Cape Jervis - Culture and History

Cape Jervis looks out on Backstairs Passage. The first European to site the passage and Kangaroo Island was Matthew Flinders who, during his circumnavigation of Australia in the Investigator in 1802, explored, charted and named the island.

On Kangaroo Island, Flinders and his crew killed 31 kangaroos and, as Flinders wrote: 'half a hundredweight of heads, forequarters and tails were stewed into soup...and as much steaks given....to both officers and men as they could consume by day and by night.... In gratitude for so seasonable a supply, I named this southern land Kangaroo Island ...'. Flinders also named the strait between the island and the mainland declaring 'It forms a private entrance, as it were, to the two gulphs; and I named it Backstairs Passage'. Flinders also named Cape Jervis after the First Lord of the British Admiralty.