Smyth - Napoleons Australia: the incredible story of Bonapartes secret plan to invade Australia

In the northern winter of 1814, a French armada set sail for New South Wales. The armadas mission was the invasion of Sydney, and its inspiration and fate were interwoven with one of historys greatest love stories that of Napoleon and Josephine.

The Empress Josephine was fascinated by all things Australian. In the gardens of her grand estate, Malmaison, she kept kangaroos, emus, black swans and other Australian animals, along with hundreds of native plants brought back by French explorers in peacetime. And even when war raged between France and Britain, ships known to be carrying Australian flora and fauna for Josephines Ark were given safe passage.

Napoleon, too, had an abiding interest in Australia, but for quite different reasons. What Britain and its Australian colonies did not know was that French explorers visiting these shores, purporting to be naturalists on scientific expeditions, were in fact spies, gathering vital information on the colonys defences. It was ripe for the picking.

The conquest of Australia was on Bonapartes agenda for world domination, and detailed plans had been made for the invasion, and for how French Australia would be governed. How it all came together and how it fell apart is a remarkable tale history with an element of the What if? No less remarkable is how the tempestuous relationship between Napoleon and his empress affected the fate of the Great Southern Land.

My opinion, and that of all those among us who have more particularly occupied themselves with investigating the workings of that colony, is that it should be destroyed as soon as possible. Today we could destroy it easily. We shall not be able to do so in 25 years time.

Franois Prons secret report on Port Jackson, 1802

Take the English colony of Port Jackson, which is to the south of Isle de France, and where considerable resources will be found.

Napoleons orders to a French naval squadron, 1810

It was resurrection, right there in our backyard clear and undeniable. A tree we had assumed to be dead and gone was blooming again. Over many months, disease had withered and rotted its branches, then its trunk, which inevitably snapped in the wind, leaving nothing but a ragged stump.

Many more months later, able to bear the eyesore no longer, I stood before it, bush saw in hand, preparing to cut it off at the base. It was then that my wife, Kate, noticed tiny green shoots struggling out from cracks in what was left of the bark, and suggested we grant the revenant a reprieve until it either flowered or wilted yet again.

I am no gardener, so I made it my business to find out whether or not apparently deceased golden wattle trees were in the habit of staging a second coming. A little research revealed that yes, Acacia pycnantha often regrows from damaged trees, and within weeks the gnarled old stump was crowned with a spray of yellow flowers. Salvation was at hand.

An odd fact about the distribution of the plant piqued my curiosity. The golden wattle Australias floral emblem is native to the east coast of Australia. So why does it grow wild on St Helena, a remote volcanic island in the South Atlantic?

The answer is that Napoleon Bonaparte, on being exiled to St Helena in 1815 after his defeat at Waterloo, brought golden wattle with him from Empress Josephines garden. Josephine, who was enamoured of all things Australian, filled her garden at Malmaison with animals and plants from the Great Southern Land, and Napoleon planted golden wattle on St Helena to remind him of the love of his life. And though the fates decided otherwise, there was a time when he could have given her the Great Southern Land itself.

But then, when I told Kate of my serendipitous discovery, she looked at me quizzically and asked, Are you talking about the grevillea?

Sorry?

The stump thats flowering again is a grevillea.

Are you sure?

Of course Im sure. Anyone can tell a grevillea from a wattle.

Anyone but me, apparently. My consolation, however, is that had it not been for my appalling ignorance of native flora this story would not have been written.

Terry Smyth, February 2018

Shocking the very air, the alien sound of gunfire disturbs the ancient solitude of Shark Bay, Western Australia. It is Tuesday 17 March 1772. As Malgana people watch from a safe distance, a party of uniformed white men row ashore from a waiting ship.

The Malgana have known such visitors before. In 1616, the Dutch explorer Dirk Hartog stepped on to Shark Bay and left a record of his visit engraved on a pewter plate nailed to a wooden post. In essence, the plate declared that Dirk was here.

Another Dutch captain, Willem de Vlamingh, visited the bay in 1697, found Hartogs plate and left behind one of his own. Basically, its message to posterity was that Willem was here too.

Two years later, the English pirate and explorer William Dampier made landfall here and gave the bay its name before sailing on to Timor.

Now, in March of 1772, come the French. Unlike past European visitors, however, they have not come ashore merely to declare, Moi aussi ! Officers and sailors from the ship Gros Ventre on a voyage of discovery trudge up the beach to the base of a hill where, with due pomp and ceremony, they claim possession of the land in the name of King Louis XV of France. The French ensign is raised, the sailors fire a musket volley, and a young officer, Mengaud de la Hage, recites the proclamation of annexation.

That done, the landing party buries two bottles at the base of the hill, by a tree. One bottle contains two French coins, while in the other is a document recording the proclamation.

Before resuming their voyage, the French explorers name the landing place Baie de Prise de Possession (Bay of Taking Possession), but the name will not stick. Neither will their claim to the continent of New Holland. The Frenchmen are unaware that almost two years earlier, Captain James Cook claimed the eastern side of the continent in the name of King George III of England.

More than two centuries on, in 1998, the coins buried at Shark Bay will be discovered by a team of archaeologists, sparking debate on whether or not France has a legitimate claim to Western Australia. The question remains unresolved.

It is Thursday 24 January 1788. There are 11 ships in the bay, preparing to leave. After an eight-month voyage, bearing some 1300 people halfway around the world to establish a colony at Botany Bay, the site has proved unsuitable. Confounding a glowing report by Captain Cook 16 years earlier, the bay lacks fresh water, has poor, swampy soil and, being open to the sea, offers no safe harbour.

Luckily, though, the commander of what history will call the First Fleet, Arthur Phillip, has returned from an expedition to Port Jackson, 12 kilometres to the north, with good news.

We had the satisfaction of finding the finest harbour in the world, in which a thousand sail of the line may side in the most perfect security, Phillip reports, to the great relief of all. He says that after exploring several of the inlets and coves in the harbour, I fixed on the one that had the best spring of water, and in which ships can anchor so close to the shore that at a very small expense quays may be made at which the largest ships may unload. This cove, which I have honoured with the name of Sydney [after the originator of the plan to found a colony in New South Wales, Thomas Townshend, Lord Sydney], is about a quarter of a mile at the entrance and half a mile in length.