Sciencentre
Investigator Tree & Charles Darwin: The Reluctant Revolutionary
This exhibition is now closed
Find out more about:
- Investigator Tree
- Charles Darwin
- Queensland Museum Science Research
- Using the display as a learning experience
- Resources for students and teachers
Engraved by members of the Matthew Flinders voyage in 1802 and the third Beagle voyage in 1841, the 'Investigator Tree' is a 3 metre long portion of tree trunk from Sweers Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria.
It provides a fascinating story of the how two separate navigation expeditions of Queensland's northern coastline crossed paths forty years apart.
The third voyage of the Beagle, led by Captain John Wickham (later Chief of Police for the colony of Queensland) and Commander John Lort Stokes, both former shipmates of Darwin, was sent back to Australia from England to explore the country's entire coastline.
On 8 July 1841 while visiting Sweers Island the Beagle landing party found the tree, bearing the carved inscription 'INVESTIGA 1802', concrete evidence of the historic voyage of Matthew Flinders and his ship the Investigator four decades earlier. It was then that Stokes added the Beagle inscription.
As well as the inscriptions from the two separate voyages there are Chinese characters and other indistinct engravings.
It was damaged in a cyclone in 1887, salvaged and donated to the Queensland Museum in 1889.
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