Precious artefacts have made a return to Australian shores from a French exploration of the southern coastline more than two centuries ago.

Nicolas Baudin led the scientific expedition at the turn of the 19th century, a journey which included his now-famous encounter with English explorer Matthew Flinders in 1802, off the South Australian coast.

Lindl Lawton from the South Australian Maritime Museum said dozens of artworks, journals and pieces of equipment from the scientific journey were on loan from Le Havre.

"We have 50 original works of art that were painted by the expedition artists, Nicolas-Martin Petit and Charles Alexandre Lesueur, and they are absolutely stunning works of art, but they're also the scientific snapshots of the time," she said.

A rare chronometer is also part of the exhibition about to open in Adelaide.

"They took four chronometers on the expedition — two were on the ship Geographe, two were on Naturaliste and they were so important for calculating longitude they were treated like treasures," Ms Lawton said.

"[There is also] one of the copper plates that was used [to] print the atlas, the first complete map of Australia that was ever published."

Ms Lawton said the French collected more than 100,000 plant and animal specimens, some of them live.

"What the French were particularly enchanted by was marine invertebrates, the world underneath the sea, and essentially jellyfish had never really been studied before and they saw the beauty in these creatures," she said.

Baudin's journey is often overshadowed in historical recollections by Matthew Flinders' circumnavigation of Australia.

Lindl Lawton (L), the curator of the Baudin exhibition, and one of her team preparing for the event. ( ABC News: Tom Fedorowytsch )

Ms Lawton said one painting in the exhibition showed smoke plumes rising at the Coorong, south of Adelaide, potentially a response from the native Ngarrindjeri people to the voyages and meeting of Baudin and Flinders in the region.

Professor John West-Sooby, from the French Studies department of the University of Adelaide, said Baudin's mission was becoming more widely recognised.

"In recent times there's been more of a recognition of the plurality of influences that played in the discovery and exploration of Australia," he said.

"In 2002 we celebrated the bicentenary of the meeting of Flinders and Baudin and that process has continued, and I think this new expedition at the Maritime Museum will move us to another stage in that process."

It is sometimes speculated by historians Baudin's visit could potentially have paved the way for a French colonisation of Australia just a few years after the English settled at Sydney Cove.

"There were no instructions for Baudin and his expedition to claim any territories or to look for sites for possible settlement," Professor West-Sooby explained.

"That's not say when they came here they didn't have an eye for that sort of thing, but when they went back [their leader] Napoleon Bonaparte had other fish to fry, as he planned to invade England."

The Art of Science: Baudin's Voyagers 1800-1804 opens in coming days at the South Australian Maritime Museum at Port Adelaide, and will tour nationally over the next two years.