Qualla: French Western Australia

French Western Australia: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:JarrahTree, CC BY 2.5 au. On 30 March 1772, on a low sandy island at the mouth of Shark Bay, a French officer named Jean Mengaud de la Hage raised a white ensign, read a proclamation to the wind, and buried a glass bottle in the dunes. Inside it was a parchment claiming this entire coast for King Louis XV, sealed with two silver écu coins. The captain who had brought the expedition here, Louis Aleno de Saint-Aloüarn, stayed aboard his ship, too ill to come ashore. He would be dead within months, and France would do nothing with the claim. But the bottle stayed in the sand for two centuries, a buried promise that the western third of Australia might have flown a different flag.

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Image: User:JarrahTree | CC BY 2.5 au

French Western Australia: The Bay of Taking Possession

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ernest Scott, Public domain. Saint-Aloüarn arrived at Dirk Hartog Island with two ships, having been separated from the rest of his squadron in the Indian Ocean. On 28 March he became the first European to formally take possession of any part of Western Australia. Two days later, at a cove the French named B...

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Image: Ernest Scott | Public domain

French Western Australia: The Bottle in the Dunes

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sam Wilson (taken with LG G6), CC BY-SA 4.0. The story might have ended as a footnote, except the French were meticulous, and the dunes kept their secret. In 1998, more than two centuries later, a team led by Philippe Godard and Max Cramer searching Turtle Bay turned up a lead bottle cap with a coin embedded in it. The find...

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Image: Sam Wilson (taken with LG G6) | CC BY-SA 4.0

French Western Australia: Almost a French Australia

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Olszewski, CC BY-SA 4.0. Saint-Aloüarn's claim was only the opening move. Three decades later, Napoleon dispatched Nicolas Baudin with the corvettes Géographe and Naturaliste on a scientific expedition that spent seventy days mapping Shark Bay in 1801. Aboard were the naturalists François Péron and Charl...

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Image: Chris Olszewski | CC BY-SA 4.0

French Western Australia: Reading the Coast in French

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hughesdarren, Public domain. The French lost the colony, but they kept the map. Roughly 260 places in Western Australia still carry names the explorers gave them. Cape Naturaliste and Geographe Bay are named for Baudin's ships. The Recherche Archipelago and D'Entrecasteaux honour an earlier French voyage. Pé...

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Image: Hughesdarren | Public domain