Australia: European contact (Janszoon, Tasman, Cook)
Australia: contacto europeo (Janszoon, Tasman, Cook)
- Date
- 1606 / 1642 / 1770 · confidence high
- Place
- Botany Bay, Sydney, Australia
- Credited to
- Willem Janszoon (1606), Abel Tasman (1642, Tasmania), James Cook (1770, east coast)
- People
- 👤 James Cook1728–1779
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
The Dutch mapped the north and west of 'New Holland' in the 17th century; Cook charted the east coast in 1770 and claimed New South Wales, leading to the 1788 penal colony.
Coordinates of Botany Bay, Cook's landing site. Australia had been inhabited for more than 60,000 years by Aboriginal peoples; Makassan fishermen also visited it. First Dutch European record in 1606 (Duyfken).
What it led to
- British colonisation of Australia (1788)
- Dispossession and demographic collapse of Aboriginal peoples
- Banks and Solander's botany
- The end of the myth of Terra Australis Incognita
Built on
- VOC's Brouwer Route
- Tasman's voyages
Made possible
- Botany Bay penal colony
- Harrison's chronometer in use (Cook's second voyage)