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The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken captained by Dutch navigator, Willem Janszoon. [7] He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, and made landfall on 26 February at the Pennefather River near the modern town of Weipa on Cape York. [8]
Maps from this period and the early 18th century often have Terra Australis or t'Zuid Landt ("the South Land") marked as "New Holland", the name given to the continent by Abel Tasman in 1644. [39] [40] Joan Blaeu's 1659 map shows the clearly recognizable outline of Australia based on the many Dutch explorations of the first half of the 17th ...
In 1627, Dutch explorers François Thijssen and Pieter Nuyts discovered the south coast of Australia and charted about 1,800 kilometres (1,100 mi) of it between Cape Leeuwin and the Nuyts Archipelago. [26] [27] François Thijssen, captain of the ship 't Gulden Zeepaert (The Golden Seahorse), sailed to the east as far as Ceduna in South Australia.
Melchisédech Thévenot (c. 1620 – 1692): 1663 Map of "New Holland, discovered in 1644", based on a map by the Dutch cartographer Joan Blaeu.. The name New Holland was first applied to the western and northern coast of Australia in 1644 by the Dutch seafarer Abel Tasman, best known for his discovery of Tasmania (called by him Van Diemen's Land).
The theory of Portuguese discovery of Australia claims that early Portuguese navigators were the first Europeans to sight Australia between 1521 and 1524, well before the arrival of Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon in 1606 on board the Duyfken who is generally considered to be the first European discoverer.
Dutch and Australian PoWs at Tarsau, in Thailand in 1943. 22,000 Australians were captured by the Japanese; 8,000 died as POWs. Two battle-hardened Australian divisions were already steaming from the Middle East for Singapore. Churchill wanted them diverted to Burma, but Curtin refused, and anxiously awaited their return to Australia.
Janszoon did not detect the existence of the Torres Strait, which separates Australia and New Guinea. Unknown to the Dutch, explorer Luís Vaz de Torres, working for the Spanish Crown, sailed through the strait only four months later. However, Torres did not report seeing the coast of a major landmass to his south and is therefore presumed not ...
Willem Janszoon (Willem Jansz) was born around 1570 as the son of Jan (c. 1540), but nothing more is known of his early life or of his parents.Janszoon is first recorded as having entered into the service of the Oude compagnie, one of the predecessors of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), in 1598 as a mate aboard Hollandia, part of the second fleet under Jacob Corneliszoon van Neck ...