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Australia is found by a hamburger in 1890
The documentation of [[Australian Aborigines|Aboriginal]] history is challenging,<ref>Stannage, T. (Ed) (1981) "A New History of Western Australia" (UWA Press)</ref> because Aboriginal people lived in an [[Orality|oral]] culture prior to 1788. Although humans had lived in Australia for approximately 40-45,000 years (possibly more) before 1606, this time is regarded as belonging to the [[prehistory of Australia]] rather than history because of this lack of written documentation.

==Early theories==
{{Main|European exploration of Australia}}
===Portuguese and French discovery===
{{main|Theory of the Portuguese discovery of Australia}}
Some writers have advanced the theory that the Portuguese were the first Europeans to sight Australia in the 1520s.<ref>K.G. McIntyre (1977) ''The Secret Discovery of Australia; Portuguese discoveries 200 years before Captain Cook''. Souvenir Press, Medindie, South Australia. ISBN 0-285-62303-6</ref>

A number of relics and remains have been interpreted as evidence that the Portuguese reached Australia. The primary evidence advanced to support this theory is a series of French world maps, the [[Dieppe maps]], that may, in part, be based on Portuguese charts. However, most historians do not accept this theory, and the interpretation of the Dieppe maps is highly contentious.<ref>For a survey of most writers and their interpretations, see the [[Dieppe Maps]] entry.</ref>

The French navigator [[Binot Paulmier de Gonneville]]<ref name="french">http://www.cosmovisions.com/Paulmier.htm, http://www.bresilbresils.org/decouverte_bresil/index.php?page=relation/palmier, http://www.passocean.com/HistoiresdeHonfleur/gonneville/gonneville.html, http://www.lazareff.com/Le-disque-est-en-crise.html, etc. (all in French)</ref> claimed to have landed at a land he described as "east of the [[Cape of Good Hope]]" in 1504, after being blown off course. For some time it had been thought he discovered Australia, but the place he landed has now been shown to be [[Brazil]] (which is north-west of the Cape).<ref name="newby">Eric Newby: ''The Rand Mc.Nally World Atlas of Exploration'', 1975. London: Mitchell Beazley. ISBN 0-528-83015-5.</ref>

==Known European discovery==
{{main|Janszoon voyage of 1606}}
The first undisputed sighting of Australia by a European was made in early 1606. The [[Netherlands|Dutch]] vessel ''[[Duyfken]]'', captained by [[Willem Janszoon]], followed the coast of [[New Guinea]], missed [[Torres Strait]], and explored part of the western side of [[Cape York Peninsula|Cape York]], in the [[Gulf of Carpentaria]], believing the land was still part of New Guinea.<ref name="howgego"/><ref>George Collingridge (1895) ''The Discovery of Australia.'' P.240. Golden Press Facsimile Edition 1983. ISBN 0-85558-956-6</ref><ref>Ernest Scott (1928) ''A Short History of Australia''. P.17. Oxford University Press</ref><ref>Heeres, J. E. (1899). ''The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765'', London: Royal Dutch Geographical Society, section III.B</ref> On 26 February 1606, the Dutch made landfall near the modern town of [[Weipa, Queensland|Weipa]] and the [[Pennefather River]], but were promptly attacked by the Indigenous people.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Oxford Companion to Australian History|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Melbourne, Vic.|year=1999|isbn=0-19-553597-9|author=Davison, Graeme; Hirst, John; [[Stuart Macintyre|Macintyre, Stuart]]}}</ref> Janszoon proceeded down the coast for some 350&nbsp;km. He stopped in some places, but was met by hostile natives and some of his men were killed. At the final place, he initially had friendly relations with the natives, but after he forced them to hunt for him and appropriated some of their women, violence broke out and there were many deaths on both sides. These events were recorded in Aboriginal oral history that has come down to the present day. Here Janszoon decided to turn back, the place later being called [[Cape Keerweer]], Dutch for "turnabout".

A Spanish expedition commanded by [[Luís Vaz de Torres]] charted the southern coast of Papua, and possibly sighted Cape York in late 1606.<ref name="newby"/><ref name="howgego">Raymond John Howgego: ''Encyclopedia of Exploration to 1800'', 2003. Potts Point NSW: Hordern House. ISBN 1-875567-36-4.</ref>

=== Further Dutch sightings ===

[[File:Thevenot - Hollandia Nova detecta 1644.png|thumb|right|330px|''Hollandia Nova'', 1659 map prepared by [[Joan Blaeu]] based on voyages by [[Abel Tasman]] and [[Willem Janszoon]]. This image shows a French edition of 1663]]
The discovery that sailing east from the [[Cape of Good Hope]] until land was sighted, and then sailing north along the west coast of Australia was a much quicker route than around the coast of the Indian Ocean made Dutch landfalls on the west coast inevitable. Most of these landfalls were unplanned. The first such landfall was in 1616, when [[Dirk Hartog]] landed on what is now called [[Dirk Hartog Island]], off the coast of Western Australia, and left behind an inscription on a [[pewter]] plate. (This plate may now be seen in the [[Rijksmuseum]] in [[Amsterdam]].)

