On This Day March 30, 1772

France makes its first formal claim to Australian territory.
 

Over 150 years before English explorer Lieutenant James Cook ever sighted eastern Australia, the Dutch landed on the Western coast. In 1616, Dutch sea-captain Dirk Hartog landed at Cape Inscription, where he left a pewter plate with an inscription recording his landing. However, it was the French who made the first formal claim to Western Australian soil.

On 30 March 1772, French vessel Gros Ventre, under the command of Louis-François-Marie Aleno de Saint-Aloüarn, anchored off Turtle Bay on the northern coast of Dirk Hartog Island, Shark Bay. Mid-morning, Saint-Aloüarn sent a crew to reconnoitre the mainland. After venturing inland for some 14km without sighting any other living person, officer Mingault or Mengaud (spellings vary in documentation) took formal possession of the land, raising the flag. The occasion was documented, and the papers placed in a bottle and buried at the foot of a small tree, together with two coins (écus) of 'six francs' each, enclosed in lead capsules. The ship's log refers to this Bay as the 'Baie de Prise de Possession' (the Bay of Taking of Possession).

The first of the coins, dated 1766, was recovered in 1998 in an expedition led by Mr Philippe Godard of Noumea, together with Max Cramer, Kim Cramer, John Eckersley, Tom Bradley and Chris Shine of Geraldton. This prompted another expedition which retrieved a bottle containing only sand, with no trace of the document, despite the contents being carefully analysed by an archaeological team.

On This Day March 17, 1912.

Lawrence Oates, of Scott's ill-fated expedition to the Antarctic, utters his famous last words: 'I am just going outside and I may be some time.'
 

Robert Falcon Scott, born in 1868, was a Royal Naval officer and explorer who commanded the National Antarctic Expedition in Discovery which began in 1900. In December 1902, Scott's expedition reached the farthest point south of any known exploration party. Following new discoveries in the Antarctic region, Scott was keen to be the first to reach the South Pole. He took with him Lieutenant Henry Bowers, Dr Edward Wilson, Petty Officer Edgar Evans and army Captain Lawrence Oates. Upon reaching the Pole on 17 January 1912, he found that Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen had beaten him to it by just one month.

Scott's party made slow progress, due to a combination of particularly severe weather, and their own determination to forge ahead laden with their rock samples. Evans died after a fall which resulted in a quick physical and mental breakdown. Lawrence Oates lost a foot to frostbite and was suffering residual effects of an old war wound. Oates is remembered as the consummate British sacrificial hero as, feeling he was holding the party back, he departed their shelter one morning, uttering the famous words, "I am just going outside and I may be some time." This was on 17 March 1912. He did not return. The bodies of the remaining three members of Scott's party were found in their camp on 10 February 1913, just twenty kilometres from a substantial depot of supplies. With them were their diaries detailing their journey and their demise.