Who discovered Australia? (2024)

FAQs

Who discovered Australia? ›

While Indigenous Australians have inhabited the continent for tens of thousands of years, and traded with nearby islanders, the first documented landing on Australia by a European was in 1606. The Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon landed on the western side of Cape York Peninsula and charted about 300 km of coastline.

The first known landing in Australia by Europeans was in 1606 by Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon on Australia's northern coast.

On January 26, 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip guides a fleet of 11 British ships carrying convicts to the colony of New South Wales, effectively founding Australia.

"They provided stunning proof that Portuguese ships made these daring voyages of discovery in the early 1520s, just a few years after they had sailed north of Australia to reach the Spice Islands -- the Moluccas. This was a century before the Dutch and 250 years before Captain Cook," he said.

Christopher Columbus never discovered Australia. In fact, Christopher Columbus never sailed beyond the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Caribbean Sea.

Lake Mungo. The oldest human remains in Australia were found at Lake Mungo in south-west New South Wales, part of the Willandra Lakes system. This site has been occupied by Aboriginal people from at least 47,000 years ago to the present.

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.

After Dutch navigators charted the northern, western and southern coasts of Australia during the 17th Century this newly found continent became known as 'New Holland'. It was the English explorer Matthew Flinders who suggested the name we use today.

Australia is an independent self Governing country and is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, it chose to have the Head of the Commonwealth of Nations as its Head of State currently that is King CharlesIII.

Aboriginal people are known to have occupied mainland Australia for at least 65,000 years. It is widely accepted that this predates the modern human settlement of Europe and the Americas. Increasingly sophisticated dating methods are helping us gain a more accurate understanding of how people came to be in Australia.

Why didn't the Dutch Colonise Australia? ›

The answer is already given. The Dutch knew about Australia, but the areas they encountered were mostly arid and unsuitable for occupation. They did manage to give Australia some names though.

British settlement of Australia began as a penal colony governed by a captain of the Royal Navy. Until the 1850s, when local forces began to be recruited, British regular troops garrisoned the colonies with little local assistance.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (First Nations) people are the first peoples of Australia. They are not one group, but rather comprise hundreds of groups that have their own distinct set of languages, histories and cultural traditions (AIHW 2015).

The Americas were not discovered by European explorers such as Columbus, but by people hailing from Asia nearly 16,000 years ago. All Indigenous Americans are derived from these first peoples.

There is proof that Europeans visited what is now Canada about 500 years before Columbus set sail. They were Vikings, and evidence of their presence can be found on the Canadian island of Newfoundland at a place called l'Anse Aux Meadows.

Before that "The Indies". Also it was called New Spain. Of course all the Native peoples had their own names in hundreds of languages , although not all had an idea of the geography of a whole continent. As for "turtle island", it was used by just a few peoples in the far northeast of today's US.

Although there is a strong theory that the Portuguese explorer, Cristóvão de Mendonça (1475-1532), may have discovered Australia in 1522, the first recorded European landfall was made by the Dutch Willem Janszoon in 1606.

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.

The minimum widely accepted time-frame for the arrival of humans in Australia is placed at least 48,000 years ago. Many sites dating from this time period have been excavated. In Arnhem Land Madjedbebe (formerly known as Malakunanja II) fossils and a rock shelter have been dated to around 65,000 years old.