Voyage of a painter

Natural History, April, 1998 by Errol Fuller

Many of these last were invertebrates and plants, but there were also a number of more spectacular discoveries, including the banded hare wallaby (Lagostrophus fasciatus). Lesueur's painting of this animal is one of his most memorable. First found by the expedition at Shark Bay in Western Australia, the species was widespread in the southwest corner of Australia at the time. Today its range has contracted, and it can be found only on two small islands in the same bay where Captain Baudin's men originally found it.

Another creature brought to the public's attention by the expedition is now extinct. On January 6, 1803, the ships landed on Kangaroo Island, a large island just off the coast of southeastern Australia, and found huge flocks of a peculiar dwarf form of emu that has been classified as Dromaius demenianus. The scientists and crew managed to capture several of these birds alive and loaded them onto Le Geographe. At least two survived the long journey back to France and were sent to the residence of the Empress Josephine, where they are said to have lived until 1822.

So quickly were the remaining emus on Kangaroo Island exterminated that these two surviving exiles were possibly the very last of their kind. One of the emus brought back to France was sent to the Jardin des Plantes (of the National Museum of Natural History) in Paris, where it remains as a stuffed specimen. This particular individual may have been captured on King Island, where the emu population vanished about the same time as the one on Kangaroo Island. Strangely, of all the thousands of specimens brought back, this is one of the few that remain intact - or, at least, that can be positively identified. Specimens were distributed to a number of museums and collections, but most records have been lost. Even specimens deposited in the museum at Le Havre are gone, destroyed during World War II.

Other living creatures were also stowed aboard the expedition's ships, and getting them all safely back to Europe was a high priority with Captain Baudin. But three days' sailing from Kangaroo Island, the captain found, to his dismay, that two of his kangaroos had died, presumably from the dampness. As a remedy, Baudin had two ship's officers removed from their cabins so that the remaining kangaroos could be kept in drier quarters.

Worn out by responsibility and effort, Captain Baudin fell seriously ill as Le Geographe headed for home via Mauritius. Barely two weeks after the vessel's arrival there, he died.

As for Lesueur, he was to enjoy many more productive years, yet the work he did for the Baudin expedition undoubtedly represents the high point of his career. Although he spent the most important periods of his life away from his native city of Le Havre, the French port pulled him back in the end; he returned there from America in 1837, after an absence of twenty-one years. During his last two years, Lesueur lived in his family home close to the sea and became director of Le Havre's newly founded museum of natural history.