ABC2 - Navigators - Baudin Vs Flinders - Part2: Discovery (2003)

In March 1802, Flinders thinks he has finally discovered the huge strait rumoured to split Australia into two separate landmasses. Instead, he finds disaster, losing seven men at ‘Cape Catastrophe’. A few days later, to the amazement of both men and their crews, he meets his French rival Nicholas Baudin, approaching from the opposite direction along the coast that the French call ‘Terre Napoleon’ The two men compare findings and together realise there is no strait splitting the continent. The explorers sail on in their opposite directions. Baudin consolidates French claims to the western coasts and amasses one of the most spectacular scientific collections ever assembled. Flinders completes the charting of the eastern and northern coasts but his rotting ship disintegrates and Flinders and his crew are shipwrecked and abandoned.

Baudin’s expedition is the first to get back to Europe and the French are the first to publish their findings, but their claims to New Holland are eventually scuttled in a final story of subterfuge, betrayal and the re-writing of history. The great race between Flinders and Baudin will cost one man his freedom and the other his life- and deliver Britain the prize of Australia.