One of the things that surprised me while I was researching Explorers was the number of Dutch ships that visited Australia during the 1600s and 1700s. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I knew there’d been a history of Dutch exploration of Australia before James Cook arrived in 1770 — but I didn’t realise that quite so many ships had landed here.
By my count, 28 Dutch ships either landed on the western coast of Australia or sighted part of it between 1616 and 1770. (There were also a couple of English and French ships in the same waters, and Dutch sailors also explored the north coast of Arnhem Land and the coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria during the same period.)
Twenty-eight doesn’t sound like many ships for such a long period — but the Dutch weren’t actually carrying out a planned program of exploration. In fact, most of these landings were accidental.
The first Dutchmen to visit Australia’s west coast accidentally were Dirk Hartog and his crew aboard the Eendracht. (I tell the story of Hartog’s voyage in Explorers). The shape of Australia as we know it today started to emerge as more and more Dutch ships made landfall on different sections of the coast, and as cartographers start adding the sections of coastline to their maps.
Hessel Gerritsz’s ‘Chart of the Malay Archipelago and the Dutch discoveries in Australia’, for instance, shows that a big chunk of Australia’s western (and southern) coast had been revealed by the explorations of the Dutch by as early as 1633.
Detail from Gerritsz, Hessel. ‘Chart of the Malay Archipelago and the Dutch discoveries in Australia’ MAP RM750. National Library of Australia. Reproduced with permission
I’ve put together another handy interactive Google Map (like I did for Willem Janszoon’s voyage aboard the Duyfken in 1606) to give a better sense of the map being filled in by showing some of the most significant landings or sightings along the western coast.
Of all these voyages, the one that fascinates me the most is the voyage of the Gulden Zeepardt along the southern coast. This was the first time Europeans entered the waters directly south of Australia. I get goosebumps thinking about what it must have been like for them to be exploring what was essentially a kind of ‘land at the bottom of the world’.
Unfortunately we don’t know much about the voyage, but we do know the ship reached the coast by accident, and that 30 of the crew had died of illness between Europe and Australia. Even with the crew so depleted, Thijssen and Nuyts must have thought it was worth exploring this new stretch of coastline — they may have even hoped that if they sailed far enough they’d see the land turn northward.
If they’d been able to keep sailing (presumably they turned back due to dwindling provisions), the crew of the Gulden Zeepaerdt might even have discovered the east coast of Australia — nearly 150 years before James Cook!
For a handy summary of all the known landings on the Australian coast, including some of the landings on the western coast not covered in my Google Map, visit the ‘Landings list’ page on the Australia on the Map website or download a copy of Great southern land: the maritime exploration of Terra Australis by Michael Pearson.
And as I said at the top, you can find out how Dirk Hartog came to make the first of these accidental landings by checking out Explorers. (It’s worth every cent!)