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- Willem Janszoon captained 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 or VOC), Janszoon had been instructed to explore the coast of New Guinea in search of economic opportunities. He had originally arrived in the 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 the south coast of New Guinea, and continued down what he thought was a southern extension of that coast, 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 did not detect the existence of the 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 only four months later. However, Torres did not report seeing the coast of a major landmass to his south and is therefore presumed not to have seen Australia. Because the two separate observations of Janszoon and Torres were not matched, Dutch maps did not include the strait until after James Cook's 1770 passage through it, while early Spanish maps showed the coast of New Guinea correctly, but omitted Australia. (en)
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