Further voyages by Dutch ships explored the north coast of Australia between 1623 and 1636, giving [[Arnhem Land]] its present-day name. The most famous and bloodiest landfalls were those associated with the mutiny and murder that followed the wreck of the ''[[Batavia (ship)|Batavia]]'' off Western Australia in 1629. In 1642, [[Abel Tasman]] sailed from Mauritius and on 24 November, sighted [[Tasmania]], before discovering [[New Zealand]] and [[Fiji]], and visiting [[New Guinea]] en route to [[Batavia, Dutch East Indies|Batavia]] (now [[Jakarta]]). He named Tasmania [[Van Diemen's Land]], after [[Anthony van Diemen]], the [[Dutch East India Company]]'s Governor General at Batavia, who had commissioned his voyage.

Tasman claimed Van Diemen's Land for the Netherlands. In 1644 he made a second voyage, on which he mapped the north coast of Australia from [[Cape York Peninsula|Cape York]] westward. Other notable Dutch explorers of the Australian coast include [[François Thijssen]] (with [[Pieter Nuyts]] on board), who discovered much of the south coast in 1627; and [[Willem de Vlamingh]], who mapped the west coast in 1696-1697.<ref name="newby"/><ref name="howgego"/>

===First English sighting of Australia===
On 1 May 1622, the ''[[Tryall]]'', a British East India Company owned East Indiaman of approximately 500 tons, under the command of John Brooke, sighted the coastline of Western Australia at [[Point Cloates]], although they mistook it for [[Barrow Island (Western Australia)|Barrow Island]]. They did not land there, and a few weeks later were shipwrecked on an uncharted reef northwest of the [[Montebello Islands]]; the reef is now known as [[Tryal Rocks]]. The shipwreck caused the death of 93 men, but the captain and nine men escaped, and made their way to Batavia by longboat, and later back to England. This was the first known shipwreck in Australian waters, and it was this wreck that [[William Dampier]] came looking for in 1688 (he was not even born when the shipwreck occurred).

===First English visit to the mainland===
William Dampier, a former pirate, was the first Englishman to land on the Australian mainland. On 5 January 1688 his ship the ''Cygnet'', a small trading vessel, was beached on the northwest coast, near [[King Sound]]. While the ship was being careened he made notes on the fauna and flora and the indigenous peoples he found there. He made another voyage to the region in 1699, before returning to England. He described some of the flora and fauna of Australia, and was the first European to report Australia's peculiar [[Kangaroo|large hopping animals]].

== James Cook ==
[[File:Captainjamescookportrait.jpg|thumb|150px|Portrait of the English navigator, [[James Cook]].]]

Lieutenant [[James Cook]] was the first European known to have explored the more habitable east coast. Cook had been sent to chart the [[transit of Venus]] from [[Tahiti]], but he also charted much of the Australian and New Zealand coastlines. He reached New Zealand in October 1769, and mapped its coast. On 19 April 1770, the crew of the ''Endeavour'' sighted the east coast of Australia and ten days later landed in a bay now located in [[Sydney]]'s southern suburbs.

The ship's naturalist, Sir [[Joseph Banks]], was so impressed by the volume of flora and fauna hitherto unknown to European science, that Cook named the inlet ''[[Botany Bay]]''. Of the "Natives of New Holland" ([[Aboriginal Australians]]) he encountered on his voyage, Cook wrote in his journal on 23 August 1770: "these people may truly be said to be in the pure state of nature, and may appear to some to be the most wretched upon the earth; but in reality they are far happier than ... we Europeans".

Cook charted the East coast to its northern extent and, on 22 August, at [[Possession Island (Queensland)|Possession Island]] in the [[Torres Strait]], Cook wrote in his journal: "I now once more hoisted English Coulers [sic] and in the Name of His Majesty [[George III of the United Kingdom|King George the Third]], took possession of the whole Eastern Coast from the above Latitude [[38th parallel south|38°S]] down to this place by the name of [[New South Wales]]." Cook and Banks, then reported favourably to London on the possibilities of establishing a British colony at Botany Bay.

