Nearly 30 Dutch ships landed on the western coast of Australia or sighted part of the coast during the 1600s and 1700s, and the crew of one Dutch ship, the Gulden Zeepaerdt, came close (well, sort of) to discovering the east coast of Australia nearly 150 years before James Cook.
Accidental landings on Australia’s west coast
Posted on 28 April 2009
Piecing history together: the Duyfken’s voyage to Australia
Posted on 15 April 2009
What do we really know about the first recorded European landing in Australia?
Continue reading…
Subjects and topics: Aborigines, Cape York Peninsula, Dutch East India Company, Duyfken, New Guinea, Willem Janszoon
Terra Australis: the imagined continent
Posted on 23 March 2009
I’ve been looking at maps of imagined places for my new book, Explorers: filling in the map of Australia. These maps were drawn by European cartographers hundreds and hundreds of years ago — and the place they’re imagining is Australia.
Well, sort of.