiling it the moment it is taken''.(215)

In New South Wales Louis de Freycinet remarked in 1802 how ''they always maintain a fire in the middle of the canoe [pirogue]: they place it on a bed of earth or ashes, and use it to cook the fish they catch''.
Nicolas Petit made a drawing of one of these small craft, and this is reproduced in the photographic section. (below)
In Tasmania Freycinet had seen this same phenomenon where ''they keep constantly a fire in one of the extremities of their canoes'' with underneath ''a layer of earth or ashes''.(216)
In Sydney Harbour in 1825 Bougainville saw canoes [canots] with ''some hots coals'' in them ''placed on flat stones, used to grill the fish, which they [the natives] devoured burning hot and half-cooked in their bare hands, casting into the sea the left-overs as bait''.(217)
A year later Lesson saw this practice here, and felt perhaps for the poor fish which, he wrote, ''pass fully alive from the water onto the burning coals''.(218)

Some form of water transport seems to have been found on much of the continent, with the notable exception of the south and west coasts.
Peron noticed the total lack of inhabitants on all the islands off the shores, from indeed the detroit de Bass to the terre de Nuyts (west of today's Albany).
The ''main cause'' for this, he thought, ''was their abso­lute ignorance of navigation''.
Along these coasts, like all previous explorers, Peron ''never saw the slightest traces of any embarkation whatever''.(219)
At Esperance Bay, D'Entrecasteaux had in fact con­cluded that ''the natives... do not have the skills to build canoes or rafts which could transport them at a short distance across the sea''.(220)
Else­where, however, canoes or rafts were found in abundance, and

Page 78

especially so in Tasmania where the expeditions of D'Entrecasteaux and Baudin encountered many of these small craft.

Near Adventure Bay in May 1792, St Aignan reported finding "a kind of canoe, flat both above and below, about seven to nine feet long, in the middle three or four feet wide and finishing in a point at the two ends.
It was made of large pieces of bark joined together in bands running lengthwise, and fastened with rushes or strands of grass."
In the D'Entrecasteaux Channel nine months later, another of these canoes was discovered and D'Entrecasteaux's second-in-com­mand, Huon de Kermadec, assumed that "the savages do not fail to venture on these frail rafts between one island and another".(221)
Baudin's encounters were even more extensive, and he himself saw indigenous people "crossing from the [Tasmanian] mainland to D'Entrecasteaux [i.e. Bruny] Island in canoes".
His companion, Cap­tain Hamelin, also met two people "in one of their miserable canoes" making the same crossing and, on one occasion, he actually brought in one of these craft so it could be examined more closely.
"I think the term 'raft' or 'floating buoy' would be more appropriate than 'canoe','' he declared.
"The sticks they propel it with likewise bear no relation to the paddles used in canoes."(222)
On Maria Island his col­league Louis de Freycinet also found some "canoes [pirogues] of the same kind as those already described, and built just as badly".(223)

As the descriptions of these canoes rather resemble one another, Louis de Freycinet's detailed presentation of those studied in the D'Entrecasteaux Channel may suffice here.
"In a state so cut off from civilisation," he wrote, "their arts have not been able to perfect them­selves very much" and consequently their "canoes [pirogues] are still of an extremely defective construction [d'une construction extremement defectueuse]: We have seen and measured many of them which all had the same dimensions and were built in exactly the same way".
He then entered into the detail of their construction and use:

"Three rolls of eucalyptus bark made up the general framework [charpente].
The main piece was 4 m 55 long and one metre wide; the two others 3 m 9 long and 0 m 32 thick.
These rolls were ... joined at the extremities, which made them go up into a point ... The whole

Page 30  

was quite solidly assembled with a sort of grass or rushes ... In this state, the embarkation had the following dimensions:

Length inside	2 m	95	= 9 ft 1"
Width outside	0 m	89	= 2ft 9"
Total height	0 m	65	= 2ft 1"
Depth in the middle	0 m	22	= 0ft 8"
Thickness at the extremities	0 m	27	= 0 ft 10''