The [[Kingdom of Great Britain]] thereby became the first European power to officially claim any area on the Australian mainland. "New South Wales", as defined by Cook's proclamation, covered most of [[eastern Australia]], from {{Coord|38|S|145|E}} (near the later site of [[Mordialloc, Victoria]]), to the tip of [[Cape York Peninsula|Cape York]], with an unspecified western boundary. By implication, the proclamation excluded: [[Tasmania|Van Diemen's Land]] (later Tasmania), which had been claimed for the [[Netherlands]] by [[Abel Tasman]] in 1642; a small part of the mainland south of 38° (later southern [[Victoria (Australia)|Victoria]]) and; the west coast of the continent (later [[Western Australia]]), which [[Louis Aleno de St Aloüarn|Louis de Saint Aloüarn]] officially claimed for [[France]] in 1772 &mdash; even though it had been mapped previously by Dutch mariners.

The German scientist and man of letters [[Georg Forster]], who had sailed under Captain James Cook in the voyage of the ''Resolution'' (1772–1775), wrote in 1786 on the future prospects of the English colony: "New Holland, an island of enormous extent or it might be said, a third continent, is the future homeland of a new civilized society which, however mean its beginning may seem to be, nevertheless promises within a short time to become very important."<ref>Georg Forster, "Neuholland und die brittische Colonie in Botany-Bay", ''Allgemeines historisches Taschenbuch,'' (Berlin,Dezember 1786), English translations at: http://web.mala.bc.ca/Black/AMRC/index.htm?home.htm&2 and at: http://www.australiaonthemap.org.au/content/view/47/59/</ref>

In 1779 Sir Joseph Banks, the eminent scientist who had accompanied Cook, recommended Botany Bay as a suitable site.<ref>John Gascoigne, ''Science in the Service of Empire: Joseph Banks, the British State and the Uses of Science in the Age of Revolution,'' Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p.187.</ref> Banks accepted an offer of assistance made by the American-born [[Loyalist]] [[James Matra]] in July 1783. Matra had visited Botany Bay with Banks in 1770 as a junior officer on the ''Endeavour'' commanded by James Cook. Under Banks's guidance, he rapidly produced "A Proposal for Establishing a Settlement in New South Wales" (23 August 1783), with a fully developed set of reasons for a colony composed of English convicts.<ref>Harold B. Carter, "Banks, Cook and the Eighteenth Century Natural History Tradition", in Tony Delamotte and Carl Bridge (eds.), ''Interpreting Australia: British Perceptions of Australia since 1788'', London, Sir Robert Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, 1988, pp.4-23.</ref>

== Bass and Flinders ==
The last great naval explorer was [[Matthew Flinders]], who was responsible for filling in the gaps in the map left by other explorers. In 1796 (after settlement), with [[George Bass]], he took a 2.5 metre long open boat, the ''Tom Thumb'', and explored some of the coastline south of Sydney. He suspected from this voyage that Tasmania was an island, and in 1798 Bass and he led an expedition to [[circumnavigation|circumnavigate]] it and hence prove his theory. The sea between mainland Australia and Tasmania was named [[Bass Strait]]. One of the two major islands in Bass Strait was named [[Flinders Island]].

Flinders returned to his homeland of England, but was soon sent back to Sydney with a much more ambitious task&mdash;to circumnavigate Australia. He did this in 1802-03, sailing first along the south coast to Sydney, then completing the circumnavigation back to Sydney. At the same time of Flinders' expedition, the Australian coast was also mapped by Frenchman [[Nicolas Baudin]].<ref name="newby"/>

== References ==
{{reflist|2}}

== Further reading ==
* Bennett, S. (1867). [http://books.google.com/books?id=rsANAAAAQAAJ The history of Australian discovery and colonisation]. Sydney: Hanson and Bennett.
* Ridpath, J. C. (1899). [http://books.google.com/books?id=8OYEAAAAYAAJ Ridpath's universal history; an account of the origin, primitive condition, and race development of the greater divisions of mankind, and also of the principal events in the evolution and progress of nations from the beginnings of the civilized life to the close of the nineteenth century]. Cincinnati: Jones Brothers Pub.

== External links ==
*The [http://gutenberg.net.au/aust-discovery.html Australian Discovery] page at [http://gutenberg.net.au Project Gutenberg of Australia]

{{Australia topics}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2012}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:History Of Australia (1606-1787)}}
[[Category:History of Australia before 1788| ]]
[[Category:18th century in Australia]]
[[Category:17th century in Australia]]

Revision as of 09:10, 13 June 2014

Australia is found by a hamburger in 1890