Eendrachtsland

Eendrachtsland or Eendraghtsland was derived from T Landt van d'Eendracht or Land van de Eendracht and was one of the earliest names given for Australia, being in use for 28 years, from 1616 until 1644.

In 1616 Dirk Hartog sailed from the west in the Dutch East India Company ship Eendracht and encountered the west coast of the Australian mainland, meeting it close to the 26th parallel south latitude (26° south) near what is now known as Dirk Hartog Island in Western Australia.

After leaving the island, the Eendracht sailed in a north-west direction along the West Australian coastline, Hartog charting as he went. He gave this land the name T'Landt van d'Eendracht or "Eendrachtsland", after his ship, the Eendracht, meaning "Unity".

The earliest known appearance of that name on the charts was eleven years later in 1627 on, Caert van't Landt van d'Eendracht ("Chart of the Land of Eendracht"), by Hessel Gerritsz, however the name was in use as early as 1619.

The Caert van't Landt van d'Eendracht images are showing that things were done quite differently in the 1620s as the chart is oriented with north to the left and shows the degrees of latitude on the bottom of the chart.

Eendrachtsland was first revealed to the world in 1626 on the small world map on the title page of the Iournael vande Nassausche Vloot [Journal of the Nassau Fleet]. This was the first published map to show any authentic part of the Australian coastline: it shows t'Eendracht Land as part of a notionally much larger landmass.

The chart shows that the knowledge held by the Dutch of the West Australian coastline was increasing, as the chart was based on a number of voyages, beginning with this 1616 voyage of Dirk Hartog.

The 1627 chart, broken here and there by unexplored openings, extends from the Willems River (believed to be the Ashburton River (Western Australia)) almost to Albany, Western Australia, spanning the West Australian coastline for a distance of around 1,900 km. It is worth reproducing here what Heeres wrote in 1899 about the increase of Dutch knowledge of the West Australian coastline, as follows:

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