Frankland Islands (long. 146° E., lat. 17° 12’ S.), were not only catamarans or rafts, but canoes made out of the solid tree, and having an outrigger on one side; and it is somewhat remarkable that both the canoes and catamarans at this place resembled others we afterwards met with at the south-eastern part of New Guinea. At Cape York (North Australia) we found the natives had large canoes, with double outriggers and mat sails, with which they stood boldly out in a strong breeze with as much sail as our own boats would carry under the same circumstances: indeed the Australians generally, upon all parts of the coast that I have visited, show little fear of the water, and under the direction of white men make very good whalers. In June 1848, the natives near Cape Grafton (lat. 16° 51’ S.) came off in their canoes and boarded the Will-o'-the-wisp, a small sandal-wood trader, which they nearly captured. There are at least six varieties of canoes and rafts along the north-eastern shore of Australia alone; and these are different from others found on the coast to the southward and in other parts."[1]
The late Mr. Beete Jukes, in reply to Mr. Brierly's letter, wrote as follows:—
"Will you allow me to refer to the paragraph headed 'Canoes in Australia,' in your last number, for the purpose of stating exactly how the case stands? In Western Australia, although some large islands front the coast near the mouth of Swan River, at a distance of not more than three or four miles, no natives had ever landed on them till the arrival of the settlers. They had not the remotest notion of a canoe nor any kind of water conveyance whatever. This is true also, as far as my enquiries sixteen or eighteen years ago enabled me to ascertain, for all the west and for all the south coast of Australia. On the north-west coast they used bundles of rushes tied together to assist them in swimming from one island to another. In Botany Bay, Cook found them using strips of bark tied together at the ends, making a sort of dish, in which a man could stand. In Rockingham Bay, when I visited it in H.M.S. Fly, we first saw bark canoes sewn together, and having thwarts, something like the canoes of the North American Indians. North of this the canoes improved till we came to the large ones belonging to the Papuan Islanders of Torres Straits, with sails and outriggers. West of the Gulf of Carpentaria, however, these disappear at once, and the natives had nothing at Port Essington that could be called a canoe until they got some of the Malay sampans. I believe therefore that the Australians derived their canoes from the Papuan Islanders, and that Mr. Crawfurd is right as to their original destitution; although Mr. Brierly is also right as to existing facts.
"P.S.—Does any wood grow in Australia large enough and light enough to make a canoe if merely hollowed out? I doubt it. Neither is there any of which a bow could be made."[2]
In reference to the above. Sir Daniel Cooper thus writes:—"Mr. J. B. Jukes, in his letter on canoes in Australia, is wrong in his statement with respect to New South Wales. In the Catalogue of the Natural and Industrial Products of New South Wales for the Exhibition of 1862 is the following
