Abel Janszoon Tasman was a Dutch seafarer and explorer, best known for his voyages of 1642 and 1644 in the service of the Dutch East India Company (VOC).
Terra Australis was a hypothetical continent first posited in antiquity and which appeared on maps between the 15th and 18th centuries. Its existence was not based on any survey or direct observation, but rather on the idea that continental land in the Northern Hemisphere should be balanced by land in the Southern Hemisphere. This theory of balancing land has been documented as early as the 5th century on maps by Macrobius, who uses the term Australis on his maps.
The maritime European exploration of Australia consisted of several waves of European seafarers who sailed the edges of the Australian continent. Dutch navigators were the first Europeans known to have explored and mapped the Australian coastline. The first documented encounter was that of Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon, in 1606. Dutch seafarers also visited the west and north coasts of the continent, as did French explorers.
Giovanni da Verrazzano was an Italian (Florentine) explorer of North America, in the service of King Francis I of France.
This is a timeline of Australian history, comprising important legal and territorial changes and political events in Australia and its predecessor states. To read about the background to these events, see history of Australia. See also the list of prime ministers of Australia.
The Mahogany Ship is a putative early Australian shipwreck that is believed by some to lie beneath the sand in the Armstrong Bay area, approximately 3 to 6 kilometres west of Warrnambool in southwest Victoria, Australia. In many modern accounts it is described as a Spanish or Portuguese caravel after the wreck was associated with the theory of Portuguese discovery of Australia by Kenneth McIntyre in his 1977 book The Secret Discovery of Australia. The most recent research has questioned this theory and provided other explanations.
The Dieppe maps are a series of world maps and atlases produced in Dieppe, France, in the 1540s, 1550s, and 1560s. They are large hand-produced works, commissioned for wealthy and royal patrons, including Kings Henry II of France and Henry VIII of England. The Dieppe school of cartographers included Pierre Desceliers, Jean Rotz, Guillaume Le Testu, Guillaume Brouscon and Nicolas Desliens.
The theory of Portuguese discovery of Australia claims that early Portuguese navigators were the first Europeans to sight Australia between 1521 and 1524, well before the arrival of Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon in 1606 on board the Duyfken who is generally considered to be the first European discoverer. While lacking generally accepted evidence, this theory is based on the following:
Cristóvão de Mendonça was a Portuguese noble and explorer who was active in South East Asia in the 16th century.
Carronade Island lies off the northern (Kimberley) coast of Western Australia, in Napier Broome Bay. It owes its name to two swivel guns found there in 1916, mistakenly described at the time as carronades.
Astrolabe was originally a horse-transport barge converted into an exploration ship of the French Navy. Originally named Coquille, she is famous for her travels with Jules Dumont d'Urville. The name derives from an early navigational instrument, the astrolabe, a precursor to the sextant.
La grande isle de Java was, according to Marco Polo, the largest island in the world; his Java Minor was the actual island of Sumatra, which takes its name from the city of Samudera situated on its northern coast.
Pierre Desceliers was a French cartographer of the Renaissance and an eminent member of the Dieppe School of Cartography. He is considered the father of French hydrography.
Guillaume Le Testu, sometimes referred to as Guillaume Le Têtu, was a French privateer, explorer and navigator. He was one of the foremost cartographers of his time and an author of the Dieppe maps. His maps were distinguished by their sophistication and detail; they influenced generations of cartographers, navigators and explorers.
Luís Vaz de Torres, or Luis Váez de Torres in the Spanish spelling, was a 16th- and 17th-century maritime explorer of a Spanish expedition noted for the first recorded European navigation of the strait that separates the Australian mainland from the island of New Guinea, and which now bears his name.
Regio Patalis is Latin for “the region of Patala”, that is the region around the ancient city of Patala at the mouth of the Indus River in Sindh, Pakistan. The historians of Alexander the Great state that the Indus parted into two branches at the city of Patala before reaching the sea, and the island thus formed was called Patalene, the district of Patala. Alexander constructed a harbour at Patala.
The Vallard Atlas is a world atlas, one of the Dieppe school of maps, produced in 1547. It is believed to have been owned by Nicolas Vallard, its authorship being unknown.
The Vallard Atlas is an atlas produced in Dieppe, Northern France, in 1547. It was ascribed to Nicolas Vallard. However, there is a degree of uncertainty over his authorship. Nowadays, it is believed that the Vallard Atlas was developed from an earlier Portuguese prototype.
The Javanese presence in Australia has been reported by Southeast Asian and European people over several centuries. The most renowned record is from the itinerary of Chiaymasiouro, king of Demak, and Declaraçam de Malaca e India Meridional com o Cathay by Manuel Godinho de Eredia. Chiaymasiouro describes a land called LucaAntara in Southeast direction of Java, which Eredia coined the term India Meridional. According to Chiaymasiouro's accounts, a subgroup of Javanese people already settled in those lands, but when Eredia's servant went to LucaAntara in 1610, the land had seemingly been abandoned.
