an, one of the headlands flanking the
entrance to the Port.

A perfectly just recognition of the real significance of Flinders in
southern exploration has led to his name being honoured and commemorated
even with respect to parts where he was not the actual discoverer. It is
a function of history to do justice in the large, abiding sense,
discriminating the spiritual potency of personalities that dominate
events from the accidental connection of lesser persons with them. In
that wider sense, Flinders was the true discoverer of the whole of the
southern coast of Australia. He, of course, made no such claim; but we
who estimate the facts after a long lapse of years can see clearly that
it was so. Only the patching up of the old Reliance kept him in Sydney
while Bass was creeping round the coast to Westernport. Only the illness
of an official and other trifling causes prevented him from discovering
Port Phillip. It was the completion of his chart of Bass Strait, based
upon his friend's memoranda, that led the Admiralty to direct Grant to
sail through the strait from the west, and so enabled him to be the first
to come upon the coast from Cape Banks to Cape Schanck. It was only the
delay before-mentioned and the contrary winds that hindered him from
preceding Baudin along the fifty leagues that are credited to that
navigator.

Thus it is that although not a league of the coastline of Victoria is in
strict verity to be attributed to Flinders as discoverer, he is
habitually cited as if he were. Places are named after him, memorials are
erected to him. The highest mountain in the vicinity of Port Phillip
carries on its summit a tablet celebrating the fact that Flinders entered
the port at the end of April, 1802; but there is nowhere a memorial to
remind anyone that Murray actually discovered it in January of the same
year. The reason is that, while it is felt that time and circumstance
enabled others to do things which must be inscribed on the historical
page, the triumph that should have followed from skill, knowledge,
character, preparation and opportunities well and wisely used, was fairly
earned by Flinders. The dates, not the merits, prevent their being
claimed for him. His personality dominates the whole group of
discoveries. We chronicle the facts in regard to Grant, Baudin, Murray,
and Bass, but we feel all the time that Flinders was the central man.

Not being aware of Murray's good fortune in January, Flinders trea