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.
William Dampier was an English explorer, pirate, privateer, navigator, and naturalist who became the first Englishman to explore parts of what is today Australia, and the first person to circumnavigate the world three times. He has also been described as Australia's first natural historian, as well as one of the most important British explorers of the period between Sir Francis Drake and Captain James Cook ; he "bridged those two eras" with a mix of piratical derring-do of the former and scientific inquiry of the latter. His expeditions were among the first to identify and name a number of plants, animals, foods, and cooking techniques for a European audience, being among the first English writers to use words such as avocado, barbecue, and chopsticks. In describing the preparation of avocados, he was the first European to describe the making of guacamole, named the breadfruit plant, and made frequent documentation of the taste of numerous foods foreign to the European palate at the time, such as flamingo and manatee.
The Swan River Colony, also known as the Swan River Settlement, or just Swan River, was a British colony established in 1829 on the Swan River, in Western Australia. This initial settlement place on the Swan River was soon named Perth, and it became the capital city of Western Australia.
Willem Hesselsz de Vlamingh was a Dutch sea captain who explored the central west coast of New Holland (Australia) in the late 17th century, where he landed in what is now Perth on the Swan River. The mission proved fruitless, but he charted parts of the continent's western coast.
Cape Leeuwin is the most south-westerly mainland point of the Australian continent, in the state of Western Australia.
Melchisédech or Melchisédec Thévenot was a French author, scientist, traveller, cartographer, orientalist, inventor, and diplomat. He was the inventor of the spirit level and is also famous for his popular posthumously published 1696 book The Art of Swimming, one of the first books on the subject and widely read during the 18th century. The book popularized the breaststroke ; he was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1990. He also influenced the founding of the Académie Royale des Sciences.
Point Hicks, is a coastal headland in the East Gippsland region of Victoria, Australia, located within the Croajingolong National Park. The point is marked by the Point Hicks Lighthouse that faces the Tasman Sea.
Ram Head or since 1970 Rame Head is a coastal headland in eastern Victoria, Australia. It is within the Croajingolong National Park.
Captain Matthew Flinders was a British navigator and cartographer who led the first inshore circumnavigation of mainland Australia, then called New Holland. He is also credited as being the first person to utilise the name Australia to describe the entirety of that continent including Van Diemen's Land, a title he regarded as being "more agreeable to the ear" than previous names such as Terra Australis.
HMS Roebuck was a fifth-rate warship in the Royal Navy which, under the command of William Dampier, carried the first British scientific expedition to Australia in 1699. The wreck of the ship has since been located by a team from the Western Australian Maritime Museum at a site on the coast of Ascension Island where it foundered more than 300 years ago.
The first voyage of James Cook was a combined Royal Navy and Royal Society expedition to the south Pacific Ocean aboard HMS Endeavour, from 1768 to 1771. It was the first of three Pacific voyages of which James Cook was the commander. The aims of this first expedition were to observe the 1769 transit of Venus across the Sun, and to seek evidence of the postulated Terra Australis Incognita or "undiscovered southern land".
Leeuwin, was a Dutch galleon that discovered and mapped some of the southwest corner of Australia in March 1622. It was captained by Jan Fransz and was the seventh European ship to sight the continent.
The name Australia is derived from the Latin australis, meaning "southern", and specifically from the hypothetical Terra Australis postulated in pre-modern geography. The name was popularised by the explorer Matthew Flinders from 1804, and it has been in official use since 1817, replacing "New Holland", an English translation of the Dutch name, first given by Abel Tasman in 1643 as the name for the continent.
HMS Investigator was the mercantile Fram, launched in 1795, which the Royal Navy purchased in 1798 and renamed HMS Xenophon, and then in 1801 converted to a survey ship under the name HMS Investigator. In 1802, under the command of Matthew Flinders, she was the first ship to circumnavigate Australia. The Navy sold her in 1810 and she returned to mercantile service under the name Xenophon. She was probably broken up c.1872.
A Voyage to Terra Australis: Undertaken for the Purpose of Completing the Discovery of that Vast Country, and Prosecuted in the Years 1801, 1802, and 1803, in His Majesty's Ship the Investigator was a sea voyage journal written by British mariner and explorer Matthew Flinders. It describes his circumnavigation of the Australian continent in the early years of the 19th century, and his imprisonment by the French on the island of Mauritius from 1804 to 1810.
Emanuel Bowen was a Welsh map engraver, who achieved the unique distinction of becoming Royal Mapmaker to both to King George II of Great Britain and Louis XV of France. Bowen was highly regarded by his contemporaries for producing some of the largest, most detailed and most accurate maps of his era. He is known to have worked with most British cartographic figures of the period including John Owen and Herman Moll.
The European exploration of Australia first began in February 1606, when Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon landed in Cape York Peninsula and on October that year when Spanish explorer Luís Vaz de Torres sailed through, and navigated, Torres Strait islands. Twenty-nine other Dutch navigators explored the western and southern coasts in the 17th century, and dubbed the continent New Holland. Most of the explorers of this period concluded that the apparent lack of water and fertile soil made the region unsuitable for colonisation.
