The Investigator Tree:
Eighteenth century inscriptions,
or twentieth century misinterpretations ?
by B.J. Stubbs and P.
Saenger
Reprinted
with permission of the authors
and the editors of RHSQ,
Journal of the Royal Historical
Society of Queensland.
First published August 1996.
In
1841, John Lort Stokes, commanding H.M.S. Beagle, was exploring
Australia's northern coastline, and in July he arrived at the small island
in the Gulf of Carpentaria (Lat. 170o6'S Long. 139o37'E)
which Matthew Flinders, nearly forty years before, had named Sweers. On
the western side of this island Stokes discovered a tree with the name
of Flinders's ship, the Investigator, carved along the trunk in
large letters. This discovery excited Stokes who wrote of it thus:
It
was . . . our good fortune to find at last some traces of the Investigator's
voyage, which at once invested the place with all the charms of association,
and gave it an interest in our eyes that words can ill express. All the
adventures and sufferings of the intrepid Flinders vividly recurred to
our memory. (1)
This tree later became
known, in consequence of its historic inscription, as the Investigator
Tree.
On 5 March 1887, almost half
a century after Stokes's voyage, the Gulf region suffered a violent cyclone
which destroyed or damaged most of the buildings in Burketown, and also
damaged the Investigator Tree on Sweers Island, seventy kilometres to the
north. As it seemed likely that the injured tree would eventually fail
and decay, part of its trunk was salvaged and sent to Brisbane.
In February 1889, the tree
became the property of the Queensland Museum. (2)
It is presently displayed in the Museum of Lands Mapping and Surveying
in Brisbane.
By the time the Investigator
Tree was brought to Brisbane it bore not only the name of Flinders's ship,
but also that of the Beagle, which Stokes had added in 1841. In
addition were a large number of other names, including some dating from
A.C. Gregory's North Australian Expedition in 1856, and some from the Burke
and Wills Search Expedition under William Landsborough in 1861. Indeed,
the tree carried inscriptions representative of many phases in the history,
not just of Sweers Island, but of northern Australia generally. This makes
the Investigator Tree an historic artifact of great cultural importance.
A detailed historical interpretation of the inscriptions on the tree has
been compiled by Saenger and Stubbs. (3)
Besides the many inscriptions
which were added to the tree after the visit of Flinders in 1802,
many published articles and books have expressed the intriguing idea that
the tree also carried inscriptions of Dutch and Chinese origin, predating
Flinders's visit. In fact, in almost every account of the tree published
after its arrival in Brisbane - and they number at least ten, spanning
over eighty years - claims have been made for Dutch and Chinese inscriptions.
Curiously, only one item from before 1889 makes any such suggestion. This
paper tests these relatively recent claims that the Investigator Tree carried
inscriptions predating the 1802 visit of Matthew Flinders to Sweers Island.
Claims for Pre-Flinders
Inscriptions
According
to Reed in 1973, in an entry entitled 'Sweers Island Q' in his
Place
Names of Australia, Dutch and Chinese navigators left inscriptions
on [the Investigator Tree] at various times' prior to the visit of Flinders
to the island in 1802. (4)
This is a relatively recent perpetuation of the idea that the Investigator
Tree carried pre-Flinders inscriptions. The idea which lacks any obvious
basis in fact. In order to discover the origin of this apparent myth, its
history, which encompasses more than a century, is subjected here to close
scrutiny.
The earliest reference we
have discovered to pre-Flinders inscriptions on the Investigator Tree is
in a report on explorations undertaken in the Gulf of Carpentaria in 1880.
The Queensland Government Schooner Pearl, under the command of Captain
Pennefather, was sent that year to chart the waters around Point Parker
on the western side of the Gulf. The Pearl arrived at Sweers Island
on 15 September. Pennefather found the tree and later reported that 'on
[it] is to be seen the name of H.M.S. Investigator with the date
1802, and a still earlier date, supposed to have been carved by the Dutch'.
(5)
It is unknown whether Pennefather himself made this supposition, or whether
he was attributing it to some unnamed informant. If the former is true
Pennefather himself may be the originator of the Dutch inscription myth;
if the latter, he may only have been following an older tradition.
