There have been a great interest in “who discovered what and when” on the forum lately.
What about the much discussed question everywhere; “Who discovered Australia first, and when”?
There are several answers to that question. Which one is right depends on your point of view:
Let’s hear for our Aussie experts.
PS: I hold an opinion that, aside from the Aboriginals, the first people to set foot on Australian soil was fishermen and traders from the Moluccas in today’s Indonesia.
The Dutch that went there later knew where to go and what to expect when they went there.
The Dutch ship ‘Batavia’ was wrecked on the Abrolhos Islands - June 4th 1629
Yes, the Duyfken was missed in that list (and remains well known as a replica sailing today), but it is also interesting to note that there was certainly Portuguese prior to that. The word “Abrolhos” is Portuguese meaning “Watch out” or something similar and was placed on the early charts to warn mariners of the danger of the very low lying islands and coral reefs as an area of great danger.
The Dutch knew of the dangers of the Abrolhos Islands and generally had turned North to Batavia before getting tangled in them. The wreck of the Batavia was a terrible mistake but makes a great story today with excellent artefacts in the museum in Fremantle.
Dampier was the first to leave his mark by nailing a pewter plate to a post planted at Steep Point on the northern tip of Dirk Hartog Island at the entrance to Shark Bay, a prominent feature of the Western Australian coast.
I note the list also does not include Luís Vaz de Torres who is credited with discovering Torres Strait as he sailed from the S Pacific to Manila. He may not have sighted the mainland of Australia but, depending on how you define “Australia”, the current nation includes islands in the strait barely a mile off the PNG coast. Torres’s nationality is variously defined. He was on a Spanish expedition, but was Galician and Portuguese.
Cook is rightly revered in Australia for his excellent charting of the east coast (and for disproving the established science of a Great South Land to balance the weight of the European and Asian continent in the north) but place names all around the coast reflect the nationalities and variety of explorers who visited over the centuries.
My ship, STS Leeuwin II, bears a dutch name meaning lioness.
They certainly did visit. I patrolled the north coast of Australia in the navy and we happily accommodated the traditional fishermen from Indonesia (commercial fishermen not allowed) who visited offshore islands and reefs.
I suggest also that what we now describe as Torres Strait Islanders (distinct from Australian Aborigines) regularly crossed from PNG in canoes in that area. Kinship crosses the loosely defined border to this day and the islanders visit unhindered by border enforcement.
It is generally believed that the aboriginals arrived in Australia over a land bridge from present day Indonesia about 60,000 years ago.
There is little doubt that fishermen and others from the Southeast Asia visited the northern part of Australia for fish and pearls including the Chinese.
The first recorded people were the Dutch as noted above. Cook made landfall in a much more hospitable part of the country that made it more desirable to claim and it was claimed under the doctrine of Terra Nullis .
That is confirmed - as much as anything that far back can be confirmed - by modern science.
Where they came from is revealed through studies of DNA from thousands of people:
PS: There are more scholarly studies, if anybody want to dig deeper.
What is less well know is that some of the migrants got stranded when water levels rose and covered the land bridges that brought them most of the way. (As far as to the Wallace Gap at least)
Some got stranded on the Andaman Islands and are still there:
There are three tribes that are very closely related to the aboriginals in Australia; the Onges, Jarwas and Sentinalese.
Two of these tribes are still not “friendly” to outsiders.
The Sentenials:
