1 March 1606
Two thousand years ago the Alexandrian philosopher Claudius Ptolemy suggested that beyond Asia a great southern land existed, Terra Australis.
In the fifteenth century, European cartographers were imagining a large continent that might exist between Asia and the Americas.
European kingdoms of the fifteenth century sponsored expeditions of discovery and exploration. These were often done via state-sponsored trading companies such as
- the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie,the VOC)
- and the British East India Company.
These companies were driven by the lure of large profits offered by spices and metals. Over time, they established large maritime fleets of their own.
The crew of the VOC ship Duyfken were the first Europeans to sight the Australian mainland. They were near the Pennefather River in the Gulf of Carpentaria. Commanded by Willem Janzsoon, Duyfken mapped the western coast of what would become Cape York in early 1606. This was the first time Europeans had met Indigenous Australians.
Later that year, the Spanish ships San Pedrico and Los Tres Reyes Magos were under the command of the Portuguese captain Luis Vaez de Torres. They sailed from east to west along the southern coast of New Guinea to Ternate Island, in modern Indonesia. The strait that he navigated between the Australian and New Guinea coasts now bears his name, though it is not known whether Torres sighted northern Australia.
During the next half-century, ships of the VOC explored and mapped two thirds of the Australian coastline. In the process, they named the continent New Holland.
The Dutch made significant contributions by charting:
- the Gulf of Carpentaria,
- the coasts of what is now Western and South Australia,
- and parts of Tasmania and New Zealand.
The extent of New Holland’s east coast, however, remained a mystery.
Captain James Cook, RN, solved much of the puzzle of the Great South Land by circumnavigating New Zealand. He then charted the eastern coastline of the Australian mainland during 1769 and 1770. A meticulous cartographer, Cook named the east coast of New Holland “New South Wales” (NSW).
In 1799, Van Diemen’s Land was shown to be a land mass separate to the Australian mainland. Royal Navy officers Matthew Flinders and George Bass circumnavigated the island in the sloop Norfolk.
Flinders went on to make further significant contributions to the charting of the Australian coastline when he circumnavigated the continent in 1803-04 aboard HMS Investigator. He suggested that the population of New Holland and NSW be called Australians. This thereby cemented the concept of a singular continent called Australia.
Accompanying Flinders on his journey in Investigator was Garigal man Bungaree. As Bungaree was the only person on board born in Australia, he has the distinction of being the first known Australian to have circumnavigated the continent.