Part 5: Voyage to Terra Australis - Student Version

Cast (in order of appearance)

Michael Jeffery as Francois Peron
Mick Cahill as Nicolas Baudin

[The signature theme melody is played in an adventure style with a bit of didgeridoo.]

The action takes place in the Captain's quarters on board the ship Geographe off the coast of Western Australia in 1801. A storm blows outside and the timbers creak. We interrupt an argument in progress.

Baudin

The Dutch captain told me there was a river.

Peron

Why don’t you just use the maps, Baudin. That’s what we brought them for.

Baudin

[Maps being rolled out.] There  Citizen Peron, look. Nouvelle Holand. Twenty copies they sent us with. Twenty copies of the same useless piece of paper. Look at this -  The coast line simply stops.

Peron

Perhaps the entrance to the great inland sea. What does that say, 'Sharks Bay?'

[Great sliding as the ship tilts, Peron is sent flying to and fro.]

Baudin

You stick to science and I will stick to sailing. Are the botanists and zoologists prepared to go ashore and collect samples?

Peron

Why don’t you ask young Bouganville?

Baudin

Casse-toi.

Peron

Oh I forgot he left with the other 50 men who had the good sense to jump ship at Isle de France.  Oh, they warned me told me this voyage to Terra Australis would be a Mission du mort. Two hundred and fifty men left France with you, and how many are left.

Baudin

Enough to get the job done. Matthew Flinders might already be there way ahead of us. The English kept all the good maps for themselves.

Peron 

General Bonaparte has demanded too much of this expedition.

Baudin

Have you seen what waits to greet us when we land?
[Book dropped on table]

Peron

What is this? I have not seen this book before. [Reading] Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales. 1790.

[Music underscores the scene with a foreboding feel.]

Baudin

[Flipping pages.] This bird stands seven feet high and has a saw blade down the back of each leg. 

Peron

Mon dieu! Look at that, it is a giant murderous goose. How many books do you have here?  Why have you not shared these with the scientists?

Baudin

How about this one? [Another book.] This animal stands between five and eight feet on its hind legs. Legs so powerful as to propel it through the air more than ten feet and faster than a horse.

That one?

Baudin

Oui.

Peron

It is a giant mouse?

BaudinT

he Englishman Banks writes here that it is called a Kangaroo.

Peron

Giant geese and giant mice. What other monsters wait for us in this hell?

[A loud clap of thunder and then the signature music theme signals the end of the scene.]

Credits

Conceived and Directed by John Paul Fischbach
Script by Robert Reid
Engineered and mixed by Carl Priestly at Itchyacoustic Design
Orchestrations by David James Nielsen
Recorded December 2007