Alan Eggleston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This year is the 400th anniversary of the first recorded sighting of the Australian coast by European navigators. The Australia on the Map Project is dedicated to commemorating the 400th anniversary of European discovery of the Australian continent and the subsequent voyages of discovery that literally put Australia on the map. There were various discoveries by a range of European powers over the years, so that little by little, with each voyage, more of the continent of Australia was mapped. This culminated in 1811 with the publication of a virtually complete map of Australia by the French, and this was followed by the British in 1812. Of course, we should acknowledge that the Aboriginal people of Australia had been here for at least 40,000 years before Europeans stumbled upon the continent, and I am sure that people from the Indonesian archipelago had known for thousands of years that Australia was here. When President Hu of China visited this country a few years ago, he made the claim in the House of Representatives that the Chinese had discovered Australia in the 14th century, when their great boats on their voyages around the world came to Northern Australia.

On 6 April this year, as part of the Australia on the Map Project, the replica of the Dutch ship the Duyfken, the first known European ship to discover Australia, will set off on a journey from Fremantle, where the replica of the Duyfken was built, which will culminate in its arrival in Sydney on 10 December. On the way the Duyfken will call into a range of ports in Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria, Queensland, Tasmania and New South Wales.

Even in ancient times, the existence of a large landmass in the Southern Hemisphere was speculated on, but it was not until the early 17th century that Europeans first discovered the Australian landmass. The first Europeans to venture near Australia were the Portuguese, who dominated the East Indies throughout most of the 16th century. There is speculation, but no compelling evidence, that they were the first Europeans to reach Australia. By 1606, the Dutch had become the dominant European power in the region, and their main base was Batavia—now Jakarta—on the island of Java in the Indonesian archipelago. As a result of their commercial activities in the East Indies, the Dutch played a large part in the discovery of Australia. In 1602, they founded the United East India Company, or VOC. The Dutch were traders, and their exploration was largely for the purpose of finding new sources of commodities to further their broader commercial objectives. In short, they wanted to discover new supplies of commodities to ship back to Europe as trade.

As stated in the recent publication Great Southern Land, ‘The first Dutch exploration of Australia in 1606 took place in the context of the Dutch domination of the Spice Islands, and within half a century the Dutch had explored the entire north and west Australian coasts and a large proportion of the southern coast of Australia.’ In March 1606, while exploring the south coast of New Guinea, Captain Willem Janszoon, on board the original Duyfken, stumbled on the west coast of the Cape York Peninsula, thus becoming the first European to discover Australia. It seems he was unaware that he had discovered a new landmass. Instead, he thought that what he had found was part of New Guinea. A decade later, the Dutch discovered the west coast of Australia. It would be over 150 years until Europeans discovered the east coast of the continent; that is, not until 1770, with the arrival of Captain James Cook.

The usual route to the Dutch East Indies, north-east from the Cape of Good Hope, often resulted in ships becoming becalmed in the doldrums of the Indian Ocean. In 1611, Dutchman Hendrik Brouwer discovered an alternative and faster route to Batavia. After rounding the Cape of Good Hope, he travelled in an easterly direction for about 3,000 miles before turning north for Batavia. Henceforth, this became the route that all VOC captains took. With no accurate method of determining longitude, it then became only a matter of time before the Dutch were to stumble across the west coast of Australia. So it was that in October 1616 the Eendracht, captained by Dirk Hartog, stumbled on an unknown coastline quite by accident, while journeying from Europe to Batavia. We now know that that unknown coastline was the coastline of Western Australia in the mid-west, around what is now known as Shark Bay. Hartog sailed about 250 miles along the coast, naming his discovery Eendrachtsland after his ship.

On 26 October he set foot on an island at the entrance to Shark Bay, which now bears his name, at what is now known as Cape Inscription. Here Hartog erected a post to which he nailed an inscribed pewter plate recording his visit. This was the first instance of printing performed in Australia and the first recorded landing on Australia of Europeans. So began a series of both intentional and unintentional Dutch contacts with Australia.

