A prize item on my home bookshelf is a copy of French explorer Nicolas Baudin’s journal from his 1802 scientific voyage of Tasmania as captain of the Géographe. Aboard the sister sailing ship, the Naturaliste, were brothers Louis-Henri Freycinet and Louis de Freycinet, a family name well known to Tasmanians and visitors to the state’s east coast. Freycinet Peninsula, famous for its jagged, orange peaks and clear waters, carries the memories of the expedition proudly on its granite back.

The voyage of discovery took a keen interest in the plants, animals and people of the places visited, providing rare insight into two centuries of change. Of his visit to Bruny Island in Tasmania’s south, Baudin wrote of the sheer abundance of oysters and lobster, saying, “Every day we caught more than the crew could eat.” 

The oysters he was referring to were the native oysters (Ostrea angasi), flat-shelled delicacies harder to come by now in waterways dominated by Pacific oysters (Crassostrea gigas), introduced from Japan in the 1940s for aquaculture. Baudin commented, too, on the heavy consumption of native oysters and lobsters by the local Aboriginal population, writing of the food items, “Everywhere one finds piles of remains.”

He mentions the profusion of abalone (ear-shells) off Bruny Island. “The women were returning from fishing, laden with lobsters and ear-shells that they had no doubt caught on the rocks on the northern tip of the island.” The largely peaceful interactions and exchanges between the French crews and the nuenonne people of Bruny Island provide sobering reading, given the tragedy that unfolded for Aboriginal people across Tasmania (lutruwita) in subsequent decades.

Of birdlife, Baudin noted that on Partridge Island, off south Bruny, “There seemed to be large numbers of birds, several of which had extremely attractive plumage. However, parrots and parakeets appeared to be the dominant species. I do not know why the island was called Partridge Island, for we did not see a single one, although we covered a fairly large area of it. We killed only a thrush and a parrot.”

While these bird sightings likely included the, still common, green rosella, the largest of Australia’s rosellas at up to 36cm in length, the mention of parakeets raises the likelihood that the French sea captain also saw the now critically endangered, and significantly smaller (at 21cm) orange-bellied parrot (Neophema chrysogaster).

Known by the ornithologist John Gould as the orange-bellied grass-parakeet, orange-bellied parrots were first recorded from a specimen found at Bruny Island’s Adventure Bay, a stone’s throw from Partridge Island, on one of James Cook’s expeditions in the 1770s.

As I write this in 2020, the species is possibly Australia’s rarest bird and the rarest parrot in the world. It is in danger of becoming extinct within three to five years. But it is not the only bird species in trouble in Tasmania. 

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Did Baudin’s January 1802 sighting of “parakeets” also include the currently critically endangered swift parrot (Lathamus discolor), of which there are an estimated 2,000 remaining in the wild nationwide? The swift parrot, at 25cm in length, is known to breed on Bruny Island and its surrounds, so it is probable this species was among those sighted by the French expedition of scientific discovery that remarkable summer.

I have sailed around, and explored, Partridge Island several times and there wasn’t an abundance of “parrots and parakeets”. What must these forests have looked and sounded like when they were the dominant species? A national recovery plan is now underway for both the the swift and orange-bellied parrots, and Tasmania is key given that both species breed here and over-winter on the mainland. 

Baudin also wrote of crossing Partridge Island and coming across “some really enormous trees”. Most of them had been evenly burnt out to a height of two or three metres, and “the chamber that had thus been made could easily hold eight or 10 people”. He mentions the large trees on the island being eucalypts, and the modern mind boggles at the idea of gums of this size. 

The swift parrot breeds in hollows of old-growth eucalypts, with the national recovery plan noting that deep hollows form in eucalypts older than 140 years, making these historic observations highly relevant to understanding the parrot’s historical range. The plan also specifies that, “The distribution of nesting swift parrots each breeding season is determined largely by the distribution and intensity of blue gum (Eucalyptus globulus) and black gum (Eucalyptus ovata) flowering.”

Given the absence on Bruny Island of introduced sugar gliders, which present a threat to swift parrots, and the need to protect swift parrot habitat, state government logging on the island has recently been suspended.

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Nicolas Baudin also wrote of “large clumps of kelp” in the waters off Tasmania’s east coast, from where 95 per cent of giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) has since disappeared. In 2012, giant kelp was the first marine ecological community to be listed as endangered by the Federal Government.

Last summer, I sailed with my family along Tasmania’s southern coast to Port Davey in the remote south-west, the wildest place I have ever been. There, given the cooler waters, stands of giant kelp still break the ocean surface, and towering middens, signalling tens of thousands of years of habitation, line west-coast beaches To my eye, the south-west appeared free from industrial-age impacts, and travelling there felt akin to journeying back in time.

Yet, dipping again into Baudin’s journal on my return, it was evident that, even off remote south-west Tasmania, there have been changes. We spotted several albatross as we sailed on the Southern Ocean, several kilometres from the coast, but in nothing like the numbers Baudin describes in his log in the same area: “We were lucky enough to catch a type of albatross on the line which was unknown to us and which we found very beautiful. This bird is apparently voracious, for more than 20 or so became hooked on the bait thrown to them; but as their strength was considerable, we were unable to haul them aboard before they had snapped our lines and, more often than not, broken the hooks by which they were caught. Thus we only acquired the one.”

Such historical records provide valuable glimpses of Tasmania pre-colonisation, and a qualitative baseline upon which we can consider change, which continues apace.

Dr Katherine Johnson is a science writer and novelist based in Tasmania. She has published in The Conversation, Good Weekend (Sydney Morning Herald) and CSIRO’s ECOS magazine. Her fourth novel, Paris Savages, was released in the UK in July. Visit www.katherineJohnsonauthor.com and connect on social media via @KJohnsonauthor.