We've Just Found The Grave Of The First Guy To Circumnavigate Australia, Just In Time To Correct Scott Morrison

Earlier this week Scott Morrison announced plans to celebrate the 250th anniversary of a “reenactment” of Captain Cook’s arrival with a replica Endeavour circumnavigating Australia.

And a lot of outlets, GOAT included, pointed out that, aside from the cost of this little piece of colonialisation-theatre, Cook didn’t circumnavigate Australia. Like, at all.

And now, as though roused by the very mention of his name, the body of the chap who DID circumnavigate Australia has been discovered in the UK.

Yes, Matthew Flinders – the man who spent two years sailing around our wide brown land in the Investigator with Bungaree, the explorer and Kuringgai man, and also a cat named Trim from 1801-03 – has seeming pulled a King Arthur, having heard the call from his true homeland and decided to return just as his nation needs him.

What’s bizarre is that no-one’s been entirely sure where Flinders was even buried.

A statue of he and Trim was erected at Euston Station in London with the idea that he was somewhere under one of the platforms, but now he’s been found in a graveyard currently being exhumed for a new London-Birmingham rail link.

His is one of the few graves found, much less identified, which is amazing. Although he was possibly found more easily, as one wag put it, because he was spinning in his grave over the idea that Cook circumnavigated Australia.

And Flinders is a genuinely fascinating character. For a start, he explored the nation with a goddamn CAT.

Also, personal letters that emerged a few years back revealed that he and fellow explorer George Bass had a close friendship-almost-certainly-something-more, which is a refreshingly new take on the heteronormative world of Australian exploration.

In any case, we assume that a zombie Flinders is making his shambling way back to Australia to correct the historical record. With Zombie Trim, obviously.