Pennefather's reference to
the supposed Dutch inscription was reiterated in 1895 by Major A.J. Boyd
in a narrative based on the official reports of Pennefather's 1880 explorations
in the Gulf. (6)
Boyd read his paper at a meeting of the Queensland Branch of the Royal
Geographical Society of Australasia in November 1895. Between Pennefather's
voyage and this time, the trunk of the Investigator Tree had arrived in
Brisbane where it was placed on exhibition in the Queensland Museum, and
it is probable that Boyd's narrative, through its timing and greater accessibility,
influenced thinking about the tree more than Pennefather's earlier but
more obscure official report. In this way the idea of a Dutch inscription
on the tree may have received a considerable boost.
In 1903, in his posthumously-published
Early
Days in North Queensland, Edward Palmer presented a summary of the
names and dates carved on the Investigator Tree. (7)
The oldest inscription, Palmer claimed, with the date 1781, was the name
of a Dutch exploring vessel the Lowy--allegedly commanded by Captain
Abel Tasman, which called at Sweers Island in that year. Unfortunately
for Palmer, the three ships under Tasman's command during his exploration
of the Gulf were named Limmen, de Zeemeeuw, and de Bracq, and
his voyage took place in 1644, not 1781. Although not the earliest reference
to a Dutch inscription, Palmer's was the first we have found which gives
a date, and is the first to use the name Lowy. It is not known where
Palmer obtained this information, but Pennefather's report certainly provided
no such detail. Thus, Pennefather's modest 1880 supposition was developed
to great heights of extravagance in Palmer's later account.
Not only did Palmer elaborate
the earlier suggestion of a Dutch inscription, but he added a claim for
the existence of a Chinese inscription on the tree. The second oldest marking
on the tree, Palmer said, comprised 'some Chinese characters' and the date
1798. Palmer is thus the earliest known perpetrator, and therefore perhaps
the originator, of the Chinese inscription myth.
In 1933 an unattributed article
in the Brisbane weekly newspaper the Queenslander,
undoubtedly following
Palmer's imaginative lead, referred to 'Chinese letters' on the tree, made
in 1798 when a junk was wrecked on Sweers Island. Twenty-five of the Chinese
trepang fishermen on board the vessel lived on the island, the article
also claimed, until rescued by a 'Macassar prau'. It is unclear, however,
why shipwrecked Chinese or their Macassan rescuers would carve the date
into a tree using a foreign script! According to the same article, and
again following Palmer, a Dutch exploring vessel, commanded by Tasman,
called at Sweers Island in 1781, and the name of that vessel--here the
Loury--was
carved
into the trunk of the Investigator Tree. The writer of this article almost
certainly used as his principal source, and embellished somewhat, Palmer's
account of the Investigator Tree inscriptions published thirty years before.
Several magazine articles
published in the 1940s refer to the Investigator Tree and to an inscription
in Chinese supposedly carved on it. One, by E.D.F. in 1942, claims that
the crew of the Investigator found a tree on which 'were carved
some Chinese characters and the date, 1798, evidence of visits by Asiatic
beche-de-mer fishers'. In addition, the 'remains' of a wrecked junk and
signs of brief visits of early Dutch ships' were found. (8)
In a similar vein, G. P. in 1946 claims that Flinders found evidence of
the visit of Chinese to Sweers Island: 'he found a tree on which were carved
some Chinese characters and the date, 1798'. Flinders then 'carved the
date and name of his ship on the same gnarled old tree on which he found
the Chinese characters'. (9)
Another article, by 'Ringata' in 1943, rightly describes the Investigator
Tree carvings as a 'romantic link with three early navigators', but then
continues to claim:
Also on the trunk
are a number of carved Chinese characters; it is believed that these were
executed by members of the crew of a Chinese beche-de-mer fishing boat.
(10)
Then, two decades later,
Lack wrote in 1962 that:
Chinese characters,
almost obliterated by time, on the famous Investigator tree from
Sweer's [sic] Island, now in the Queensland Museum, would seem to indicate
that Chinese junks came seeking beche-de-mer in the Gulf of Carpentaria
at least half a century before Cook sailed along the eastern coast, and
a hundred years before Flinders' Investigator visited these waters.
