The Dutch navigators who had first sighted it - without stopping or claiming possession -had named “Land of Leeuwin” (which in Flemish means “lioness”, the name of their ship) this vast and wild piece of territory located at the southwestern tip of Australia. And if Mathew Flinders eventually gave the name Leeuwin to the cape itself in 1801, the French influence on this region could have been much more important !

In 1772, while Yves de Kerguelen is sailing back towards France in order to inform Louis XV of his “discovery” (a barren, frozen and desolate archipelago, somehow hastily described to the monarch as a “Southern paradise”), the second vessel of his expedition wanders, lost in the icy fogs of a very hostile Southern Ocean.

Louis de Saint-Allouarn, commanding officer on that ship named “Gros Ventre” (“Big Belly”), tries to make way towards a meeting point that had been arranged previously between himself and Kerguelen, sailing the “Fortune”, should the two boats end up separated. The two officers had agreed to get together south west of Australia, a rather still unknown land then named “New Holland”. Of course, despite his efforts, Saint-Allouarn doesn’t encounter the other half of his expedition, and sails along the desert coastline, contemplating territories which haven’t yet been claimed by anyone. He eventually decides to head North and on March the 30th 1772, moors the “Gros Ventre” in the “Bay of the Sea Dogs”, today known as “Shark Bay”, before sending lieutenant Mingault de la Hage ashore, with the mission of claiming the territory in the name of Louis XV. But Saint-Allouarn dies on the way back, and will never see France again - his fellow navigators on their part will not be able to convince the authorities of the importance of the land they just claimed…

In reality, no one pays any attention, and England will only officially take possession of Western Australia in 1829. But in the meantime (in 1801 precisely), another Frenchman, Nicolas Baudin, led one of the most important scientific campaign of the era, contributing to a tremendous increase of the amount of knowledge in terms of flora and fauna of the territory. Louis de Saint-Allouarn and his 1772 claim in the name of Louis XV has almost been forgotten… yet his lieutenant had, as the protocol required, buried a bottle containing official documents bearing the King’s seal, even though it did not seem to interest anyone. Until one day in 1998, when a French tourist from New Caledonia finds traces of Saint-Allouarn’s passage, discovering a coin representing Louis XV at the tip of the Dirk Hartog Island! Below 15 cm of sand, on a beach, this coin was discovered a few metres away from a bottle, found by Myra Stanbury (head of the archeology Dpt. of the Fremantle Maritime Museum) a few weeks later: “After having examined it closely, we have concluded that there was more than 50% chance it actually was THE bottle”, she said at the time. Further thorough analysis and comparisons allowed it to be confirmed without any remaining doubt that the bottle indeed came from the “Gros Ventre”.

Historically, this implies that this portion of Australia could have remained French, provided the authorities had paid attention to it: but taking possession without subsequently occupying the land could not be considered a legitimate claim… and it is blatantly obvious that France never even tried to encourage settlements or to open commercial establishments on the “Land of the lioness”.

Geographical coordinates: 34°22’ S - 115° 08’ E