7 Europeans begin to explore the Australian continent
7 Europeans begin to explore the Australian continent
European exploration of the Australian continent mostly followed colonisation, rather than colonisation following exploration: when Sydney was founded in 1788 not even the outline of the continent was fully known. At that time, for Europeans, there was the possibility that New South Wales (the eastern edge of which had been mapped by James Cook) was not the same landmass as New Holland (the western portion of the continent, with a coastline in part mapped by Dutch navigators). The Sydney settlement was slow to spread inland, and in its early years was more tightly tied to the Pacific on its doorstep than to its continental hinterland. As other British colonies were established on the continent that pattern was repeated: colonisation led to exploration, not the other way round.
As the edges of the Australian continent were being charted by ocean-going explorers and voyagers, the continental interior remained a blank space on European maps. Famously, James Cook produced a detailed map of large portions of the east coast during his 1770 voyage along it, and by the time of Cook’s Endeavour voyage portions of the north, west, and south coasts had been surveyed and partially mapped by a variety of European explorers. The establishment of Sydney did not immediately lead to increased European knowledge of the continent. A quirk of geography meant that the settlement was able to spread only a short way inland before being caged in by the hills and mountains of the Great Dividing Range. The settlement initially spread to encompass the welcoming, coastal Cumberland Plain, but then faced significant barriers before it could tap into resources further inland. Early Sydney sought its supplies in Tahiti and Aotearoa (New Zealand) and those vital connections confirmed the colony’s position: it was a coastal rather than a continental settlement, and the Pacific on its front door step was of greater significance to its survival than the continent behind it.
Once Sydney was established as a European base, coastal exploration of the Australian continent intensified. In 1795 coastal exploration to Sydney’s south by Matthew Flinders and George Bass established that the scrap of coast mapped by Tasman (named Van Diemen’s Land) was part of an island (in 1856 that island became a colony separate from New South Wales and officially took the name Tasmania). The charting of Bass Strait (between Van Diemen’s Land and the continent) promised quicker transit from Britain to Sydney by sea. Between 1801 and 1803 Flinders captained an expedition that undertook the first close circumnavigation of the Australian continent. His journal and the map he constructed were not published until 1814. They contained the first clear map of the coast of the Australian continent, and a proposal that it be named ‘Australia’. As a result of Flinders’ 1801-3 voyage it was finally clear what landmass was in the process of being colonised by the