HISTORY WEEK LECTURE
EXPLORERS, MONUMENTS & TOURISTS by Associate Professor Richard White
SUNDAY, 8TH SEPTEMBER 2013
1.30 – 3.00PM
Laperouse Museum
On the 6th September, 1825 the navigator and explorer Hyacinthe de Bougainville laid the foundation stone for the establishment of the Laperouse Monument.
This fascinating lecture examines the ways in which sites associated with Australian exploration were marked out, commemorated and identified as tourist sites. The monument to Laperouse, inspired by Bougainville, is particularly important in its role as arguably Australia’s most significant historic monument during the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Explorers themselves had their own sense of historical tradition: they sought out the signs of their predecessors and commemorated them. So were explorers themselves Australia’s first ‘history tourists’?
Join Friends of the Laperouse Museum during History Week on this 188th anniversary of Bougainville’s visit to Botany Bay.
Richard White is Associate Professor at the University of Sydney, where he has taught Australian history and the history of travel and tourism since 1989. His publications include Inventing Australia, The Oxford Book of Australian Travel Writing, Cultural History in Australia, On Holidays: A History of Getting Away in Australia, Symbols of Australia and, most recently, Playing in the Bush: recreation and national parks in New South Wales. He was co-editor of the journal History Australia from 2009 to 2013. His work on the history of tourism to Australia’s past has led to an exhibition, ‘Touring the Past’, for the Macleay Museum, University of Sydney, from August 2013 to February 2014.
Dr. William Land AM
President
FOLM Members: Free
Non members: Included with Museum Entry Fee
Following the lecture – afternoon tea will be provided on the verandah of the Museum.
RSVP / Further information: laperousemuseum (at) hotmail.com
Further reading:
The liaison between Bougainville and Mrs Harriott Ritchie
The Governor’s noble guest:
Hyacinthe de Bougainville’s account of Port Jackson, 1825
Baron Hyacinthe de Bougainville was the son of the famous French Pacific navigator Louis-Antoine de Bougainville. Like his father he was an officer of the French navy and in 1825 he commanded an expedition which took the ships Thetis and Esperance to Macau, Manila and New South Wales.
This book is a translation of the private diaries kept by the Baron during his stay in New South Wales. In the diaries he recorded both his reactions to the society of the colony and his observations on some of its leading figures, among whom were Governor Brisbane; the explorers Hume, Hovell, Blaxland and Oxley; John Macarthur, Samuel Marsden and John Piper. The diaries also contain de Bougainville’s records of private comments these dignitaries made about one another, thus providing for the reader not only insights into the major personalities of the colony but also hitherto unpublished information about the administrative structures of New South Wales at this time.
De Bougainville also gives detailed descriptions of expeditions to the Blue Mountains, Emu Plains, Cow Pastures, Windsor, Parramatta, Liverpool and other localities.
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La Perouse Museum & Headland 
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