WEST KIMBERLEY PLACE REPORT - Department of Sustainability ...

the coast which were unmapped were dispersed in various sections of the whole
Australian coastline. Careening Bay exhibits a rare association with the work of
Phillip Parker King and the process under which the first exploratory running surveys
of the Australian coastline were refined into accurate naval charts.
King was the first, and for a number of years the only, Australian-born navigator to
attain eminence in the world outside the Australian colonies. On his first four voyages
he made significant contributions to Australian exploration by providing the first
surveys of previously uncharted coastlines, particularly around the north-west and the
Kimberley. He was the first to utilize nineteenth century advances in hydrographic
equipment and techniques in surveying and charting the Australian coastline. In 1825
the British Admiralty published the eight small-scale sheets of King's surveys,
together with seven larger-scale plans of sections considered important for their detail.
As a result, the process of mapping the extent of the Australian continent was
completed, and charts of the whole Australian coastline were available to mariners for
the first time. King's addition to Flinder's work of mapping the Australian coastline
was so great that in 1829 the Admiralty replaced Flinder's General chart of Terra
Australis or Australia originally published in 1814, with the General chart of Terra
Australis or Australia, from the surveys of Capt n Flinders and King. This
subsequently became Admiralty chart No.1042 (Hordern 1997). Of the eight coastal
survey sheets produced by the British Admiralty from King's work, two were used
during Second World War, and his 'Northern Sheet' became Admiralty Chart No.
BA1044 which was not withdrawn until 1955, over 130 years since it had first been
engraved (Hordern 1997). Lieutenant Commander G. C. Ingleton, himself a former
naval surveyor, has described King as 'the greatest of the early Australian marine
surveyors' and has written that his charts 'although not numerous, were of a quality
not attained by any previous navigator in the Pacific' (Ingleton 1944).
A century and a half after his death, Australia continues to reap the benefits of King's
work. What had begun for the British on Mermaid as a poorly resourced response to
Freycinet's 1817 voyage and the need to maintain British strategic advantage in the
southern hemisphere, grew into a professional hydrographic arm of the Navy that laid
the essential groundwork for any foreign British activity, whether commercially or
politically motivated (Tiley 2006). King's work completed the process started by the
Dutch navigators and Dampier whereby the extent of the Australian continent was
finally delineated for Europeans. Countless vessels have been guided through the
dangerous waters around Australia's coastline to safe havens as a result of the
increasingly accurate chart work done by King and his successors (Hordern 1997).
Only the 'Mermaid' tree in Careening Bay remains in situ as direct evidence of the
man and his great work.
In summary, the 'Mermaid Tree' is the only remaining direct physical link with the
important hydrographic work of Phillip Parker King. Although he left a memorial
hammered into Hamelin's post at Cape Inscription, this has now been removed to the
Western Australian Maritime Museum, and the 'Mermaid' tree in Careening Bay is the
only remaining direct physical link with King which remains in situ.
The Mermaid tree within Careening Bay has outstanding heritage value to the
nation under criterion (b) as rare, in situ, physical evidence of nineteenth
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