• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

1605-1788 - Early European Contact

The first documented European to visit Australia was William Jansz, who had been sent by the Dutch East India Company in 1605. Dutch exploration attempts continued through 1644 but, by then, the Company had lost interest in the land to the south. The Aboriginal people were to be left in relative peace from the outside world for a while yet.

However, on April 1, 1770, Captain James Cook officially took possession of New Zealand for Great Britain and then anchored in Botany Bay on the April 29. "I now once more hoisted English Colours, and in the name of His Majesty King George the Third take possession of the whole Easterncoast ... after which we fired 3 Volleys of small Arms." Cook made two more voyages to the 'Great South Land' before he was killed in Hawaii. He made remarkably accurate maps, even though he did not have the use of a chronometer until his second voyage. He had made known to Europe more of the world than anyone else at that time.

The period of European discovery and settlement began on August 23, 1770, when Captain James Cook of the British Royal Navy took possession of the eastern coast of Australia in the name of George III. His party had spent four months in exploration along eastern Australia, from south to north. Unlike Dutch explorers, who deemed the land of doubtful value and preferred to focus on the rich Indies to the north, Cook and Joseph Banks of the Royal Society, who accompanied Cook for scientific observations, reported that the land was more fertile.

Exploring with Cook was the botanist, Joseph Banks. It was his report back to the British government that paved the way for the first penal colony. The few Australians he observed were reported to be "ill-armed, backward, and timid; most of them ran at the sight of a white face; and they had no goods or property to defend." Cook's fame in Britain helped to fix the attention of the British government on the area, which had some strategic significance in the European wars of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

In 1779 Joseph Banks recommended Botany Bay, named after the profusion of new plants found there, as a site for a penal settlement. A new outlet was needed for convicts to be transported overseas in continuance of British penal policy after the loss of the 13 North American colonies. In 1786 the British government decided to adopt Bank's recommendation.

Considerations other than the pressing need to reduce the convict population may have influenced Lord Sydney, the home minister, in his action. There was, for example, some expression of interest in supplies for the Royal Navy and in the prospects for trade in the future. The first fleet in the series that transported convicts arrived in January 1788, bringing 1,500 people, nearly half of them convicts. On January 26, Captain Arthur Phillip of the Royal Navy raised the British flag at Sydney Cove, which he decided was preferable to Botany Bay, slightly to the south, as a settlement site. The colony of New South Wales was formally proclaimed on February 7, 1788.