Great South Land: How Dutch Sailors Discovered New Holland and Left Australia to a British Pirate by Rob Mundle

Book Description

Secondhand. Very good condition. Minor wear to book corners and edges. Dust jacket is in only good condition with staining to the back cover. Dust jacket is now enclosed in a glossy protective cover. Interior and binding are still excellent.

For many, the colonial story of Australia starts with Captain Cook's discovery of the east coast in 1770, but it was some 164 years before his historic voyage that European mariners began their romance with the immensity of the Australian continent. Between 1606 and 1688, while the British had their hands full with the Gunpowder Plot and the English Civil War, it was highly skilled Dutch seafarers who, by design, chance or shipwreck, discovered and mapped the majority of the vast, unknown waters and land masses in the Indian and Southern Oceans.

Rob Mundle is back on the water with another sweeping and powerful account of Australian maritime history. It is the story of 17th-century European mariners, sailors, adventurers, and explorers who became transfixed by the idea of a Great South Land: 'Terra Australis Incognita'.

Rob takes you aboard the tiny ship, Duyfken, in 1606 when Dutch navigator and explorer, Willem Janszoon, and his 20-man crew became the first Europeans to discover Australia on the coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria. In the decades that followed, more Dutch mariners, like Hartog, Tasman, and Janszoon (for a second time), discovered and mapped the majority of the coast of what would become Australia. Yet, incredibly, the Dutch made no effort to lay claim to it or establish any settlements. This process began with British explorer and former pirate William Dampier on the west coast in 1688, and by the time Captain Cook arrived in 1770, all that remained was to chart the east coast and claim what the Dutch had discovered.