NickFun wrote:To say that any European dicovered Australia is like saying Colombus discovered America. There were PEOPLE there already! The Aborigines dicoverd Australia!
No nick, I tried to explain that earlier.
Aborigines have "always" been with Australia. The land gave birth to people who were "of the land"
http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=2579174#2579174
Once, much of Australia was a huge inland sea. Salt scald is a huge agricultural problem in many parts of this country. I read somewhere that the average topsoil depth in Oz is 3 inches. All the rest having been worn away over time.
Setanta
Hartog set off across the Indian Ocean
(from The Cape of Good Hope) for Batavia (present-day Jakarta), utilising (or perhaps blown off course by) the strong westerly winds known as the "Roaring Forties" which had been earlier noted by the Dutch navigator Henderik Brouwer as a quicker route to Java. On October 25, 1616, at approximately 26° latitude south, Hartog and crew came unexpectedly upon "various islands, which were, however, found uninhabited." He made landfall at an island off the coast of Shark Bay, Western Australia, which is now called Dirk Hartog Island after him. His was the second recorded European expedition to land on the Australian continent (having been preceded by Willem Janszoon), but the first to do so on the western coastline.
Hartog spent three days examining the coast and nearby islands. He named the area Eendrachtsland after his ship, but this name has not endured. When he left he affixed a pewter plate to a post, now known as the Hartog plate. On the plate he had etched a record of his visit to the island. Its inscription (translated from the original Dutch) reads:
1616 On 25 October arrived the ship Eendracht, of Amsterdam: Supercargo Gilles Miebais of Liege, skipper Dirch Hatichs of Amsterdam. on 27 d[itt]o. she set sail again for Bantam. Deputy supercargo Jan Stins, upper steersman Pieter Doores of Bil. In the year 1616.
source wikpedia
Quote:The Eendracht plate remained where it had been placed until 2 February 1697, when men of Willem de Vlamingh's expedition found it lying beside a decayed post. Vlamingh replaced it with another flattened pewter plate, inscribed with a copy of the text on the old plate and a record of his own visit, and nailed it to a new post. He took the Eendracht plate to Batavia (Jakarta); from there it was transferred to the V.O.C.'s archives in the Netherlands and later to the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. It is the oldest known record of a landing by Europeans in Australia.
(snip)
Willem Jansz had charted the west coast of Cape York Peninsula some ten years earlier, that land was generally regarded as an extension of New Guinea. After Hartog's discovery, the mythical continent known as Terra Australis Incognita (the Unknown South Land) was replaced on maps by a major landmass called 't Landt van de Eendracht (the Land of the Eendracht). Later discoveries extended charts of its coastline and the continent was later renamed Hollandia Nova (New Holland) by the Dutch, and Australia by the British.
http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/AS10210b.htm
