1802. Surveyor-General Grimes went there with him, and during the survey
he made, is reported to have camped on the spot where Melbourne now
stands. The port was discovered three times independently in the same
year. First by Murray, next by Baudin, and again by Flinders. Colonel
Collins, formerly of Norfolk Island, was dispatched in the year that
Governor King wrote his letter (1803) to found a township. He at once
declared the country unfit for settlement, with scarcely any examination;
and it was immediately abandoned in favour of Van Dieman's Land.

The results of efforts at inland discovery were now but slight. Flinders
on the south coast had sailed up Spencer's Gulf, and from Mount Brown at
the head a fine view was obtained, but nothing more.


"Neither rivers nor lakes could be perceived, nor anything of the sea to
the south-eastward. In almost every direction the eye traversed over an
uninterruptedly flat, woody country; the sole exceptions being the ridge
of mountains extending north and south, and the water of the gulph to the
south-westward."


Compared with the great size of the island continent, it will be seen
that but an insignificant portion had, by the end of the eighteenth
century come under the sway of colonisation. The rivers Hawkesbury,
Nepean, and Grose, with other minor tributaries in the neighbourhood of
Sydney. To the north, the river Hunter, and to the south, the district
now known as the Illawarra. This was the sum total of the known country
inside the coastal line; and with all the wish to extend their knowledge
of their wide domain, the administrative demands of the little colony
pressed too heavily on the authorities to permit them to devote much time