When Binot Paulmier de Gonneville returned from a long ocean voyage in 1504, claiming to have found the fabled Great South Land, the landmass that is now Australia was still an undefined part of this imaginary southern continent. Two other French navigators set out in the late 18 th century to prove the existence this legendary land in the south. They reached Australia but left few records of the nature and the shape of the country they briefly encountered. Between 1792 and 1840 seven French expeditions of discovery visited Australia, five of which as part of voyages around the world. All had embarked on these voyages with different objectives and their contributions to descriptions of the landscape and to the knowledge of Australian geology vary considerably. One of the major tasks of the first two of these expeditions led by Bruni d'Entrecasteaux (1792) and Nicolas Baudin (1801-1803) was the charting of the still incompletely known coasts of Australia. Their work resulted in the publication, in 1811, of the first complete map of the continent. Both expeditions sailed with a large complement of civilian scientists who examined and recorded aspects of the country's natural history, including its geology. The loss of relevant journals and the death of some of scientific personnel and ships' officers has severely diminished our knowledge of their findings. The following five expedition to visit Australia were commanded by Freycinet (1818) Duperrey (1824), Bougainville (1825) and Dumont d'Urville (1826 and 1839-40). On these voyages the ships' surgeons took over the role of naturalists. Most had a considerable knowledge of the natural sciences, which often included mineralogy. They made valuable contributions that provided early insights into the nature of the continent's landscapes and geology. Many thousands of specimens were collected and taken to France for study and display. The last of these expeditions sailed from Tasmania to Antarctica, where its crews were the first to discover solid land beneath the cover of ice and proved the existence of a southern continent.