Exploration

 … in our passage from thence to the East Indies, we were driven by a violent storm to the north-west of Van Diemen’s Land. By an observation, we found ourselves in the latitude of 30 degrees 2 minutes south.

— Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, part I, chapter 1, describing the location of Lilliput, near Woomera.

The usual bane of such expeditions is hurry; because men seldom allot themselves half the time they should do; but, fixing on a day for their return, post from place to place, rather as if they were on a journey that required dispatch, than as philosophers investigating the works of nature.
— Gilbert White (1720 – 1793), The Natural History of Selborne, (1789), Letter XXVI.

My statement of the arrangements that were requisite for our accommodation was approved of by the Governor, who gave the necessary orders to the Engineer, a captain of the forty-sixth regiment; and the Deputy Commissary General was instructed to attend to all my demands, and to supply the requisite quantities of provisions and stores; but, notwithstanding every wish on the part of His Excellency to forward our outfit and complete the vessel for sea without delay, it was not until 21st of December that the alterations were finished. Had we met with as much opposition and inattention from the commissariat department as from the engineer, the vessel would not have been ready for sea for six months; it is, however, a duty I owe to Deputy Commissary General Allan, to acknowledge the readiness with which that officer’s department attended to my wants.
— Phillip Parker King, Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia performed between the years 1818 and 1822. 2 vols, London: 1827, and Adelaide: Libraries Board of South Australia facsimile edition, 1969, vol. I, xxxviii.

By the observations which Ross obtained to the South, to the N.W. and in the Meridian of the Magnetic Pole he has been enabled to fix the position of it with as much accuracy as if he had been so fortunate as to reach the spot. He could not get within 160 miles of it. In sailing to the N.W. of his own discoveries in returning the ships ran for 80 miles over mountains and other land which the American Exploring Expedition had laid down in their charts and thus was stamped the proper value on their pretended discoveries in this quarter. [Lady Franklin, to her husband in Sydney, April 1841]
— Franklin, Sir John and Lady, Some Private Correspondence of Sir John and Lady Jane Franklin. Dubbo: Review Publications Pty Ltd., 1977 (reprint of Australian Historical Monographs, Volume XV), Part I, pp. 116-117.

Captain Ross has erected his observatories in the Government domain, a sort of Park, where the New Government House is to be built. They have been set up in a very short space of time and I believe he is much satisfied with the facility and readiness with which all his wants are supplied.

I believe he did not expect to find Van Diemen’s Land anything like so good a country as it is. He is charmed with the climate (though this is our February and March weather) and with the picturesque beauty of the scenery and says we cannot conceive what a difference it is from the last desolate island, Hesgallin Land (an uninhabited place sometimes called and known here as Desolation Island) which was their last place of sojourn. [Lady Franklin, letter to her father, September 1840]
— Franklin, Sir John and Lady, Some Private Correspondence of Sir John and Lady Jane Franklin. Dubbo: Review Publications Pty Ltd., 1977 (reprint of Australian Historical Monographs, Volume XV), Part I, pp. 99-101.

Capt. Ross found a yankee Corvette at the Bays of Islands, of which the captain (Anlick) [sic: correctly Aulick] boasted much of the exploits of Wilkes, and of ‘the Antarctic Continent’. Ross let him go on to the end in silence and then let out piece by piece his own story. ‘You can hardly conceive,’ he says, ‘his amazement.’ He took it extremely well, however, and expressed himself very kindly, and handsomely towards Ross. [Lady Franklin to her sister, October 1841.]
— Franklin, Sir John and Lady, Some Private Correspondence of Sir John and Lady Jane Franklin. Dubbo: Review Publications Pty Ltd., 1977 (reprint of Australian Historical Monographs, Volume XV), Part II, 38.

An ingenious but sarcastic Yankee, when asked what he thought of Western Australia, declared that it was the best country he had ever seen to run through an hour-glass. He meant to insinuate that the parts of the colony which he had visited were somewhat sandy.
— Trollope, Anthony, Australia and New Zealand, London: 1873 and Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1967 (edited by Edwards and Joyce), 557.

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