Rear Admiral Phillip Parker King, FRS, RN (13 December 1791 – 26 February 1856) was an early explorer of the Australian and Patagonian coasts. Early life and education King was born on Norfolk Island, to Philip Gidley King and Anna Josepha King née Coombe, and named after his father's mentor, Admiral Arthur Phillip (1738–1814), (first governor of New South Wales and founder of the British penal colony which later became the city of Sydney in Australia), which explains the difference in spelling of his and his father's first names. King was sent to England for education in 1796, and he joined the Royal Naval Academy, at Portsmouth, in county Hampshire, England in 1802. King entered the Royal Navy in 1807, where he was commissioned lieutenant in 1814. Expeditions in Australia King was assigned to survey the parts of the Australian coast not already examined by Royal Navy officer, Matthew Flinders, (who had already made three earlier exploratory voyages between 1791 and 1810, including the first circumnavigation of Australia) and made four voyages between December 1817 and April 1822. Amongst the 19-man crew were Allan Cunningham, a botanist, John Septimus Roe, later the first Surveyor-General of Western Australia, and the Aboriginal man, Bungaree. The first three trips were in the 76-tonne cutter , but the vessel was grounded in 1829. The Admiralty had instructed King to discover whether there was any river "likely to lead to an interior navigation into this great continent". The Colonial Office had given instructions to collect information about topography, fauna, timber, minerals, climate, and the Indigenous peoples and the prospects of developing trade with them. First voyage From February to June 1818, the coast was surveyed as far as Van Diemen Gulf (between the Northern Territory and Timor) and there were many meetings with Aboriginal Australians and proas sailed by Makassans. In June the Mermaid visited Timor before returning to Sydney using the same route, arriving on 29 July. Second voyage In December 1818 and January 1819, King surveyed Macquarie Harbour in Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania), sailing north in May 1819 for Torres Strait. King took John Oxley as far as the Hastings River on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales, and continued further up the coast to survey the coastline between Cape Wessel (Northern Territory) and Admiralty Gulf (Western Australia). King returned to Sydney on 12 January 1820. Third voyage On King's