Overview

In 1606 Dutchman Willem Jansz (1570-?) arrived on the Australian mainland, becoming perhaps the first European to do so. His achievement did not lead to Dutch rule of the area, as the Dutch were not interested in colonizing it. Nevertheless, his voyage was a milestone because it launched almost a century of successful Dutch exploration of Australia.

Background

Scholars, including the ancient Greeks and Romans, had long contended that a continent must exist in the Southern Hemisphere to balance the large land areas in the Northern Hemisphere. Ptolemy's (fl. A.D. 127-145) world map in the second century and later Renaissance maps depicted a Pacific terra australis, Latin for "southern land." Gerardus Mercator's (1512-...