(11)
From 1933 onwards, the references
to Chinese inscriptions on the Investigator Tree have in common their use
of these supposed markings as evidence of the visit of Asian trepang fishermen
to Sweers Island. There is better historical evidence for such visits,
however, than for the alleged inscriptions, and it would have been more
sound to use the visits to support claims for the existence of the inscriptions,
not the reverse.
How did these claims originate?
The ingredients of the idea are contained in the history of the Dutch and
Macassan presence in northern Australia.
Historical Elements
of the Myth
That
Asian mariners visited the northern coast of Australia long before the
first Englishmen did so is beyond doubt. The development prior to the end
of the eighteenth century of a thriving Macassan trepang fishing industry
along our northern shores was discussed in detail by Campbell in 1916 and
analysed thoroughly in Macknight in 1976. (12)
Although the industry was centred on the port of Macassar (now Ujung Pandang)
on the Indonesian island of Celebes (now Sulawesi), the consumption of
trepang was almost entirely restricted to the Chinese, and China was the
final destination for most of the trepang exported from Macassar. It must
be emphasised that the Chinese themselves did not do the fishing in northern
Australia, contrary to this suggestion in many of the articles quoted above.
Trepang became a common and substantial item of trade between Macassar
and China by the late 1700s. According to Macknight, Dutch restrictions
on Macassarese enterprise after 1667 probably caused the redirection of
resources into new activities such as the trepang industry in general,
and voyages to northern Australia in particular. Direct trade between Macassar
and south China in the earlier part of the seventeenth century provided
opportunities for trepang to become known there. In addition, the general
outline of the Australian coast was known from Dutch charts of the time,
facilitating Macassarese activity in that region.
The trepang industry probably began, in the opinion of Macknight, in the
last quarter of the seventeenth century. The absence of references to the
Macassans in records of Dutch exploration of northern Australia prior to
1754, however, suggests that it began in a 'small, irregular and secretive
way', but it had certainly become a large and flourishing industry by the
end of the eighteenth century. (13)
Thus, when in December 1802 Flinders visited the cluster of islands in
the south-western corner of the Gulf which he named Sir Edward Pellew's
Group, he found that:
Indications of some
foreign people having visited this group were almost as numerous as those
left by the natives. Besides pieces of earthen jars and trees cut with
axes, we found remnants of bamboo lattice work, palm leaves sewed with
cotton thread into the form of such hats as are worn by the Chinese, and
the remains of blue cotton trousers . . . It is evident that these people
were Asiatics, but of what particular nation, or what their business [was]
here, could not be ascertained; I suspected them, however, to be Chinese.
(14)
Flinders had visited Sweers
Island the previous month and there he found seven human skulls and a number
of bones lying together near three extinguished fires. A square piece of
timber, seven feet long, of teak, which according to the judgment of the
carpenter had been a quarter-deck carling of a ship, was also found, thrown
up on the western beach. Later, on nearby Bentinck Island, he saw the stumps
of twenty or more trees, which had been felled with an axe or some other
sharp iron instrument. Close to these were found scattered the broken remains
of an earthen jar. From these several observations Flinders conjectured
that a ship from the East Indies had been wrecked there 'two or three years
back', that part of the crew had been killed, and that the others had 'gone
away . . . upon rafts constructed after the manner of the natives'. (15)
Notably, Flinders made no mention of having discovered a tree bearing the
carvings of these or any other visitors to Sweers Island. Nor did Robert
Brown, the naturalist on the Investigator, nor Peter Goode, the
gardener, although both made careful botanical searches of the island.
(16)
The origin of these 'foreign
visitors' was revealed to Flinders in February 1803 when he discovered
at the Gove Peninsula, near the western entrance to the Gulf of Carpentaria,
'a canoe full of men' and 'six vessels covered over like hulks, as if laid
up for the bad season'. Flinders had little doubt that these people were
of the same origin as those whose traces he had already found 'so abundantly
in the Gulph'. It was soon ascertained that the six vessels, which seemed
to have twenty or twenty-five men in each, were 'prows from Macassar'.
