Oceania Explored

European sailors first crossed the Pacific Ocean in the 1500s and trade ships were regularly sailing to the Indian subcontinent and the Far East during the latter half of this century. However, Australia, New Zealand and many of the Pacific Islands remained undiscovered by Europeans until the 1600s.

It seems certain that Chinese and Indonesian sailors knew about the northern coastline of Australia long before the first European ships arrived in the southern Pacific. Asian fishermen and seafarers traded with the Aborigines, handing over iron knives, for example. Rumours and stories of an unknown ‘Southern Land’ reached Europe during the 1500s, and a landmass starts to appear on maps drawn after 1540.

The first European to see Australia and return was Dutch explorer Willem Jansz. He sailed into the northern Gulf of Carpentaria in 1606, where he saw what he described as ‘wild black men’. The first known landing on Australia did not occur for another ten years until 1616, when a Dutchman named Dirk Hartog landed there.

Hartog was the skipper of a ship bound from the Cape of Good Hope to Java, but he was blown off course. He sailed too far east, and landed on the west coast of Australia. Other Dutch ships took the same route and saw this new land. They explored its western and southern coasts, but did not settle.

In 1642, Abel Tasman, another Dutch captain, sighted the island of Tasmania, which he named Van Diemen’s Land. Sailing on eastwards, his ship came in sight of a bigger island. He had discovered New Zealand’s South Island.

Unfortunately, Tasman’s first contact with the Maori people who lived there ended violently, with four of the European sailors killed. Tasman reported that the new land was best left alone. And so it was, until the arrival of James Cook over 100 years later in 1769.

Crossing the vast Pacific Ocean was a risky adventure. The first expedition to do so was led by the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan in 1519-21. This expedition was the first circumnavigation of the world. However, Magellan did not live to see the voyage completed as he was killed in the Philippines in April 1521. Five months later, the remains of his fleet returned to Spain. Only one ship completed the voyage of the five that set out and just 17 European sailors returned out of an original crew of more than 270. More than 50 years later, the English sailor Francis Drake made the second round-the world voyage from 1577-80, landing in Australia on the way. Much later, in the 1680s, the English pirate William Dampier explored the coasts of Australia and New Zealand. There seemed little trade or treasure to be gained from visiting this region, so Europeans largely ignored the new southern lands until the 1700s.