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The following extract is taken from Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. III. - Hunter. 1786-1799., ed. F.M. Bladen, N.S.W. Government, 1895. It is part of a dispatch from Governor Hunter to the Duke of Portland, dated 1st of March, 1798.
pp. 363-365.
“My Lord Duke.
“The tedious repairs which his Majesty’s ship Reliance necessarily required before she could be put in a condition for going again to sea hav’g given an opportunity to Mr. George Bass, her surgeon, a young man of a well-informed mind and an active disposition, to offer himself to be employed in any way in which he could contribute to the benefit of the public service, I enquired of him in what way he was desirous of exerting himself and he informed me nothing could gratify him more effectually than my allowing him the use of a good boat and permitting him to man her with volunteers from the King’s ships. I accordingly furnished him with an excellent whaleboat, well fitted, victualled, and manned to his wish, for the purpose of examining along the coast to the southward of this port, as far as he could with safety and convenience go. His perseverance against adverse winds and almost incessant bad weather led him as far south as the latitude of 40 degrees 00 minutes S., or a distance from this port, taking the bendings of the coast, more than of six hundred miles. He coasted the greatest part of the way, and sedulously examined every inlet along the shore, which does not in thses parts afford a single harbour fit to admit even a small vessel, except a bay in latitude 35.06, called Jarvis’s Bay [Jervis Bay], and which was so named by one of the transport ships, bound here, who enetered it, and is the same called by Captain Cook Longnose Bay. * [Footnote - * Long Nose Point was the name Captain Cook gave to the inner north head of Jervis Bay. The point is that given in the Admiralty Charts as Dart Point. Cook noted in passing that a bay existed, but did not give it any name. Lieutenant Bowen, when he entered the bay in August, 1791, in the transport Atlantic, named it Jervis Bay, after Sir John Jervis, under whom he had seen considerable active service in the Navy.] He explored every accessible place until he came as far as the most southernmost parts of this coast seen by Captain Cook, and from thence until he reached the northernmost land seen by Capt. Furneaux, beyond which he went westward about sixty miles, where the coast falls away in a west-north-west direction. Here he found an open ocean westward, and by the mountainous sea which rolled from that quarter, and no land discoverable in that direction, we have much reason to conclude that there is an strait through, between the latitude of 39 and 40.12 S., a circumstance which, from many observations made upon tides and currents thereabouts, I have long conjectured. * [Footnote - * When commenting upon his voyage in the Sirius, from Sydney to the Cape, for provisions, in 1788-89, Hunter remarked that no land was seen to the westward, between Furneaux Group and the southernmost known part of the coast of New Holland; and he surmised, from the fact that they had an easterly set of current with a N.W. wind, that there was either a very deep gulf or a strait which separated Van Dieman’s Land [Tasmania] from New Holland. - Hunter’s Journal, pp. 125, 126.]
“It will appear by this discovery that the northernmost land seen by Captain Furneaux is the southernmost extremity of this coast, and lays in latitude 39.00 S. At the western extremity of Mr. Bass’s coasting voyage he found a very good harbour [Westernport]; but, unfortunately, the want of provisions induced him to return sooner than he wished and intended, and on passing a small island laying off the coast he discovered a smoke, and supposed it to have been made by some natives, with whom he wished to have an opportunity of conversing. On approaching the shore he found the men were white, and had some clothing on, and when he came near he observed two of them take to the water and swim off. * [Footnote - * Bass did not make any allusion to these escapees in his Journal. - Ante, pp. 312 to 333.] They proved to be seven of a gang of fourteen who escaped from hence in a boat on the 2nd of October last, mentioned in letter No. 30, * {Footnote - * Ante, p. 345.] and who had been treacherously left on this desolate island by the other seven, who returned northward. The boat, it seems, was too small for their whole number, and when they arrived at Botany Bay, and they boarded another boat in the Hawkesbury with fifty-six bushels of wheat on board, they went off with her northward, leaving the old boat on shore.
“These poor distressed wretches, who were chiefly Irish, would have endeavoured to travel northward and thrown themselves upon his Majesty’s mercy, but were not able to get from this miserable island to the mainland. Mr. Bass’s boat was too small to accommodate them with a passage, and, as his provisions were nearly expended, he could only help them to the mainland, where he furnished them with a musket and ammunition and a pocket-compass, with lines and fish-hooks. Two of the seven were very ill, and those he took into his boat, and shared his provisions with the other five, giving them the best directions in his power how t proceed, the distance being not less than five hundred miles. He recommended them to keep along the coast the better to enable them to get food; indeed the difficulties of the country and the possibility of meeting hostile natives are considerations which will occasion doubts of their ever being able to reach us. [See Flinders’ account for a more complete description.]
“When they parted with Mr. Bass and his crew, who gave them what cloathes they could spare, some tears were shed on both sides. The whaleboat arrived in this port, after an absence of twelve weeks, and Mr. Bass delivered to me his observations on this adventur’g expedition. I find he made several excursions into the interior of the country wherever he had an opportunity. It will be sufficient to say that he found in general a barren, unpromising country, with very few exceptions, and were it even better, the want of harbours would render it less valuable. * [Footnote - * See Bass’s own account of this voyage. Ante, pp. 312-333.]
“Whilst this whaleboat was absent I had occasion to send the Colonial schooner to the southward to take on board the remaining property saved from the wreck of the ship Sydney Cove, and to take the crew from the island she had been cast upon. * [Footnote - * See a full account of this shipwreck, Appendix A.] I sent in the schooner Lieut. Flinders, of the Reliance (a young man well qualifyed [sic]), in order to give him an opportunity of making what observations he could amongst those islands; and the discovery which was made by him and Mr. Hamilton, the master of the wrecked ship, shall be annexed to those of Mr. Bass in one chart, and forwrded to your Grace herewith, * [Footnote - * Undoubtedly this chart had not been preserved; but one, apparently by Flinders, showing part of the tracks of Bass in the whaleboat, Flinders in the Francis, and Flinders and Bass in the sloop Norfolk, is reproduced. - Appendix B.] by which I presume it will appear that the land called Van Dieman’s [Tasmania], and generally supposed to be the southward promontory of this country, is a group of islands separated from its southern coast by a strait [Bass Strait], which it is probable may not be of narrow limits, but may perhaps be divided into two or more channels by the islands near that on which the ship Sydney Cove was wrecked.”
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