109-455: Beyond Capricorn: How Portuguese adventurers secretly discovered and mapped Australia and New Zealand 250 years before Captain Cook is a 2007 book by journalist Peter Trickett on the theory of Portuguese discovery of Australia . Although its thesis is similar to that advanced by Kenneth McIntyre in 1977, Lawrence Fitzgerald in 1984 and others, the publisher and some news reports presented it as being
218-620: A 1786 history of the Portuguese empire in Asia, Trickett argues Pacheco was killed at Napier Broome Bay , in a battle with Aborigines . Trickett claims the Carronade Island cannons originate from this voyage. Most of the book, however, focuses on the claimed voyage of a fleet of four ships commanded by Cristóvão de Mendonça , along the eastern and southern coasts of Australia then to New Zealand shortly afterwards, and another Portuguese voyage along
327-549: A Portuguese discovery of Australia and New Zealand. In the publicity campaign surrounding the release of the book, several media reports mentioned Trickett's claim that the Vallard map accurately showed Botany Bay to the point where Sydney Airport runways could be drawn on it. Trickett's Botany Bay is "Baia Neve" on the Vallard Map, and on p. 155 Trickett provides a sketch map of the bay with Sydney Airport runways drawn on it to
436-443: A Portuguese discovery of Australia: If the Portuguese did in fact map the northern, western and eastern coasts, this information was hidden from general knowledge ... The Dieppe maps had no claimed sources, no "discoverer" of the land shown ... and the iconography on the various maps is based on Sumatran animals and ethnography, not the reality of Australia. In this sense the maps did not really expand European knowledge of Australia,
545-454: A copy of or had seen a copy of the Dauphin Map, and by implication was using it to chart his way along the eastern Australian coast. McIntyre acknowledged in his book that Cook may have been told this by the lookout or boat crew, but added it was a "peculiar remark to make." Reference to this remained in subsequent editions of The Secret Discovery of Australia. In 1997, Ray Parkin edited
654-560: A definitive account of Cook's voyage of 1768–1771, transcribing the Endeavour's original log, Cook's Journal and accounts by other members of the crew. Parkin transcribed the relevant Journal entry as "...anchored in 4 fathom about a mile from the shore and then made a signal for the boats to come onboard, after which I went myself and buoy’d the channel which I found very narrow and the harbour much smaller than I had been told but very convenient for our purpose." The log for 14 June also mentions
763-518: A horse, representing Europe, a camel , to represent Asia , a lion , for Africa , and another animal that resembles a kangaroo , to represent a fourth continent. The latter creature features a marsupial pouch containing two offspring, and the characteristically bent hind legs of a kangaroo or another member of the macropod family . However, as macropods (including the dusky pademelon , agile wallaby , and black dorcopsis ) are found in New Guinea and
872-566: A lot of bunkers around Botany Bay. The bunkers were built by the military during World War II and still remain. Botany Bay has a diverse marine population , and the area around its entrance is a popular area for scuba diving . In 2008, the Botany Bay Watch Project began with volunteers assisting to monitor and protect the Bay Catchment and its unique marine life. The world's largest population of weedy sea dragon ever surveyed
981-588: A map of the world that would take account of the new geographical information obtained during the Age of Discoveries. The Dieppe world maps reflected the state of geographical knowledge of their time, both actual and theoretical. Accordingly, Java Major, or Jave la Grande, was shown as a promontory of the undiscovered Antarctic continent of Terra Australis . King argues that Jave la Grande on the Dieppe maps represents one of Marco Polo's pair of Javas (Major or Minor), misplaced far to
1090-442: A new theory on the discovery of Australia. Historical scholars, including Flinders University Associate Professor Bill Richardson, generally reject the premise on which the book is based, pointing out that only circumstantial evidence has been presented which supports the theory. The book has been translated into Portuguese. On 8 May 2008 the colloquium of specialists in Portuguese maritime history, "Os Portugueses na Austrália",