(17)
Flinders communicated with their six Malay commanders and learned that
sixty prows, carrying about one thousand men, had left Macassar in the
north-west monsoon two months before and the fleet, divided into groups
of five or six vessels each, now lay at various places along the coast.
(19)
The purpose of the expedition was to search for a marine animal called
trepang, (20)
which when dried and smoked was sold to the Chinese. Pobassoo, the chief
of the division which Flinders encountered, had made six or seven such
visits to the Australian coast during the preceding twenty years, that
is since about 1782, and he claimed to be 'one of the first who came'.
(21)
Stokes, who landed on Sweers
Island in 1841, found no inscription on the Investigator Tree other than
the one which he attributed to Flinders. Fifteen years later, Lieutenant
Chimmo, of the paddle steamer Torch, landed there and discovered
at high water mark on the western side of the island:
the remains
of a Malay proa . . . the beams of which were teak. We concluded she had
been cast away during the N.W. monsoon; her beam was 17 feet; length could
not be ascertained. (22)
He also found the tree which
still 'plainly bore' the inscriptions of the Investigator, and of
the Beagle which had visited the island in the meantime. (23)
Like Stokes, Chimmo
made no mention of any earlier carvings.
Further evidence of the visit
of Asian mariners to Sweers Island is provided by a record of the Queensland
Museum having received in 1889 a 'piece of mast of a Chinese junk, supposed
to have been wrecked on Sweers Island'. (24)
The Queenslander claims that this was forwarded to Brisbane with
the main branch of the Investigator Tree, and that it was part of the wrecked
Chinese junk 'found' by Flinders. (25)
It is unknown whether this is so (Flinders found only one piece of timber),
whether it was part of the wrecked prow which Chimmo found in 1856 (assuming
they were different wrecks), or whether it belonged to another more recent
wreck.
Several elements of the claims
discussed above for pre-Flinders inscriptions on the Investigator Tree
seem to have as their bases comments made by Flinders in the account of
his exploration of the Gulf quoted above. Flinders's conjecture in 1802
that a ship from the East Indies had been wrecked on Sweers Island 'two
or three years back', (26)
together with his supposition that the Asian visitors whose traces he found
in Sir Edward Pellew's Group were Chinese, may be the basis of the claim
for the 1798 Chinese inscription first made by Palmer in 1903. Flinders's
observation that each of the prows which he encountered in 1803 contained
twenty or twenty-five men may be the basis for the claim in the Queenslander
that
the crew of the wrecked 'junk' numbered twenty-five. The origin of the
claim that a Dutch exploring vessel called at Sweers Island in 1781 is
not clear, but there may be some significance in the comment by Pobassoo,
as recounted by Flinders, that he had made six or seven visits to the Australian
coast during the preceding twenty years - since about 1782.
Several Dutch ships are known
to have explored the waters of northern Australia from the early seventeenth
century - notably those under the command of Tasman in 1644. That any actually
visited Sweers Island is, however, unlikely. Tasman's are the only Dutch
ships known to have sailed close to Sweers Island, but it is highly improbable
that they stopped there. On Dutch maps showing Tasman's route around the
Gulf, the Wellesley group of islands to which Sweers belongs appears as
a peninsula--Cape van Diemen. Clearly, Tasman failed to recognise the individual
islands of this group. (27)
It is therefore inconceivable that he visited the western side of Sweers
Island where the tree stood. The idea that he went ashore, and found the
tree, (28)
and carved a name on it, is sheer fantasy.
Although it therefore seems
improbable that the Dutch visited Sweers Island, it is equally clear that
Macassan trepangers had been there, both before Flinders, and probably
on later occasions as well. It is still a big leap, however, from knowing
of these visits to claiming the presence of Macassan inscriptions on the
Investigator Tree. Flinders, whose record of his 1802 visit to the Gulf
is meticulous, found no cause to comment about pre-existing inscriptions
on the tree on which the name of his ship was carved in 1802. Subsequent
visitors such as Stokes, in 1841, and Chimmo, in 1856, also found no such
inscriptions. How, then, it must be asked, did the idea originate? Why
did the need arise to invent such inscriptions?
