A number of convicts were sent out under Captain Philips to Botany Bay, and from that time onward English explorers gradually determined with accuracy both the coast-line and the interior of the huge stretch of land known to us as Australia.

One of the ships that had accompanied Cook on his second voyage had made a rough survey of Van Diemen's Land, and had come to the conclusion that it joined on to the mainland.
But in 1797, Bass, a surgeon in the navy, coasted down from Port Jackson to the south in a fine whale boat with a crew of six men, and discovered open sea running between the southernmost point and Van Diemen's Land; this is still known as Bass' Strait.

A companion of his, named Flinders, coasted, in 1799, along the south coast from Cape Leeuwin eastward, and on this voyage met a French ship at Encounter Bay, so named from the _rencontre_.

Proceeding farther, he discovered Port Philip; and the coast-line of Australia was approximately settled after Captain P.P.King in four voyages, between 1817 and 1822, had investigated the river mouths.
[Illustration: THE EXPLORATION OF AUSTRALIA.] The interior now remained to be investigated.

On the east coast this was rendered difficult by the range of the Blue Mountains, honeycombed throughout with huge gullies, which led investigators time after time into a cul-de-sac; but in 1813 Philip Wentworth managed to cross them, and found a fertile plateau to the westward.
Next year Evans discovered the Lachlan and Macquarie rivers, and penetrated farther into the Bathurst plains.