It was described and included in Philip Parker King’s (1793-1856) work that described his surveys and charting of the Intertropical & West Coasts of Australia in the years 1818-1822. The entire work was published 1826 in London.
In 1821 during Parker King’s survey of the North West coastline the HMS Bathurst crew, encountered the Worrorra at Hanover Bay. King wrote in his narrative that on our presenting them with some of the fish that we had caught…they dropped their spears and immediately returned us something in exchange; one gave a belt…and the other a club… Soon after the exchange of goods, a British officer was speared in the back. The British retaliated by shooting a local man in the shoulder and then left. In the panic of the moment it is likely that neither side understood why the encounter had unravelled. The stone spearhead illustrated comes from that moment. When the British returned to the region in the 1880’s it was to secure land for cattle.
Phillip Parker King, the eldest son of Governor King, was born on Norfolk Island in 1791. He joined the British Navy and was the first Australian to become an admiral
In 1817 the British government decided that ‘circumstances consequent upon the restoration of Peace … rendered it most important to explore, with as little delay as possible, that part of the coast of New Holland … not surveyed or examined by the late Captain Flinders’, and appointed Lieutenant King to do this. Before he departed King married Harriet, daughter of Christopher Lethbridge, of Launceston, Cornwall. He arrived at Port Jackson in September 1817 in the Dick with instructions from the Colonial Office to Governor Lachlan Macquarie that he was to be provided with the most suitable vessel and a carefully chosen crew. The 84-ton cutter Mermaid was bought for £2000 and the expedition sailed from Sydney on 22 December with a complement of nineteen including Allan Cunningham, John Septimus Roe and the Aboriginal Bungaree. By way of King Georges Sound they reached North West Cape where the survey began.
King had been instructed by the Admiralty to discover whether there was any river ‘likely to lead to an interior navigation into this great continent’, and by the Colonial Office to collect information about climate, topography, fauna, timber, minerals, and the natives and the prospects of developing trade with them. From February until June 1818 the expedition surveyed the coast as far as Van Diemen’s Gulf and had many meetings with Aborigines and Malay proas. In June the Mermaid visited Timor and then returned to Sydney the way she had come, arriving on 29 July. Next December and January King surveyed the recently discovered Macquarie Harbour in Van Diemen’s Land and sailed in May 1819 for Torres Strait. He took John Oxley as far as the Hastings River, and went on to survey the coast between Cape Wessel and Admiralty Gulf. He returned to Sydney on 12 January 1820.
In Sydney Cove the Mermaid was careened, re-coppered and caulked and then immersed for several days to destroy the cockroaches that infested the ship. However, both cockroaches and rats soon reappeared. Only two of the former crew volunteered to sail again and a new crew was formed, this time including a surgeon. The Mermaid sailed north on 14 June 1820. At Bowen she ran aground and suffered much damage. Surveys were made between Admiralty Gulf and Brunswick Sound on the north-west coast, but in September the ship began to leak badly. She was careened and ten days were spent repairing her at what is now known as Careening Bay. King then left the coast and sailed to Port Jackson where, after a narrow escape from wreck off Botany Bay, he arrived on 9 December.
King made his fourth and final survey in northern Australia in the Bathurst, 170 tons, which carried a complement of thirty-three, not counting a girl who had stowed away for love of the bos’n. In place of Bungaree King took another Aboriginal, Bundell. The Bathurst sailed on 26 May 1821 from Sydney by way of Torres Strait to the north-west coast. After a visit to Mauritius for rest and refreshment the Bathurst resumed the survey of the west coast. King arrived back in Sydney in April 1822. On these four voyages he made significant contributions to Australian exploration by establishing the insularity of several islands, by investigating the inner geography of many gulfs, and by giving the first report of Port Darwin.