1199-487: A public exchange of opinion with W. A. R. Richardson. McIntyre's own theory about distortion of the maps and the calculations used to correct the maps has also been challenged. Both Lawrence Fitzgerald and Peter Trickett argue Jave la Grande is based on Portuguese sea charts , now lost, which the mapmakers of Dieppe misaligned. Both these writers try to compare the coastal features of Jave la Grande with modern Australia's, by realigning them. In 1994, McIntyre suggested that
SECTION 10
#17328547209381308-399: A result of Makassan contact with Australia . Ian S McIntosh's view is also that the coins were "probably introduced by sailors from Makassar... in the first wave of trepanging and exploration in the 1780s." Possibly because of the degree of conjecture involved in the theory of Portuguese discovery of Australia, there have been a number of critics. Matthew Flinders cast a sceptical eye over
1417-463: A second, parallel, runway. The first container terminal at Port Botany, east of the airport, was completed during the 1970s and is the largest container terminal in Sydney. A second container terminal was completed during the 1980s and bulk liquid storage facilities are located on the northern and southern edge of the bay. A third container terminal was completed in 2011. The land around the headlands of
1526-787: A small island in Napier Broome Bay, on the Kimberly coast of Western Australia . Since the guns were erroneously thought to be carronades , the small island was named Carronade Island . Kenneth McIntyre believed the cannons gave weight to the theory of Portuguese discovery of Australia. However, scientists at the Western Australian Museum in Fremantle made a detailed analysis of the weapons, and determined that they are swivel guns , and almost certainly of late 18th-century Makassan , rather than European, origin. The claim that one of
1635-619: A stone blockhouse and defensive wall while wintering on a voyage of discovery down Australia's east coast. Since McIntyre advanced his theory in 1977, significant research on the site has been conducted by Michael Pearson, former Historian for the NSW Parks and Wildlife Service . Pearson identified the Bittangabee Bay ruins as having been built as a store house by the Imlay brothers, early European inhabitants, who had whaling and pastoral interests in
1744-463: A subsequent article, he argues that the Dieppe mapmakers identified Java Major ( Jave la Grande ) or, in the case of Guillaume Brouscon Locach ( Terre de lucac ), with Oronce Fine 's Regio Patalis . 15th century 16th century Botany Bay Botany Bay ( Dharawal : Kamay ) is an open oceanic embayment, located in Sydney , New South Wales , Australia, 13 km (8 mi) south of
1853-595: A theory, one solution is to alter it." In an article in The Globe in 2009, Robert J. King refers to Beyond Capricorn , arguing that Jave la Grande is a theoretical construction, an artifact of 16th century cosmography. He points out that the geographers and map makers of the Renaissance struggled to bridge the gap from the world view inherited from Graeco-Roman antiquity, as set out in Claudius Ptolemy 's Geography , and
1962-404: A total of sixty might be borrowings from either Portuguese or Latin. The most convincing is the word for 'turtle' in various Pilbara languages including Ngarluma, Karierra, Ngarla, Yinjibarndi, and Nyamal, which is "tartaruga" or "thartaruga" – the former being identical to the Portuguese word for this animal. Such borrowings must presumably date to the early Portuguese interception of
2071-555: Is at least partly based on Portuguese sources that no longer exist. McIntyre attributed discrepancies between the Jave la Grande coastline and Australia's to the difficulties of accurately recording positions without a reliable method of determining longitude , and the techniques used to convert maps to different projections . In the late 1970s, mathematician Ian McKiggan developed his theory of exponential longitude error theory to explain discrepancies, although he modified this position after
2180-406: Is most striking, might have been seen by the Portuguese themselves, before the year 1540, in their voyages to, and from, India". In the last chapter of The Secret Discovery of Australia, Kenneth McIntyre threw down a challenge, stating: "Every critic who seeks to deny the Portuguese discovery of Australia is faced with the problem of providing an alternative theory to explain away the existence of
2289-494: The Duyfken who is generally considered to be the first European discoverer. While lacking generally accepted evidence, this theory is based on the following: Precedence for earliest non-Aboriginal visits to Australia has also been claimed for China ( Admiral Zheng ), France , Spain , and even Phoenicia , also all without generally accepted evidence. Although Scotsman Alexander Dalrymple wrote on this topic in 1786, it
