'Captain Vancouver has described the country in the neighbourhood of King George's Sound, and therefore a few observations on it will suffice. The basis stone is granite, which frequently shows itself at the surface, in the form of smooth bare rock; but upon the sea-coast hills, and the shores of the south sides of the sound and Princess-royal Harbour, the granite is generally covered with a crust of calcareous stone; as it is, also, upon Michaelmas Island. Captain Vancouver mentions having found upon the top of Bald Head, branches of coral protruding through the sand, exactly like those seen in the coral beds beneath the surface of the sea; a circumstance which should seem to bespeak this country to have emerged form the ocean at no very distant period of time. This curious fact I was desirous to verify; and his description was proved to be correct. I found, also, two broken columns of stone three or four feet high, formed like stumps of trees and of a thickness superior to the body of a man; but whether they were of coral, or of wood now petrified or whether they might not have been calcareous rocks, worn into that particular form by the weather, I cannot determine. Their elevation above the present level of the sea could not have been less than four hundred feet ...'

- Matthew Flinders in Terra Australis  (5 Jan 1802)