Botany Bay Story
At daylight on January 26, 1788, as the first men from Philip's fleet waded ashore in Sydney Cove and the balance of the First Fleet prepared to leave Botany Bay for Sydney, two French exploration ships sailed into Botany Bay.
Compte De LA Perouse
The French ships, La Boussole and L'Astrolabe, commanded by Jean Francois Balaup, Compte do la Perouse, sailed from Brest in 1785 on a four-year voyage of discovery at the direction of King Louis XIV.
Two Catholic priests, Abbe Monges and Father Louis Receveur, a Franciscan monk, were with the French expedition. Father Receveur served as naturalist and astronomer as well as chaplain. He was also a skilled botanist, geologist, chemist, meteorologist, and philologist.
When the French ships put into Tutuila in the Samoan Islands, Father Receveur was wounded by the natives. His injury was described as a "violent contusion of the eye".
On arrival at Botany Bay, La Perouse erected a camp on shore and established friendly relations with the British who came round from Sydney to visit his camp.
On February 17, Father Receveur died and was buried at the camp. Although many, including Governor Philip, believed that he died from injuries received at Tutuila, La Perouse's report indicated that he had recovered while at Botany Bay.
He was the first Catholic priest and the second white man to be buried in Australian soil. His obsequies were the first Catholic religious ceremony held in Australia. Abbe Monges, and possibly Father Receveur if he were well enough, would have celebrated Mass on board the ships anchored in Botany Bay. This is the first occasion, of which there is reasonable evidence, that Mass was celebrated in Australian territory.
Funeral Procession of French Franciscan monk Father Louis Receveur is led by Abbe Monges to the grave of La Perouse on Botany Bay on Febuarry 17, 1788. A mound was placed over Father Receveur's grave and two boards nailed on an adjacent tree. An inscription recorded the death of Father Receveur. When natives removed the boards, Governor Phillip had a copper plate similarly inscribed and fixed to the tree.
On March 10, 1788, the La Perouse expedition left Botany Bay and shortly afterwards was wrecked in the New Hebrides. All its members, including Abbe Monges, drowned. Their fate remained a mystery for nearly 40 years.
In 1826, Captain Peter Dillon, while in command of his own ship, St Patrick, called at the Santa Cruz Islands and recovered relics of the ill fated La Perouse expedition.
Before leaving Botany Bay, to mark Father Receveur's grave, La Perouse had nailed to a tree two boards bearing this inscription:
HIC JACET LE RECEVEUR
E ff. Minimis Galliae Sacerdos
Physicou in circumnavigatione mundi
Duce M. de La Perouse
Obiit 17 Febr., 1788.
When a party of explorers from the British settlement at Sydney Cove reported to Governor Phillip some time later that natives had removed the inscription, the Governor had a copper plate similarly inscribed and securely fixed to the tree.
By 1824, when the French ship Coquille visited New South Wales, the copper plate had also disappeared. A Frenchman M. Duperrey, then carved on the tree thes words: "Near this tree lie the remains of Pere le Receveur. Visited in March, 1824."
A Monument to La Perouse and to mark Father Receveur's grave was commenced in 1825 by Baron de Bouganville, commander of a French ship, Thetis. Iron railings were added to the grave in 1870 and renewed in 1906. In September, 1879, Mass was celebrated in a marquee near the grave and attended by officers and med of a visiting French warship.
The tree itself was eventually reduced to a stump, which was finally removed, sent to Paris, and exhibited at the great International Exhibition. It was then preserved permanently as an exhibit in the Musee de Marine in Paris.
A number of pilgrimages have been made to the site of Father Receveur's grave. One of the most memorable was that made during the Sesqui-Centenary of Australia in 1938. Organised by the Franciscan Fathers, it was attended by the late Archbishop Kelly, his Coadjutor (Archbishop, now Cardinal, Gilroy), the chaplain and officers and men of the visiting French warship Jeanne d'Arc.
The land enclosing the La Perouse monument and Father Receveur's grave at Botany Bay have been given in perpetuity to France.