The Portuguese

Thequest for wealth and knowledge might logically have pulled the Portuguese to Australian shores; the assumption has some evidential support, including a reference indicating thatMelville Island, off the northern coast, supplied slaves. Certainly the Portuguese debated the issue of aterra australis incognita (Latin: “unknown southern land”)—an issue in European thought in ancient times and revived from the 12th century onward. The so-called Dieppe maps present a landmass, “Java la Grande,” that some scholarship (gaining strength in the early 21st century) has long seen as evidence of a Portuguese discovery of the Australian landmass, 1528 being one likely year.

TheSpanish

Viceroys ofSpain’s American empire regularly sought new lands. One suchexpedition, fromPeru in 1567, commanded byÁlvaro de Mendaña, discovered theSolomon Islands. Excited by finding gold, Mendaña hoped that he had found the great southern land and that Spain would colonize there. In 1595 Mendaña sailed again but failed to rediscover the Solomons. One of his officers wasPedro Fernández de Quirós, a man of the Counter-Reformation who wantedRoman Catholicism to prevail in the southland, the existence of which he was certain. Quirós won the backing ofKing Philip III for an expedition under his own command. It left Callao, Peru, in December 1605 and reached theNew Hebrides. Quirós named the island group Australia delEspirítu Santo, and he celebrated withelaborate ritual. He (and some later Roman Catholic historians) saw this as the discovery of the southern land. But Quirós’s exultation was brief; troubles forced his return to Latin America. The other ship of the expedition, underLuis de Torres, went on to sail through theTorres Strait but almost certainly failed to sight Australia; and all Quirós’s fervour failed to persuade Spanish officialdom to mount another expedition.

TheDutch

Late in 1605Willem Jansz (Janszoon) of Amsterdam sailed aboard theDuyfken from Bantam in theDutch East Indies in search ofNew Guinea. He reached the Torres Strait a few weeks before Torres and named what was later to prove part of the Australian coast—Cape Keer-Weer, on the western side ofCape York Peninsula. More significantly, from 1611 some Dutch ships sailing from theCape of Good Hope to Java inevitably carried too far east and touched Australia: the first and most famous wasDirck Hartog’sEendracht, from which men landed and left a memorial atShark Bay,Western Australia, October 25–27, 1616.Pieter Nuyts explored almost 1,000 miles (1,600 km) of the southern coast in 1626–27, and other Dutchmen added to knowledge of the north and west.

Most important of all was the work ofAbel Tasman, who won such respect as a seaman in the Dutch East Indies that in 1642 Gov.-Gen.Anthony van Diemen of the Indiescommissioned him to explore southward. In November–December, having made a great circuit of the seas, Tasman sighted the west coast and anchored off the southeast coast of what he calledVan Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). He then explored the island ofNew Zealand before returning to Batavia, on Java. A second expedition of 1644 contributed to knowledge of Australia’s northern coast; the Dutch named the new landmass New Holland.

TheBritish

The Netherlands spent little more effort in exploration, and the other great Protestant power in Europe, England, took over the role. In 1688 the English buccaneerWilliam Dampier relaxed on New Holland’s northwestern coast. On returning to England, he published hisVoyages and persuaded the Admiralty to back another venture. Hetraversed the western coast for 1,000 miles (1699–1700) and reported more fully than any previous explorer, but he did so in terms so critical of the land and its people that anotherhiatus resulted.

The middle decades of the 18th century saw much writing about the curiosities and possible commercial value of the southern seas andterra australis incognita. This was not restricted to Great Britain, but it had especial vigour there. The British government showed its interest by backing several voyages. Hopes flourished for a mighty empire of commerce in the eastern seas.

This was the background for the three voyages of CaptainJames Cook on behalf of the British Admiralty. The first, that of the HMSEndeavour, left England in August 1768 and had its climax on April 20, 1770, when a crewman sighted southeastern Australia. Cook landed several times, most notably atBotany Bay and at Possession Island in the north, where on August 23 he claimed the land, naming itNew South Wales. Cook’s latervoyages (1772–75 and 1776–79) were to other areas in the Pacific, but they were both symptom and cause of strengthening British interest in the eastern seas.

Later explorations

Cook’s voyages led to settlement but did not complete the exploration of the Australian coasts. Marion Dufresne of France skirted Tasmania in 1772, seeing more than had Tasman. Thecount de La Pérouse, another French explorer, made no actual discoveries in Australia but visited Botany Bay early in 1788. In 1791 the British navigatorGeorge Vancouver traversed and described the southern shores discovered by Pieter Nuyts years before. The French explorer Joseph-Antoine Raymond de Bruni, chevalier d’Entrecasteaux, also did significant work, especially in southern Tasmania.

Two Britons—George Bass, a naval surgeon, andMatthew Flinders, a naval officer—were the most famous postsettlement explorers. Together they entered some harbours on the coast near Botany Bay in 1795 and 1796. Bassventured farther south in 1797–98, pushing around Cape Everard toWestern Port. Flinders was in that region early in 1798, charting the Furneaux Islands. Late that year Flinders and Bass circumnavigated Tasmania in theNorfolk, establishing that it was an island and making further discoveries. Several other navigators, including merchantmen, filled out knowledge of theBass Strait area; most notable was the discovery of Port Phillip in 1802.

Meanwhile Flinders had returned home and in 1801 was appointed to command an expedition that would circumnavigate Australia and virtually complete the charting of thecontinent. Over the next three years Flinders proved equal to this task. Above all, he left no doubt that the Australian continent was a single landmass. Appropriately, Flindersurged that the name Australia replace New Holland, and this change received official backing from 1817.

France sponsored an expedition, similar in intent to Flinders’s, at the same time. UnderNicolas Baudin, it gave French names to many features (including “Terre Napoléon” for the southern coast) and gathered much information but did little new exploration. It was on the northern coast, fromArnhem Land toCape York Peninsula, that more exploration was needed. Two Admiralty expeditions—underPhillip Parker King (1817–22) and John Clements Wickham (1838–39)—filled this gap.