australian history

Great South Land

IN 1605 A SATIRE of contemporary English society was anonymously published as The Discovery of a New World . It had, in fact, beenwritten by the moral philosopher Bishop John Hall, and concerned the adventures of one Marcus Britannicus, destined to spend thirty years among the inhabitants of Terra Australis Incognita . There, Britannicus found a world divided into four regions. The first was populated by gluttons, the second by fools, and the third by thieves. The final region, Shee-landt, was ruled by women. Within Shee-landt lay Double-sex Isle, peopled by hermaphrodites who wore a mixture of men and women's clothing and bore names like Peter-alice, and where those of a single sex were publicly displayed as monstrosities.

For Hall, the mysterious southern continent provided a convenient imaginary place to situate his fantastical yet pointed critique of seventeenth century England. Yet, as Miriam Estensen's Discovery: The Quest for the Great South Land ably demonstrates, European visions of the land at the bottom of the world dated from at least five centuries before the birth of Christ. The Greek geographer Ptolemy produced a map around 140 A.D. that showed a vast, irregular landmass which spanned the entire southern hemisphere and connected Asia and Africa. It was only in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, as Portuguese navigators first began to chart the lands and seas of Europe's 'New Worlds', that the southern continent began to appear on maps in its own right. In the Western imagination, it remained a site of marvels, full of gold and precious spices, until at least the late eighteenth century.

Estensen's history opens in 'a time before time' when dramatically 'Out of the dark ocean that sheeted the earth four billion years ago a ragged outcrop of rock erupted into a lifeless world'. This was 'the tawny continent of Australia'. It concludes with the voyage of James Cook in the Endeavour, and his arrival in 1770 on the eastern edge of the land he would name New South Wales. Estensen's interest lies in tracing the arduous voyages of the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch, the French and the English to 'discover' -- both literally and imaginatively -- the Great South Land.

This is a grand narrative of adventure and persistence. Estensen writes with lucidity and considerable elegance about the hardships on the small wooden vessels as they plunged through treacherous waters, and where illness and death were daily occurrences. Her story of these voyages is interwoven with the broader tapestry of European politics and commerce, and the competition between European nations for the resources and souls of the peoples of the non-European world. This was a time when navigational reports containing knowledge about unexplored territories were extremely valuable, and were locked away in archives. Cartographic espionage was rife; the possession of maps wielded power.

Who, then, discovered Australia? Estensen doesn't tackle this hoary old question directly, although she concludes there is no firm evidence of a Portuguese discovery of Australia despite tantalising speculations about the infamous Mahogany ship. For those looking for new perspectives or original research on European exploration, Discovery is not the book for you. It offers an uncluttered and measured synthesis of the available historical sources.

Still there is plenty in the standard accounts of sea exploration to fill the pages of Discovery with exciting tales. These include the Spanish expeditions of de Quiros and de Torres; Willem Jansz's 1606 voyage in the Duyfken, the first documented landing on the Australian continent; the shipwreck of the Batavia, crammed with 300 men, women and children and chests of silver coins, on the West Australian coast in 1628; and the exploits of the English buccaneer William Dampier. There are also some lesser known, but nonetheless intriguing, snippets. For instance, in 1623, off Western Australia, a Dutch woman gave birth to a boy aboard the Leijden, en route to the Indies. Named Seebaer van Nieuwellandt, or Seabirth of Newland, this is the first recorded birth of an European child in the vicinity of Australia.

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Kate Darian-Smith is Director of The Australian Centre at the University of Melbourne, where she also teaches in the Department of History.