The easterly monsoon commences about the 1st of April, with squally, rainy weather, but, in a week or ten days, settles to fine weather and steady winds in the offing, and regular land and sea breezes, as above described, near the coast.

It ceases about the latter end of November or early part of December; the westerly monsoon may then be expected to blow strong, and perhaps with regularity.
This is the rainy season, and is doubtless an unwholesome time; Captain Flinders' crew experienced much sickness in his examination of the Gulf of Carpentaria during this monsoon, but, when upon the western side of the gulf, he thought that the fine weather then experienced might be occasioned by the monsoon's blowing over the land.

In January and February the monsoon is at its strength, but declines towards the end of the latter month, and in March becomes variable, with dark, cloudy, and unsettled weather; the wind is then generally from the South-West, but not at all regular.
The current sets with the wind, and seldom exceeds a knot or a knot and a half per hour; between Capes Wessel and Van Diemen it is not stronger, and its course in the easterly monsoon, when only we had any experience of it, was West: the strength is probably increased or diminished by the state of the wind.
The tides are of trifling consequence; the flood comes from the eastward, but rarely rises more than ten feet, or runs so much as a mile and a half per hour.

High water takes place at full and change at Liverpool River, and Goulburn Island at six o'clock, at the entrance of the Alligator Rivers in Van Diemen's Gulf, at 8 hours 15 minutes, and at the south end of Apsley Strait at 3 hours 25 minutes.* The flood-tide comes from the eastward, excepting when its course is altered by local circumstances; the rise is not more than eleven feet at the springs.
(*Footnote.

In St.Asaph's Bay, Lieutenant Roe found high-water take place at full and change at 5 hours 45 minutes; and in King's Cove at 5 hours 15 minutes; at the latter place it rose fourteen feet.) The variation of the compass in this interval is scarcely affected by the ship's local attraction.