Speeches
Wednesday, 16 April 2025
Seven Seas Club of Australia Dinner Meeting
Rod and I are delighted to join members and guests of the Seven Seas Club at your annual Flinders’ Night.
I have her agreement to say that my Honorary Aide-de-Camp Lieutenant Lauren Altschwager RAN, as a hydrographic surveyor, is also very pleased to be here.
Throughout my career, and in my current role, it has been one of my priorities to foster gender equity.
I am pleased the Club has changed its membership criteria and now includes women among its members.
I am delighted that two more female members have been inducted into the club tonight.
That is to be welcomed and encouraged.
Friends
In my address tonight, I will speak about representing South Australia at the reinterment of the remains of Captain Matthew Flinders RN at Donington in Lincolnshire late last year.
I imagine, though, that Ken Messenger, whom I met over there, there has probably had already conveyed to you the sense of occasion we all felt on the day.
Certainly, the model of HMS Investigator which Ken presented on behalf of the Seven Seas Club of Australia attracted much interest and an appropriate degree of admiration.
I was pleased to come across a photograph of it in this month’s edition of Wheelspin, the Sporting Car Club of South Australia’s magazine.
I caught up with Ken again at the opening of the Matthew Flinders exhibition at the Flinders University city campus earlier this year.
It is also a pleasure to see Flinders’ researcher, Honorary Associate Professor Gillian Dooley, here tonight.
Gillian’s account of that wonderful day in Donington was the cover story of the August/September 2024 edition of GeoNews, the bimonthly newsletter of the Royal Geographical Society of South Australia.
I can say to you that day was in my top five as Governor.
Before I continue with the present, let me wind back the clock some way to my first encounter with the story of Matthew Flinders, legendary explorer, navigator, cartographer, seaman and scientist.
For every South Australian, it is a rite of passage to visit Victor Harbour and climb the Bluff.
As a young child, I did so often on family holidays and loved standing atop the Bluff, looking out to sea, admiring the vista of the coast.
I don’t know how many times – it must be many – I have read the inscription on the plaque that commemorates the nearby meeting/ the “encounter” in fact at sea of the two captains Matthew Flinders and Nicholas Baudin in Encounter Bay in 1802.
As a primary school student in the 1960s here in Adelaide, I learned about Flinders, but knowledge of the profound impact Flinders had on our state and country came later.
As a career diplomat, the story of the encounter took on a new significance for me.
Both captains were far from home, at the other end of the world, not knowing if their two countries England and France were in fact still at war.
But the two explorers agreed to meet, and in the universal spirit of scientific exchange, put aside any potential political differences and exchanged information about their explorations.
Detente at its finest!
Fast forward to today and, like you, I have walked down Flinders Street, travelled to the Flinders Ranges, driven the Flinders Highway, been to Flinders Chase on Kangaroo Island, visited Flinders University, and the Flinders Medical Centre.
Young people facing behavioural challenges take part in Operation Flinders, hiking through the ancient land of the Flinders Ranges to get a new perspective on their lives.
I have also had the pleasure of meeting, on a number of occasions, police horse Flinders, a member of South Australia Police’s mounted operations unit.
Outside Government House there is the statue of Matthew Flinders and inside in the Adelaide room stands a maquette of the statue of Flinders and his cat Trim, which stands on the esplanade at Port Lincoln and, for a time, outside Euston Station in London.
Flinders named many places in what we now call South Australia, including Fowler’s Bay, Cape Catastrophe and Port Lincoln on Eyre Peninsula, and Kangaroo Island and Mount Lofty to name just five.
As I took off from Adelaide Airport to fly to Donington - in a mere 24 hours, unimaginably quicker than Flinders’ voyages – below me for a moment was the coast he explored as part of his navigation of the Continent.
We still have the spirit of exploration with us today.
We marvel that astronauts go beyond our earth’s boundaries in the quest of scientific exploration. We admire their bravery and their spirit of discovery.
Author Rob Mundle in the opening to his book Flinders the Man who Mapped Australia, likens those early European explorers to the modern astronauts who undertake similar long and intrepid expeditions to the unknown.
At Donington we all had a sense that Flinders’ long journey was being completed.
The people of Donington came out in force to honour their famous son. The village was bedecked with bunting, people lined the streets, and you could even get a Flinders cocktail or a Flinders beer at the pub.
Everyone who was there from South Australia was taken by the warmth of the celebrations and the joy in the village and how welcome we were made to feel.
Because later in life, sadly Matthew Flinders didn’t receive the ceremony and accolades that hindsight might expect.
As a previous speaker at the Seven Seas Club has outlined, he was held prisoner for six and a half years by the French in Mauritius on his journey home because the nations were still at war. It was wonderful that representatives of Mauritius travelled to Donington for the celebrations and that their sand was mixed with ours in Flinders’ final resting place.
Flinders at the aged of 40 died a few years later in England – far too young – his grave in the St James burial ground becoming unknown, but rediscovered during earthworks for extensions to the Euston Railway station.
The story of its rediscovery and his return to Donington, is a moving story which almost defies credulity.
At the church service in his home town, Flinders’ role in the subsequent settlement of South Australia and the inspiring example he set for us was acknowledged.
And we should all be grateful to direct descendants of Matthew Flinders, Rachel Flinders Lewis, Dr Matha Flinders Lewis, and Susie Flinders Beatty for their generous gift of the lead coffin breast plate to South Australia.
The plate is exquisite. Its copperplate lettering and flower motifs bring us closer to the man who left an indelible mark on our history.
My Official Secretary carefully carried it in a custom-made case on our flight home to be entrusted to the History Trust of South Australia for future display at the South Australian Maritime Museum at Port Adelaide.
I hope many take the opportunity to see it and to be inspired to learn more about this remarkable man and his legacy.
And in doing so, I hope they will be encouraged to achieve their highest potential, to be curious and to take a global perspective.
Friends.
On a lighter note, there have been many books written about Matthew Flinders.
One in particular, My Love Must Wait, a novel by Ernestine Hill tells the tale of how Flinders was separated from his new bride for some years during his voyages and imprisonment.
The book was voraciously read by my aunt when she was near to giving birth, a time when there’s not much else that can be done but wait and read.
She enjoyed it so much that she named her son Matthew.
While that particular Matthew didn’t go to sea, my family does have many connections with the water, as do I as Governor.
As the first female captain of the Adelaide University Boat Club, I loved the joy of being on the river and appreciated the team work and camaraderie amongst fellow rowers.
My late father was a keen recreational sailor, having learned to sail in the sea scouts, graduating to trailer‑sailors in adulthood, followed by larger boats, each of which he loved.
Together, we’d watch the start of the Sydney to Hobart on television every year and followed America’s Cup racing closely.
This exposure to sailing and my own occasional efforts has given me a lifelong respect for, and admiration of, sailors, both amateur and professional.
That respect has been honed as Governor when I open the season at the Adelaide Sailing Club and the Royal South Australian Yacht Squadron.
Common to all yacht and sailing clubs, the love of the sea, and the camaraderie of sailors is clearly palpable; such camaraderie you also share from your own love of the sea and your coming together through the Seven Seas Club of Australia.
And I expect some of you are eagerly looking forward to the SA Wooden Boat Festival in a just over a week’s time, just as Rod and I are. Perhaps we’ll see you at Goolwa.
Friends
Thank you again for the invitation to be here tonight. I am happy to take any questions.