Did you know?

Based on the current consensus, the first Australians, likely to have been the ancestors of Australia’s Indigenous population, arrived here about 46,000 years ago.

The oldest representation of an Australian bird is a 15,000 year old depiction of an emu in a rock art panel at Dangurrung in the Northern Territory.

A sulphur-crested cockatoo was given to Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen (1194-1250), and a white cockatoo appears in a painting done in 1496. These are thought to be New Guinean sub-species obtained in trade.

The term “Australia” is first known to have been used on a map in 1545. It was applied to an imaginary southern landmass on a map in a German work Astronomia-Teutsch Astronomei.

When Captain Willem Janszoon, sailing in the Duyfken, made first documented contact with Australia in 1606, he thought it was part of New Guinea.

The first documented sighting of an Australian bird in Australian waters, the Torres Strait pigeon, was by Diego Prado y Tovar, a member of Torres expedition that sailed through Torres Strait in September 1606.

The oldest existing European document created in Australia is an inscription on a pewter plate left nailed to a post on Dirk Hartog Island by Dirk Hartog, Captain of the Eendracht on 25 October 1616. This plate is now in the Amsterdam  Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands.

Australia’s first shipwreck occurred on 24 May, 1622, when the English ship Tryall, under the command of Captain John Brookes, struck the Trial Rocks off the north west coast of Western Australia. Brookes and some of the crew sailed to Java in two boats leaving at least 93 sailors stranded on the wreck. No-one knows what happened to them.

The first regional map to show part of Australia was the Gerritszoon Map, published in 1622. It showed the part of Cape York charted in 1606 by Willem Janszoon in the Duyfken.

The first recorded birth of a European in Australia took place in 1623, on board the Leyden, which was charting Western Australia's coastline at the time. Willemtgen Janszoon gave birth to a son.

The first book written referring to Australia was Samuel Purchas’ Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrims Contayning a History of the World, in Sea Voyages and Lande-Travells by Englishmen and Others … , published in 1625 (p.385).

That the first armed conflict between Europeans in Australian history occurred during the Batavia Mutiny in 1629 on the Abrolhos Islands off the Western Australia. A group known as the Defenders held out on West Wallabi Island, against the mutineers.

Wiebe Hayes, who led the Defenders resistance against the mutineers during the Batavia Mutiny, is arguably the first acknowledged “hero” in Australian history. A monument has been erected to him in Winschoten, his home town in The Netherlands.

The first murders of Europeans by other Europeans, the first mutiny and the first recorded rape all occurred in the course of the Batavia Mutiny between June and September 1629.

The first trials ( legal review)  in Australian history occurred as a result of the Batavia Mutiny in the Wallabi Group of the Abrolhos Islands in October 1629. This resulted in 7 men being hanged (after some had hands chopped off) on 2 October 1629, the first recorded executions in Australian history.

The Batavia Mutiny also saw in the first clergyman and the first European women setting foot on Australian soil.

The first report of the black swan was in 1636. Antonie Caen, sailing in the Banda, reported seeing “two stately birds as large as swans, which had orange yellow bills and were almost half a yard long” as they passed by Bernier Island just north of Shark Bay.

The first circumnavigation of Australia was by Abel Tasman, in the course of his two voyages to Australia in 1642 and 1644.

The first book about an Australia subject was Ongeluckige Voyagie van’t Schip Batavia, published in 1647. It was about the Batavia Mutiny and was a bestseller.

The oldest European structures in Australia were built in 1629, on the Abrolhos Islands, where they still exist. They include the “fort”, a defensive position consisting of two adjoining sections about ten metres by three metres, built with dry-stone walls about one metre high.

Australia’s oldest “prison”, which is still standing, can be found on Beacon Island in the Abrolhos Islands, again the result of the Batavia Mutiny in 1629. It is a shallow pit with a low wall of piled rocks. It was built to hold Jeronimus Cornelisz, the instigator of the Batavia Mutiny.

The first written description of an Australian marsupial was of the tammar wallaby, found on West Wallabi Island. Pelsaert recorded the description in his journal on 15 November 1629 as he departed the Abrolhos Islands following the Batavia Mutiny.

The first European residents in Australia were Wouter Loos and Jan Pelgrom de Bye. They were marooned on the west coast on 16 November 1629 as punishment for their part in the Batavia Mutiny.

The first English map to show any part of Australia was produced by Sir Robert Dudley in 1646, but was written in Latin.

The first English map, in English, showing part of Australia appeared in 1681.

The first visit by the French was on 4 August 1687, when the L’Oiseau, under the command of Admiral Duquesne-Guitton, sighted the west coast of “Terre de la Concorde” (New Holland) near the Swan River.

William Dampier was the first English explorer to visit Australia, in 1688 in the Cygnet. He explored King Sound and the Buccaneer Archipelago in the Kimberley region of north west Australia.

The first recording of any Indigenous language in Australia was the words “gurry, gurry”, of uncertain meaning. These words were recorded by Dampier during his visit in 1688.

The first Australian birds to be depicted by Europeans were the bridled tern, red-necked avocet, common noddy and the pied oystercatcher. The drawings were done by Dampier’s draughtsman during his second visit to Australia in the Roebuck in 1699. These subsequently appeared in Dampier’s Voyage to New Holland in 1703.

The first depiction of the black swan was an engraving published in Valentijn’s Oud en Nieuw Oost Indien in 1724-26,

Torres was the first to sail through Torres Strait in 1606 with his ships San Pedro and Los Tres Reyes. It was not until 1756, 150 years later, that the next voyage through the Strait took place, when the Dutch ship Rijder, captained by Gonzal, sailed through and back again, without realising they had done so.

The first water-colour drawings of Australia were done in 1696-7 by Victor Victorszoon who was on board the Geelvinck during Willem de Vlamingh's voyage to the Southland. Victor drew coastal profiles of seven parts of the Western Australian coast.

The first sailing boat built in Australia was the Sloepie in 1727. This was constructed by the survivors of the Zeewijck, wrecked on the Abrolhos Islands, from the wreckage of their ship. They managed to sail back to Java in it and thus save themselves.