Cape Keerweer
Willem Janszoon made the first recorded European landing on the Australian continent in 1606, sailing from Bantam, Java in the Duyfken. As an employee of the Dutch East India Company (Dutch: Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, VOC), Janszoon had been instructed to explore the coast of New Guinea in search of economic opportunities. He had originally arrived in Dutch East Indies from the Netherlands in 1598 and became an officer of the VOC on its establishment in 1602.
In 1606, he sailed from Bantam to its south coast and continued down what he thought was a southern extension of New Guinea, but was in fact the western coast of the Cape York Peninsula of northern Queensland. He travelled south as far as Cape Keerweer, where he battled with the local aboriginal people and several of his men were killed. As a consequence he was obliged to retrace his route up the coast towards Cape York and then returned to Banda.
Janszoon failed to discover Torres Strait, which separates Australia and New Guinea. Unknown to the Dutch, the Spanish or Portuguese explorer Luis Váez de Torres, working for the Spanish Crown, sailed through the strait four months later, although Torres did not report seeing the coast of a major land mass to his south and is therefore presumed not to have seen Australia. As a result of these oversights, Dutch maps did not include the strait until after James Cook's 1770 passage through the Torres Strait, while early Spanish maps showed the coast of New Guinea correctly, but omitted Australia.
Janszoon travelled to the Dutch East Indies in 1598 for the Oude compagnie and became an officer of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC) in Dutch) when it was established in 1602. After two trips back to the Netherlands, he returned to the East Indies for the third time in 1603 as captain of all the Duyfken. In 1605, he was at Banda in the Banda Islands, when—according to an account given to Abel Jansen Tasman, issued in Batavia on 29 January 1644—he was ordered by VOC President Jan Willemsz Verschoor to explore the coast of New Guinea. In September 1605, he left for Bantam in west Java—which the VOC had established as its first permanent trading in 1603—so that the Duyfken could be fitted out and supplied for its voyage.
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