The savages [sauvages] can number five or six in these pirogues, but more usually they only go three or four at a time.
Their paddles [pagaies] are simple pieces of wood, from 2 m 50 (7 ft 8") up to 4 and even 5 metres long (11 ft 6" and 15 ft 5"), and a thickness going from 2 to 5 cm.
Sometimes, when the water is not very deep, they use these sticks [Wfotts] to push against the bottom ...
They usually sit to manoeuvre their pirogues, when they use bales of hay [bottes de foin] as seats.
At other times they stand.
We have only seen them cross the channel in fine weather: such frail and makeshift embarkations could neither advance nor even stay up in a rough sea.
Mr Peron has presented, in the collection of plates accompanying the historical part of our voyage, a very exact drawing of the pirogues of the savages of Diemen's Land [sauvages de la Terre de Diemen] under no. XIV.'(224)
[This drawing, by Lesueur, is presented in the photographic section.]
In New South Wales too Freycinet observed similar craft which could also ''not navigate at all off the coasts, but only in the bays, harbours and rivers''.
Here, however, the canoes could carry only 'up to three' people.(225)

In 1770 Joseph Banks had also counted a max­imum of three persons in these canoes at Botany Bay.
To the north, however, in the Whitsunday Passage and above, he saw ''far superior' canoes regularly hollowd [sic] out of the trunk of a tree and fitted with an outrigger'', which could contain ''3 people or at most 4''.(226)
Further north still, in Raffles Bay some sixty years later (in 1839), Lieutenant Barlatier Demas, in L'Astrolabe with Dumont d'Urville, ''saw two canoes coming out to the ship carrying eight or ten savages''.
''These canoes,'' he observed, ''were tree trunks crudely hollowed out,

Page 31

without sails, and for paddles they had only bits of poorly trimmed wood.''(227)


Page 154

Perhaps the most painful of these tasks was the procurement of food for the family, and among these the need to collect lobsters and shellfish by plunging for long periods into the cold seas of southern Tasmania.
Several of D'Entrecasteaux's people (including D'Entrecasteaux himself, Labillardiere, Ventenat and La Motte du Portail) give detailed accounts of this activity, all of which resemble one other, and confirm the Frenchmen's concern for the women involved and their surprise at the apparent laziness of the men. La Motte du Portail's account will suffice here.

"Lunch time was approaching, and we were curious to see them make their meal.
The women, to whom this whole task was left, went to take

Page 155

their fishing gear from the bush where they had hidden it.
This consisted in a basket made out of reeds ... of which the strings were arranged in such a way that the head and left hand could be passed.
In addition to the basket there was a piece of wood whose shape was like our toilet knife [sic], and which was carried between the teeth.
So arrayed, they would go to the sea and dive several times and eventually fill up their basket with crayfish, abalones and oysters that they would remove from the bottom with their little piece of wood."

Elsewhere La Motte du Portail, along with colleagues Labillardiere and Ventenat, also noted that the women brought up several lobsters.
La Motte du Portail continued: "Chilled to the bone [and this in mid-summer!], they would come out of the water and then each would light a fire, around which the family would gather, and she would cook the catch ... Soon afterwards, a distribution was made: first the children, and then the husband who had been waiting for this moment with the greatest patience without, however, having made the slightest move to help ... A second fishing followed this meal.
They do so as many times as necessary.''

The French were ''amazed at seeing how women were reduced to so tiring a task'', and tried to discover why.
One of the native men ''made us clearly understand', wrote La Motte du Portail, 'that the work we had seen the women do, would be fatal for him and his companions''.
The Frenchman's own conclusion was clear. ''I thought it might be the result of some prejudice having been turned into a religious be­lief,' he declared, 'but its source might be just found in laziness and the privilege of the strongest.''(16)

In New South Wales, some forty years later, Laplace would note how, in order to catch fish or shellfish, the women 'spent whole days and often even nights plunging amidst the foam of the waves, or fish­ing out at sea on makeshift rafts with crude nets made from the bark of trees'.(17)

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Endnotes

215. Banks, Joseph, The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks, 1768-1771, ed.J. C. Beaglehole,
Trustees of the Public Library of New South Wales in association with Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1962, vol. 2, page 134.

216.  Freycinet, Louis, Voyage de decouvertes aux terres australes. Navigation et Geographie,
Imprimerie Royale, Paris, 1815, vol. 2, pages 293 and 45.