Origin of the Myth
In
1895, the year in which Major Boyd presented his narrative of Captain Pennefather's
voyage, there appeared in Brisbane the first edition of J.J. Knight's In
the Early Days: History and Incident of Pioneer Queensland.
In this
book the Investigator Tree receives honourable mention as a 'valuable relic
of Flinders' voyage to the Gulf'. Knight included an illustration of the
tree which he had obtained, along with most of his text regarding it, from
an article published in the Queenslander shortly after the arrival
of the tree at the Queensland Museum in 1889 (see
photo). This article's anonymous writer, blissfully unaware of Pennefather's
earlier speculation, made no reference to pre-Flinders inscriptions on
the tree. Rather, after stating that Flinders cut the name of his vessel
on it, he added:
a portion of the original
inscription - namely, "Investig," - is clearly visible to this day, while
the name in full is also cut in the bark, but is evidently of a more recent
date. (29)
This article is the next
known published reference to the Investigator Tree after Pennefather's
report of 1880. The two inscriptions which its author was then able to
make out are both still visible on the tree today, one clearly and one
much less so. The older of these inscriptions, we propose, is the one which
Pennefather, eight years previously, could not read and had supposed to
be of Dutch origin. This was quite a reasonable deduction
if
Pennefather
could not decipher the older inscription and assumed the newer one to date
from Flinders's visit. Thus, the Dutch inscription myth arose as a means
of explaining the existence on the tree of an inscription which, although
difficult to decipher and of great apparent age, was in fact of lesser
antiquity. How, it must now be asked, did the tree come to bear two inscriptions,
both of which apparently read, or originally read, Investigator?
In July 1841, when the Beagle
visited
Sweers Island, Captain Stokes found 'the name of Flinders' ship cut on
a tree . . . . and still perfectly legible although nearly forty years
old'. 'On the opposite side of the trunk', Stokes noted, the name of his
ship and the year of his visit were cut. (30)
In July 1856, Lieutenant Chimmo found that the tree 'still plainly bore
the inscriptions of the "Investigator and Beagle;" the former fifty-four
years since, the latter fifteen'. (31)
Later in 1856, four months after Chimmo's visit, Sweers Island was visited
by the Messenger, bearing part of A.C. Gregory's North Australian
Expedition, under the command of Thomas Baines, on its return from the
Victoria River. The answer to the mystery of the second Investigator inscription
is to be found hidden in Baines's journal. (32)
On 19 November, after having
spent two days replenishing the water casks of the
Messenger,
Baines
recorded that 'nearly all men . . . carved their names on some of the smaller
trunks of the Investigator's tree and one invading the main stem had made
some unintelligible cuts two or three of which came across the name of
the Investigator'. (33)
Baines, who was the artist on the expedition and the leader of this party
by instruction of Gregory, gave orders that 'this relic of the Adventurous
old Navigator should be respected and as it was now barely legible [he]
cut the word afresh just below it'. (34)
Baines also made a sketch of the tree on which he made the note:
Tree near Flinders' Well
on Sweers Island Gulf of Carpentaria with the names of the Investigator
and the Beagle carved on it the uppermost is the original name carved by
Flinders crew, the lower and more distinct was cut by myself to mark the
spot visited by the old navigator when his own might be effaced.
(35)
It is this second Investigator
inscription, made by Baines in 1856, we propose, which caused the confusion
which led to the invention of eighteenth century Dutch and Chinese inscriptions.
Confusion Arises
Three
accounts of visits to the Investigator Tree are known from the period between
that of Baines in 1856, and the removal of the trunk of the tree to Brisbane
about 1889. (36)
In 1861, during an inspection of the island on 30 September, William Landsborough
and Captain W.H. Norman found 'the old tree with [Flinders's] ship's name
cut on it, looking quite healthy'. (37)
The inscription was 'still quite legible, though cut so far back as 1802'.
(38)
George Bourne, second in charge of Landsborough's party, reported seeing
the 'tree with Investigator . . . cut on it, besides other names'. (39)
it was probably the inscription made by Baines in 1856, however, not Flinders's
original, which Landsborough, Norman and Bourne saw. The earlier one was
apparently not noticed.
