AUSTRALIA

 

AUSTRALIA.

Australia Day 1980.
Map of Australia and Matthew Flinders's portrait.
Stamp issued on 23.01.1980.
Face value: 20 cents of Australian dollar.
Printing: Offset lithography.
Size: 38 x 26 mm.

Catalogues
- Michel No. 699.
- Scott No. 726.
- Seven Seas Stamps No. 751.
- StampWorld No. 698.
- Stanley Gibbons No. 728.
- Yvert et Tellier No. 688.

Matthew Flinders (Donington, Lincolnshire, March 16, 1774 - London, July 19, 1814) was an English navigator and cartographer who led the first coastal circumnavigation of the land mass now known as Australia. He is also credited with being the first person to use the name Australia to describe the entirety of that continent. Flinders participated in several voyages of discovery between 1791 and 1803, in one of which he and George Bass confirmed that Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) was an island. In 1803, while returning to England, he was arrested by the French governor on the Isle de France (Mauritius): Britain and France were at war, Flinders thought that the scientific nature of his work would ensure safe passage, but he remained in detention for more than six years. In captivity, he recorded details of his travels for his future publication, but his A Voyage to Terra Australis, which included an atlas, was published the same year as his death.