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Captain James Cook gets a lot of credit for being the first European to stumble upon the east coast of Australia
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But he didn't get here in 1770 by accident. In fact, he might not have made it at all if it wasn't..
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..for this. This is one of the charts Cook used to find his way
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a sort of incomplete GPS, to what was then only known as New Holland
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It was made by Dutch explorer Abel Tasman about 130 years before Cook
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What makes it unique is that it shows both of Tasman's epic voyages
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the famous journey around the south of Australia and his lesser-known exploration of the north
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This is Abel Tasman's attempt to solve a puzzle, and that is what was happening in the Southern Hemisphere
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See, it was not many years before that people in the Northern Hemisphere believed it was impossible to cross the equator
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you went through an area called the Torrid Zone, an inferno of a place that was like sailing through hell
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where you would be burned alive. So even though Tasman had shown it was safe
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to cross the equator into the southern hemisphere, and his map is a wonderful depiction of what was going on
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there's still that degree of superstition. And you can see it here with a depiction of scary monsters For nearly 300 years this incredibly important piece of Australia history was lost to our shores and the story of how it was found and returned to this part of the world involves
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the most eclectic cast of characters you could imagine, Bonaparte, Breaker Morant, and the
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very feisty Daisy Bates. In the early 1900s, Daisy discovered in a traveller's journal
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that the map was in the possession of Prince Roland Bonaparte the great nephew of Emperor Napoleon himself
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and that he'd promised to gift the map to Australia when he died
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So in 1926, Daisy wrote a letter to the State Library of New South Wales
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urging them to claim it Would it not be worth the while of the authorities at the library
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to inquire and, if possible, obtain possession of something peculiarly Australian and no doubt valuable
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Yours faithfully, Mrs Daisy M. Bates. Now, Daisy was no shrinking violet
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She married Breaker Moranze, of all people, but it didn't last. They'd split up within a month
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But then she married someone else, and then she married someone else, all the while still married to the Breaker But after a while she got shot at a lot of them and she set herself up as a self protector of Aborigines on the edge of the Nullarbor Plain
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As you do. And the letter she sent off from the desert
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set off a daisy chain of events that led to William Herbert Ifold
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head of the Mitchell Library at the State Library of New South Wales. The information he had from Daisy Bates was actually 23 years old
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So most people today and then would have written a polite note back to Daisy Bates
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thanking them for their information and then filing the letter. But not Eiffel
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It was like a terrier. He must pursue it. And he found out, of course, that Prince Roland Bonaparte had died
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He then used diplomatic contacts to track down his daughter and then asked about the map
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He was operating on a hunch. If you wait for documented fact, you miss out on the goodies
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And like a detective, he tracked down his quarry. So now it gets weird
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The map is now in the possession of Prince Bonaparte's daughter, Marie Bonaparte, who happens to be a sex maniac
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I kid you not. She even has an unspeakable operation to increase her sexual fulfilment But it doesn work So who does she go and see Sigmund Bloody Freud They become best mates
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She helps him escape the Nazis. Bonaparte then gifts the map to Australia
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and everyone lives happily ever after. Seven years after Daisy Bates first wrote her letter
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the map finally arrived in Australia. It would have been like looking on the face of Tutankhamen
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when they found the tomb. Here was this incredibly important map that showed Tasman's charting of the north coast of Australia
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one of the few documents that does that. And so he would have been delighted
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that he'd captured it for Australia, and here it is for all time
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And nothing says more about what the Tasman map means for William Herbert Ifold and the Mitchell Library than this
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it's a stunning marble mosaic map commissioned by Ifold himself right here on the floor of the
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main entrance to the library and I reckon it'll never get lost again
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Hello time travellers, thank you so much for watching this video. If you enjoyed it leave a
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comment below and don't forget to subscribe to the channel. Until next time remember history
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doesn't repeat but it certainly echoes. Thank you
