The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland

The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent, are attributed to the Dutch.

[60] The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken captained by Dutch navigator, Willem Janszoon.[61] He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, and made landfall on 26 February 1606 at the Pennefather River near

the modern town of Weipa on Cape York.[62] Later that year, Spanish explorer Luís Vaz de Torres sailed through, and navigated, Torres Strait islands.[63] The Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent “New Holland” during the 17th

century, and although no attempt at settlement was made,[62] a number of shipwrecks left men either stranded or, as in the case of the Batavia in 1629, marooned for mutiny and murder, thus becoming the first Europeans to permanently inhabit the continent.[64] William

Dampier, an English explorer and privateer, landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688 (while serving as a crewman under pirate Captain John Read[65]) and again in 1699 on a return trip.[66] In 1770, James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain.[67]