By 1622 the Dutch had discovered the western coastline from Cape Leeuwin to Shark Bay. A number of ships were wrecked over the years, perhaps the most famous being the shipwrecking of the Batavia in 1629 on the Abrolhos Islands, near Geraldton. I would think that the ensuing mutiny, murder and executions is one of the most bloodthirsty stories in Australian history. In December 1618 two Dutch vessels, the Dordrecht and the Amsterdam reached the Western Australian coast at a more southerly point than Hartog and sailed north along the coast.

In July 1619 Frederick de Houtman came close to discovering the Swan River but, mistaking Rottnest Island for a cape, he failed to see the river. Then in 1622 the crew of the Leeuwin discovered the extreme south-western point of the coast of Australia, now known as Cape Leeuwin after the ship, and they proceeded to map the south-westerly coast of Western Australia. In 1624 the Gulden Zeepaard landed near Cape Leeuwin and sailed along the Great Australian Bight towards what is now South Australia. In 1627 Gerrit Frederikszoon de Witt on the Vyanen reached the west coast near modern day Port Hedland and followed it to the Montebello Islands, which of course are just north-west of what is now called Dampier.

In 1644 Abel Tasman charted a long section of the Western Australian coast. In 1696 Willem de Vlamingh, on board the boat Geelvink, was sent to search for a shipwreck on the Western Australian coast. Although de Vlamingh failed to find the wreck, he did discover a river, which he explored over a number of days. Owing to the plentiful number of black swans on it, he named the river the Swan River. Of course, the river still bears this name today and is the site of both Perth and Fremantle. Vlamingh’s party made several inland expeditions to explore the mainland but did not see any potential for trade and so did not seek to establish a settlement. On his journey Vlamingh came upon an island off the Western Australian coast with strange creatures that he thought were large rats. In fact the animals were quokkas, a type of marsupial. He gave the island the name rottennest, or rats nest, and, of course, today it is known as Rottnest Island and is a very important tourist resort in Western Australia.

On 30 January 1697, de Vlamingh rediscovered Dirk Hartog Island. He landed and found the pewter plate that Hartog had left there. Vlamingh replaced Hartog’s plate with a new one, inscribing Hartog’s old record and also recording his own visit. He then took Hartog’s plate with him and it is now held by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. According to Michael Pearson, writing in the publication Great Southern Land, ‘de Vlamingh’s voyage greatly enhanced the knowledge of the geography of the west coast, by closely fixing its position and principal features’. However, the VOC was somewhat displeased because none of these explorers had found any potential for trade and so no Dutch settlements were established in Western Australia.

In 1688 the English buccaneer William Dampier on board the Cygnet repaired his ship at King Sound on the north-west coast, where modern Derby is located. French navigators were also active on the WA coast. In fact the French laid claim to Western Australia in March 1772 when the Frenchman Francois-Alenso de St Allouam, on board the Gros Ventre reached Cape Leeuwin. He subsequently sailed north to Shark Bay, where he buried an act of possession, claiming the west coast of the landmass for the King of France.

In 1792 another Frenchman, Joseph-Antoine Raymond de Bruni D’Entrecasteaux charted the Western Australian coast from Cape Leeuwin to Termination Island. In 1800 the Baudin expedition of two ships, the Geographe and the Naturaliste, sailed up the Western Australian coast naming many points along the coast, which explains why there are so many French names on the Western Australian coast. Of particular interest to me is that the Baudin expedition went to Geographe Bay in the south-west near where the town of Busselton, where I grew up, is now located. The district is called Vasse after a French seaman who was lost overboard from that expedition.

Although focusing on the west coast, I hope that this speech has served to highlight the very significant contribution that the Dutch especially—but also sailors from other European nations, particularly France and Portugal—made in putting Australia on the map. Also, I hope this speech has made the point that there were European navigators on the west coast over 150 years before the British charted the east coast of the continent. In conclusion, I would like to encourage the communities in the 25 harbours that the replica of the Duyfken will visit as it sails around the Australian coast this year to become involved in the event and to celebrate the history of French, Dutch and Portuguese navigation of the Australian coast.