Willem Janszoon Reaches Australia
Willem Janszoon put the Duyfken ashore on the western side of Cape York Peninsula around late February 1606, the first recorded European landing on Australia. He had been sent from Bantam by the Dutch East India Company to look for trade and reported gold east of Java, and followed the southern coast of New Guinea eastward. Where the coast turned south he followed it, assuming it was the same landmass. He was crossing the Torres Strait without registering it, and the shore he then charted for some 300 kilometres was Australian. He landed at the Pennefather River and elsewhere in the Gulf of Carpentaria. Contact with the Wik people went badly — several of his men were killed in encounters ashore, and the Dutch fired on people who approached — and Janszoon concluded that the land was barren, waterless and inhabited by savages with whom no trade was possible. His chart labelled the whole coast as part of New Guinea, and the error was repeated for years. Luis Váez de Torres sailed through the strait in the opposite direction within months and reported it to Madrid, where the account sat unpublished in the archives until the British took Manila in 1762 and found a copy. The Dutch went on to chart the north, west and south coasts over the following forty years, named it New Holland, and concluded it offered nothing worth a settlement. Cook charted the fertile east coast in 1770, which is the one they had all missed. Janszoon returned in 1618 and charted more of the west coast without changing his opinion of it. The British settled Botany Bay in 1788, 182 years after a Dutchman first stepped ashore.
- Year: 1606 CE
- Category: Exploration
