By Julie Power
Matthew Flinders. Explorer. Now the long-distance mariner has also been revealed as a hot and steamy writer of love letters, and a pioneer in the use of emojis.
A collection of letters acquired by the State Library of NSW from Flinders to his bride of three months, Ann, and others he left behind before he set sail in 1801 on HMS Investigator, reveal the human cost of exploration before phones, WhatsApp and Facebook.
State Library of NSW executive director Louise Anemaat with some of the letters written by explorer Matthew Flinders during his expeditions.Credit: Max Mason-Hubers
State Library of NSW executive director Louise Anemaat said the collection reminded the public that “history is, at its heart, about people and their resilience in the face of distance and abandonment, and the tension between love, loss, ambition and acclaim”.
On his historic trip with Aboriginal navigator Bungaree from 1801 to 1803, where they circumnavigated Australia, proving it was a single continent, Flinders wrote to Ann of his love and lust.
“Feast me with love when I return, to recompense me for all my anxieties, and Oh, write to me constantly, write me pages and volumes,” he wrote.
“My mind retraces with delight, our joys, our conversation, our looks, our everything of love.”
A little smiley face that Flinders drew on a letter to a relative.Credit: Max Mason-Hubers
Just like modern fly-in fly-out workers, or jet-setting executives, Flinders chose ambition and financial security over home.
Before he left the UK, Flinders had secretly planned to smuggle Ann aboard the Investigator, only to abandon the plan when Sir Joseph Banks, the famous botanist and a supporter of the trip, found out.
‘My mind retraces with delight, our joys, our conversation, our looks, our everything of love.’
Matthew Flinders
He wrote: “I shall give up the wife for the voyage of discovery; and I beg of you, Sir Joseph, to be assured that even this circumstance will not dampen the ardour I feel to accomplish the important purpose of the present voyage.”
Flinders was as pragmatic about love as he was about work.
In a letter to a relative, he wrote: “I prize [Ann] too for perhaps what no man else would; she is of double value to me from not being a beauty. It is too dangerous an experiment for a sailor to marry a beautiful woman whom he must be obliged to leave frequently.”
These lines may anger the reader, but Anemaat said Flinders loved Ann.
In a jokey letter to Ann’s sister, he drew a smiley face that resembles a modern emoji. Anemaat said the drawing was a bit of fun. Many letters back then were decorated with “tiny, tiny little drawings”, she said.
A portrait of explorer Matthew Flinders.Credit: Max Mason-Hubers
The love letters are part of a much larger collection purchased by the State Library from Flinders’ descendants for $4.75 million, the most ever paid for this sort of material.
It includes details of his funeral and invoices for the plumes of feathers used to decorate the horses used to pull his hearse when he died aged 40.
For the library, the material is like finding last piece of a jigsaw puzzle.
“For the first time, we’re able to bring these deeply personal letters together with his official logbooks, charts, hat and sword from the Investigator which were donated to the library by Flinders’ grandson in 1922,” Anemaat said.
She said the collection showed the personal cost of exploration to those who went to sea, and those like Ann, who stayed behind. Ann’s own father had died at sea.
Such intimate accounts from a key 19th-century figure are rare, Anemaat said.
“We talk about Flinders and all those British explorers in quite heroic terms. We ignore the personal side of these endeavours, which meant long, long separations and meant great risk. It was like flying to the moon. You give up a lot personally.”
The couple were separated for nearly 10 years after Flinders was detained as a spy on his return journey to England on the French colony of Mauritius, because of the war with England.
State Librarian Caroline Butler-Bowdon said the State Library had been determined to secure this sensational addition to the State Library’s world-renowned Flinders archive.
A selection of the love letters will be on public display in the library’s Amaze Gallery from Thursday – the anniversary of the Flinders’ marriage in 1801 – until February 22, 2026.
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