In 1866, it is claimed, (40)
John G. Macdonald visited the Investigator Tree and recorded the names
and dates which then were legible. Macdonald's list, as published in the
Queenslander
in
1933, began 'FLINDERS INVESTIGATOR 1802'. In August the following year,
the Eagle, under the command of Captain F. Cadell, and en route
to
the Northern Territory on a voyage of discovery, called at Sweers Island.
B.J.
Gulliver, who was attached to the party as botanical collector, came upon
the Investigator Tree which was 'growing and in a healthy state'. Gulliver
copied the inscriptions which were 'distinctly visible' into his diary.
They also included the entry 'FLINDERS INVESTIGATOR 1802'. (41)
Macdonald and Gulliver are
the only known observers to have recorded 'Flinders' among the inscriptions
which they claim to have seen on the Investigator Tree. Although it may
seem improbable that both, independently, would make the same error, the
best explanation which we can give is that this dual mistake is the result
of equally imaginative attempts to interpret the original 'Investigator'
inscription which, a decade before, had been rendered partly illegible
by the careless carvings of someone from the crew of the
Messenger.
This
original inscription, it must be remembered, was now more than sixty years
old, and was therefore unclear even without the damage it sustained in
1856. Unless Macdonald and Gulliver had read Baines's diary, they would
not have suspected that the inscription had been replicated, so their 'Flinders'
inscription is a fair guess. In addition, it must be noted that none of
these 1860s observers refer to pre-Flinders Chinese or Dutch inscriptions.
In 1880, Pennefather interpreted
the older 'Investigator' not as 'Flinders', as Macdonald and Gulliver had
done, but as something in Dutch. The Queenslander reporter in 1889
examined the tree more closely than visitors to Sweers Island had done
previously, for he was able to make out the portion of the original 'Investigator'
inscription which, about twenty years before, Macdonald and Gulliver had
mistaken for the name 'Flinders' and which eight years previously Pennefather
had also misinterpreted. He was also able to rightly assess that the full
word 'Investigator'--the carving made in 1856 by Baines--was a more recent
addition. It is notable that such a careful observer as this person obviously
was, found no inscriptions on the tree which he had cause to think might
be Chinese or Dutch. It is suggested, therefore, that the supposed foreign
scripts are simply imaginative interpretations of the original 'Investigator'
inscription which had been rendered indecipherable, or at least unclear,
by age and injury.
Had Pennefather examined
the tree more closely in 1880 he might never have made the mistake of supposing
the older inscription to be Dutch - but he did. Thus, the idea of pre-Flinders
inscriptions seems to have begun with Pennefather. It was reinforced, however,
by Boyd in 1895, and Edward Palmer later embellished it with dates and
other details to the point where it took on the appearance of fact, not
merely supposition. Of course, there is always the remote possibility that
Palmer had access to reliable information which we have been unable to
locate. In answer to that possibility, we must state that Palmer's account
of the tree is demonstrably wrong in several other details. Palmer records
'Stokes' among the names which he claims were inscribed on the tree, but
no evidence for this can be found. Stokes did, however, have the name of
his ship cut into the tree. Palmer also incorrectly identifies Robert Devine
(whose name was carved into the tree) as the first lieutenant on the Investigator
(1802),
when in fact he was the Captain of the Messenger (1856). (42)
He also records 'Chimmo' in his list of inscriptions, but judging by Chimmo's
own account, is not justified in so doing. Chimmo recorded that:
we
all assembled beneath THE TREE which still plainly bore the inscriptions
of the "Investigator and Beagle;". . . the Torch's name was not
added,
for
if all did the same the original wouId soon be obliterated, which I hold
to be next to sacrilegious, considering that the original and the originator
stand alone as long as wind and weather will permit. (43)
In the light of such a plethora
of inaccuracies, why should Palmer's claims for pre-Flinders Dutch and
Chinese inscriptions not be questioned?
The First 1802 Inscription
The
earliest inscription on the Investigator Tree which we now believe to be
beyond dispute is 'Investigator', apparently carved by one of that ship's
company in 1802. There is nothing, however, in the journals of Flinders,
nor of others such as Robert Brown or Peter Goode who were part of his
party, to confirm that he or a member of his crew actually carved this
inscription on the tree. This omission resulted later in some doubt over
the authenticity of the inscription.