217. Bougainville, Hyacinthe de, Journal de la navigation autour du globe, Paris, 1837, vol. 1, page 485.

218. Lesson, Rene Primavere, Voyage autour du monde sur la corvette 'Ia Coquille', Paris, 1838, vol. 2, page 289.

219. Peron, Francois and Freycinet, Louis, Voyage de decouvertes aux terres australes.
Historique, Paris, 1807 and 1816, vol. 2, page 122.

220. Bruny d'Entrecasteaux, Voyage to Australia and the South Pacific, 1791-1793,
translated by E. and M. Duyker, Melbourne Uni­versity Press, Melbourne, 2001, page 125.

221. Plomley, N.J. B., The General, Queen Victoria Museum, Launceston, 1993, pages 133 and 121.

222. Cornell, Christine, The Journal of Post-Captain Nicolas Baudin,
Libraries Board of South Australia, Adelaide, 1974, pages 304,312 and 334.

223. Freycinet, Louis, Voyage de decouvertes aux terres australes. Navigation et Geographie,
Imprimerie Royale, Paris, 1815, vol 2 page 61.

224. Freycinet, Louis, Voyage de decouvertes aux terres australes. Navigation et Geographie,
Imprimerie Royale, Paris, 1815, vol 2 pages 44-5.

225. Freycinet, Louis, Voyage de decouvertes aux terres australes. Navigation et Geographie,
Imprimerie Royale, Paris, 1815, vol 2 page 293.

226. Banks, Joseph, The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks, 1768-1771, ed.J. C. Beaglehole,
Trustees of the Public Library of New South Wales in association with Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1962, vol. 2, p. 134.

227. Rosenman, Helen; Two Voyages to the South Seas by Jules S-C. Dumont d'Urville,
Melbourne University Press,Melbourne, 1987, vol. 2, page 413.

Chapter

16. Plomley, Brian and Piard-Bernier, Josiane:
The General : the visits of the expedition led by Bruny d'Entrecasteaux to Tasmanian waters in 1792 and 1793.
Queen Victoria Museum, Launceston, Tasmania,  1993, pages 341-342.

17. Lappace, Cyrille Pierre Théodore: Voyage autour du Monde par les Mers de l´Inde et de Chine exécuté sur la Corvette de l´etát La Favorite pendant les années 1830, 1831 et 1832.
Imprimerie Royal, Paris, 1833-35, volume 3, page 262.

Laplace set sail for Hobart, and sighted Mewstone on 6 July.
Two more men were buried on Bruny Island, before La Favorite was allowed to anchor at Hobart on 11 July.
The sick men were sent to hospital, although three men were to die there.
Laplace left Hobart on 7 August, and set sail for Sydney, arriving on 16 August.
In Sydney the crew went to numerous social events, left to a twenty-one gun salute on 21 September 1831.

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c1802 Nicholas Petit: Van Dieman's Land Aborigines carrying fire in their canoe, 1802. - Museum d'Historie naturelle, Le Harve. - Muekee and Shoemaker: Aboriginal  Australians (2004) page 18. From the voyage by Peron and Freycinet.

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Lesueur: Campfire and rolled-bark or reed fishing canoes, Tasmania, 1803. Nicholas Petit: View of Schouten Island, Van Diemen's Land, 1803 - Museum d'Historie naturelle, Le Harve. - Muekee and Shoemaker: Aboriginal  Australians (2004) page 13. - Burnum: Burnum Burnum (1988) page 267.

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Louise de Sainson : A canoe made from bark [Tasmania], 1830. Pirogue aus zusammengenaketer baumrinde Louis Auguste de Sainson (1800-1887) was in Australia and the Pacific in 1826-1829. At the National Gallery of Australia NGA 2011.58 Hand coloured print titled: Pirogue en ecorce cousue, [Sewn bark canoe],1834

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Freycinet, Louis de: Voyage de decouvertes aux terres australes. Navigation et Geographie, Imprimerie Royale, Paris, 1815, 2 volumes. Selections quoted in Dyer, Colin: The French Explorers and the Aboriginal Australians 1772-1839. University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, Queensland, 2005 . Bibliotheque natlonale de France  http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k74602q/f1.image