A new analysis of a tree stump from the Gulf of Carpentaria has disproved a theory about when explorers first arrived on the shores of northern Queensland.
The Investigator tree — named for an inscription made by Matthew Flinders in 1802 marking the passage of his ship, the HMS Investigator — was discovered on Sweers Island.
It was said to have originally borne over 20 inscriptions, containing writing from Dutch, Macassan and Chinese travellers that predated British explorers.
However, James Cook University researcher Sarah Collins said new analysis of the stump had shown only five inscriptions — all written in English.
"It's just a mistake," Ms Collins said.
"People have misread the original, now quite faded, inscription of the word Investigator as Chinese characters."
Ms Collins has been researching the stump at Brisbane's Queensland Museum over the past 12 months and found it hard to believe the misinterpretation.
"When we went back and physically looked, even today you can clearly make out the word Investigator," she said.
British explorers left inscriptions
Principal curator of History, Industry and Technology at the Queensland Museum, Geraldine Mate, said trees acted as makeshift guest books, or 19th-century social media, to explorers when arriving on the Indigenous Kaiadilt land of Sweers Island.
She said according to newspaper articles from the 20th century and explorers' journal entries, there were three trees on the island into which new arrivals carved their names.
Ms Collins said the Investigator tree was the last remaining evidence of this.
Other words can be found on the stump, including 'Beagle 1841', made by British explorer John Lort Stokes, and a second 'Investigator', carved by British explorer Thomas Baines," she said.
Although the markings on the stump were all in English, Ms Collins did not want to rule out the possibility of non-British explorers having arrived on Sweers Island before Flinders.
"We cannot confirm that they were definitely there, but circumstantially some of the [journal entries] strongly indicate the possibility of pre-Flinders inscriptions," Ms Collins said.
Queensland Museum houses tree
Although the 200-year-old stump has spent over half its life at the Queensland Museum, digitisation and modern technology has allowed researchers to re-examine it.
Dr Mate said it proved the importance of preserving artefacts and continuing analysis of them.
"It's incredible that the tree has been on display for so long, the words were almost found in plain sight," Dr Mate said.
"I guess there's no such thing as knowing everything about anything."
Dr Mate said the new findings highlighted that Australian history was complex and contested.
"Just from this research, we know that what was written in the newspapers back then was not what was written on the tree," she said.
"It doesn't tell the story of the Kaiadilt people of Sweers Island. It doesn't tell you the context of the men who went there, the fact that there were women there.
"No matter you look at that represents the past, you need to understand it as more complex than what's immediately in front of you."