When the Northern Protector
of Aborigines, Dr Walter E. Roth, first visited Sweers Island in 1901 he
took special note of the condition of the Investigator Tree. The limb bearing
the inscription for which the tree was named had been removed 'some few
years back' and deposited in the Queensland Museum. The remainder of this
'very interesting historical landmark' had been mutilated by subsequent
visitors, and only a corner post remained of a fence which had once been
erected around it.
Roth's visit to the Investigator
Tree occurred only a year before the centenary of Flinders's visit to Sweers
Island. Roth thought that the erection of a new fence and some permanent
commemorative inscription would be a fitting way to mark the occasion,
and he offered to assist the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia
(Queensland branch) to establish such a memorial during his return visit
to the island the following year. (44)
The Council of the Society were unreceptive of the idea, however, believing
that it was not at all certain that Flinders, or even any member of the
crew of the Investigator, had marked the tree, and, even if he had,
that the portion of the tree preserved in the Queensland Museum was 'sufficient
for all ordinary requirements'. The Council's belief was based on the absence
of any mention of the tree in Flinders's own account of his visit to Sweers
Island. (45)
There is a simpler explanation,
however, for the lack of a mention of the Investigator Tree in the original
accounts of Flinders's 1802 visit to Sweers Island. It was commonplace
for early navigators and explorers to record names and dates on trees,
and these, as on the Investigator Tree, became important references for
future visitors. It was necessarily less common, however, and therefore
more noteworthy, to record a name on a tree which already bore the name
of a previous visitor. Stokes did so in 1841 and considered the event worthy
of particular mention in his journal. Conversely, that Flinders made no
mention of the tree may indicate only that he was the first to use it in
this manner, that is, that the Investigator Tree bore no earlier inscriptions
than that left by Flinders or his crew in 1802.
Conclusions
The
idea that the Investigator Tree bore inscriptions, either Chinese or Dutch,
pre-dating the visit of Flinders to Sweers Island in 1802 seems to have
been first expressed in 1880 by Captain Pennefather. It was modified and
embellished during the subsequent one-hundred years, most notably by Edward
Palmer in 1903. After close examination of many accounts of the Investigator
Tree written over a period of about 130 years we have found no evidence
to corroborate such claims. It has, however, been possible to explain them.
The Dutch and Chinese inscriptions
were invented to explain the existence on the Investigator Tree of an illegible
- or at least difficult to decipher - inscription which was clearly older
than a legible one apparently dating from 1802. These myths or explanations
drew on knowledge derived primarily from Flinders's account of his visit
to Sweers Island and to the Gulf region generally in 1802, and were perhaps
supported by Chimmo's account of his visit in 1856. They would never have
arisen, however, had it not been for a member of the crew of the Messenger
in
1856 having damaged the original 'Investigator' inscription, and of Thomas
Baines having carved it anew.
Once the idea had originated,
that it managed to survive - indeed thrive - is regrettably due to a series
of cases of unquestioning repetition, combined with sheer wishful thinking.
The perpetuation of Palmer's claims in later articles such as the Queenslander,
E.D.F., Ringata, G.P., Lack and Reed, have together lent considerable apparent
weight to the idea of older inscriptions than the original 'Investigator'.
Analysis of records spanning
well over a century has failed, however, to reveal any credible evidence
for any inscription older than the first 'Investigator' in 1802. The evidence
for earlier inscriptions seems unsound at best. Ironically, Baines's 1856
replication of the original inscription, undertaken to conserve the memory
of Flinders's visit, was probably the underlying cause of the later confusion
and speculation. After about 1860, any visitor to the tree who found a
legible inscription apparently dating from 1802 could only assume that
the adjacent illegible inscription - Flinders's original - was older. Herein,
we believe, lies the explanation for the numerous unproven claims for Dutch
and Chinese inscriptions on the Investigator Tree.
Endnotes
Drs. B.J. Stubbs and
P. Saenger lecture at the Centre for Coastal Management,
Southern Cross University,
Lismore, NSW, 2480.
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