Matthew Flinders and his map of Australia

Australians are demanding that Britain hands back a map of the country drawn by explorer Matthew Flinders in 1804. Often referred to as the nation's 'birth certificate' on account of the fact that it's the first map to refer to the land mass as Australia, it is currently currently kept at the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office (UKHO) in Taunton, Somerset - but is not on display.

In 1798, Lincolnshire born Lieutenant Matthew Flinders, who had studied navigation and cartography under William Bligh joined Royal Navy surgeon George Bass on a voyage around Van Diemen's Land, charting its coasts and proving that it was separate from the main continent. From 1802 to 1803 he circumnavigated the continent aboard the Investigator, filling in many unknown stretches of coast on the charts. Flinders's map, produced while he was detained by the governor of Mauritius from 1803-10, was the first to call the continent Australia. The name was adopted by the British Admiralty in 1824.Flinders died in 1814.

Australian MP Greg Hunt has written to the Dr Liam Fox, the British Defence Secretary, asking for his assistance and has started a petition calling for the return of the map to Australia. However, the Daily Telegraph reports that UKHO's response to the request was to say: "Matthew Flinders was a Commander in Her Majesty's Royal Navy on board the HMS Investigator and, as such, the UK Government holds it as a public record and [it] is officially part of the UK National Archives."

Matthew Flinders's Voyage to Terra Australis can be read here and for a little more information about him see this Manchester Guardian piece that appeared on July 21 1919:

Ludwig Leichhardt

The Northern Territory News reports that a 'boffin' is to travel through the the north west deserts of Australia in a bid to find the final resting place of explorer Ludwig Leichhardt, who disappeared around 165 years ago. Central to the search for evidence is the fact that Leichhardt was know to carve the letter L into trees to mark his campsites. Dr Darrell Lewis, a National Museum of Australia research fellow, said "All the explorers marked trees everywhere ... It was really to help future people to relate to the maps." An illustration of this historical graffiti can be seen in an 1858 Sydney Morning Herald article.

Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Leichhardt, who was German, began geological investigations in Australia in 1841. In 1848 he set out with the object of crossing the continent from east to west, but the last heard of him was from McPherson's Station, on the Cogoon River, Darling Downs, on April 3 1848. Five relief expeditions were sent out between 1851 and 1865, but no trace of the expedition was ever found. Various theories have been put forward about the disappearance including that the group was massacred by Aborigines, washed away in a flooded creek or perished of thirst and starvation in the desert. The following report about one of search parties appeared in the Manchester Guardian on January 14 1862:

Read Leichhardt's Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia, here.

Phillip Law

The Australian press has been reporting the death of renowned Antarctic explorer Phillip Law, at the age of 97. Often known as Mr Antarctica, in a four-decade career he helped map more than 5,000 km of the continent's coastline as well as setting up three Australian bases during his 28 trips to the region.

The Mawson station, the first of these, was establihed in 1954 and the following piece by Law appeared in the Guardian appeared on February 4 of that year.

See the Australian Antarctic Division for a history of the country's exploration of the white continent.

The Burke and Wills expedition

The Melbourne Age recently reported that an expedition is to retrace the steps of explorers Burke and Will,150 years after the ill-fated pair made the first traverse of Australia from south to north.

In 1860, Robert O'Hara Burke and William Wills were part of the Victorian Exploring Expedition, a large, and well-equipped party, that aimed to complete the journey from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria, and return safely after making scientific observations. Instead, it was a shambolic affair that saw the death of eight of its members including Burke, the leader, and Wills its navigator.

Incompetence, impatience and mismanagement are just some of the words that have been used to describe why the expedition was such a disaster. Ignorance is another. Rather than use the knowledge and help offered by Aborigines, the expedition, as Jonathan King writes in the Age, shot at "the blacks" and Wills described the tribes as "mean-spirited and contemptible in every respect."

The 2010 expedition, which sets out in August,has an environmental objective with plans to carry out an audit of such matters as drought-induced soil erosion and feral animals. A century and a half after the orginal trek, the leaders will be seeking the advice and help of Aboriginal people and tribal elders are planning to welcome the entourage.

Despite it being a much celebrated catalogue of disasters, the Royal Society of Victoria, which is organising the commemoration, hopes to remind people of the expedition's achievements in exploration and scientific discovery, and the opening up of a path which many others would soon follow.

The Guardian reported the fate of the expedition on January 14 1862 (reprinted from the Sydney Morning Herald).

More information about Burke and Wills here.