Willem Janszoon Reaches Australia
In early 1606, commanding the VOC vessel Duyfken, Willem Janszoon departed the Banda Sea to seek trade south of New Guinea. He crossed the Torres Strait without recognising it as a strait and charted approximately 320 km of the western shore of Cape York Peninsula in what is now Queensland. His crew had several violent encounters with Aboriginal Australians, in which at least ten Dutch sailors were killed. Janszoon turned back without realising he had reached a new continent rather than an extension of New Guinea. His charts, the earliest known European maps of the Australian coast, survived in Dutch East India Company archives.
- Year: 1606 CE
