Willem Janszoon - Exploration

Exploration

On 18 November 1605, the Duyfken sailed from Bantam to the coast of western New Guinea. Janszoon then crossed the eastern end of the Arafura Sea, without seeing the Torres Strait, into the Gulf of Carpentaria. On 26 February 1606, he made landfall at the Pennefather River on the western shore of Cape York in Queensland, near the modern town of Weipa. This is the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent. Janszoon proceeded to chart some 320 km of the coastline, which he thought was a southerly extension of New Guinea.

Finding the land swampy and the people inhospitable (ten of his men were killed on various shore expeditions), at Cape Keerweer (“Turnabout”), south of Albatross Bay, Willem Janszoon decided to return and arrived at Bantam in June 1606. He called the land he had discovered “Nieu Zeland” after the Dutch province of Zeeland, but the name was not adopted and was later used by Abel Tasman for New Zealand.

The Duyfken was actually in Torres Strait in March 1606, a few weeks before Luís Vaz de Torres sailed through it. In 1607 Cornelis Matelieff de Jonge sent him to Ambon and Banda. In 1611 Janszoon returned to the Netherlands believing that the south coast of New Guinea was joined to the land along which he sailed, and Dutch maps reproduced this error for many years. Though there have been suggestions that earlier navigators from China, France, or Portugal may have discovered parts of Australia, the Duyfken is the first European vessel definitely known to have done so.