The first undisputed sighting of Australia by a European was made in 1606. The Dutch vessel Duyfken, captained by Willem Jansz, followed the coast of New Guinea, missed Torres Strait, and explored perhaps 350 km of western side of Cape York, in the Gulf of Carpentaria, believing the land was still part of New Guinea [2]. The Dutch made one landing, but were promptly attacked by Aborigines and subsequently abandoned further exploration.
The discovery that sailing east from the Cape of Good Hope until land was sighted, and then sailing north along the west coast of Australia was a much quicker route than around the coast of the Indian Ocean made Dutch landfalls on the west coast inevitable. Most of these landfalls were unplanned. The first such landfall was in 1616, when Dirk Hartog landed on what is now called Dirk Hartog Island, off the coast of Western Australia, and left behind an inscription on a pewter plate. (This plate may now be seen in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.) The most famous and bloodiest result was the mutiny and murder that followed the wreck of the Batavia.Further voyages by Dutch ships explored the north coast of Australia between 1623 and 1636, giving Arnhem Land its present-day name. In 1642, Abel Tasman sailed on a famous voyage from Batavia (now Jakarta), to Papua New Guinea, Fiji, New Zealand and, on November 24, sighted Tasmania. He named it Van Diemen's Land, after Anthony van Diemen, the Dutch East India Company's Governor General at Batavia, who had commissioned his voyage. Tasman claimed Van Diemen's Land for the Netherlands. In 1644 he made a second voyage [2,3], on which he mapped the north coast of Australia from Cape York westward [2,3]. Other notable Dutch explorers of the Australian coast include François Thyssen [2,3] (with Pieter Nuyts on board [2,3]) who discovered much of the south coast in 1627 [2,3] and Willem de Vlamingh [2] who mapped the west coast in 1696-1697 [2].