SECTION 20
#17328547209382398-489: The Bismarck Archipelago , this may have no relevance to a possible Portuguese discovery of Australia. Another explanation is that the animal is based on a North American opossum . On 11 June 1770, James Cook's Endeavour struck a coral reef (now known as Endeavour Reef ) off the coast of what is now Queensland . It was a potentially catastrophic event and the ship immediately began to take water. However, over
2507-553: The Caltex Fuel Terminal , sewer treatment, and historical sand mining facilities. On the southern side of the bay a section of water has been fenced off under the authority of the NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service at Towra Point for environmental conservation purposes. The western shores of the bay feature many popular swimming beaches including Lady Robinsons Beach and are highly urbanised. There are also
2616-529: The Geelong Keys , and other things of that sort, are not part of the proof that the Portuguese discovered Australia. It is the other way around. The Dieppe maps prove (sic) that the Portuguese discovered Australia, and this throws a fierce bright light on our mysteries such as the Mahogany Ship". Later writers on the same topic take the same approach of concentrating primarily on "Jave la Grande" as it appears in
2725-584: The Portuguese were the first Europeans to discover Australia, between 1519 and 1523, well before the first recognised landfall of Europeans in Australia in 1606 by Willem Janszoon . According to Trickett, a 1520 expedition searching for gold and led by Diogo Pacheco (a relative of Duarte Pacheco ), may have been the first Europeans to sight Australia, in the present-day Kimberley region of Western Australia . Using an account from João de Barros 's Décadas da Ásia ,
2834-537: The Sunda archipelago beyond Java collected from native informants by the Portuguese. In 1895, George Collingridge produced his The Discovery of Australia , an attempt to trace all European efforts to find the Great Southern Land to the time of Cook , and also introducing his interpretation of the theory of Portuguese visitation of Australia, using the Dieppe maps. Fluent in Portuguese and Spanish , Collingridge
2943-630: The Sydney central business district . Its source is the confluence of the Georges River at Taren Point and San Souci as well as the Cooks River at Kyeemagh , which flows 10 km (6 mi) to the east before meeting its mouth at the Tasman Sea , midpoint between the suburbs of La Perouse and Kurnell . The northern headland of the entrance to the bay from the Tasman Sea is Cape Banks, and, on
3052-589: The Western Australian coast, as far south as the southwest tip of Australia. Trickett claims that the French Vallard maps were composed of several portolan charts that were incorrectly assembled from now lost Portuguese charts. Trickett adjusts parts of the Vallard maps by rotating them 90 degrees, giving what he claims is a remarkably accurate depiction of Australia's eastern, southern, and western coasts. Trickett goes through almost every written location on
3161-410: The "Great Java" of the Dieppe maps in A Voyage to Terra Australis, published in 1814, and concluded: "it should appear to have been partly formed from vague information, collected, probably, by the early Portuguese navigators, from the eastern nations; and that conjecture has done the rest. It may, at the same time, be admitted, that a part of the west and north-west coasts, where the coincidence of form
3270-719: The 1780s, while five with Arabic inscriptions were identified as being from the Kilwa Sultanate of east Africa . The coins are now held by the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. In 2018 another coin, also thought to be from Kilwa, was found on a beach on Elcho Island , another of the Wessel Islands, by archaeologist and member of the Past Masters group, Mike Hermes. Hermes speculated that this may indicate trade between indigenous Australians and Kilwa, or that they coins had arrived as
3379-628: The 1970s and 1980s, linguist Carl Georg von Brandenstein , approaching the theory from another perspective, claimed that 60 words used by Aboriginal people of the Australian north-west had Portuguese origins. According to Peter Mühlhäusler of the University of Adelaide : Von Brandenstein discusses a number of words in Pilbara [Aboriginal Australian] languages which show some resemblances with Portuguese (and Latin) words, and concludes that perhaps fifteen out of
Beyond Capricorn - Misplaced Pages Continue
3488-443: The 19th century. The western shore of Botany Bay remained in its virgin state for almost fifty years after the initial settlement of Sydney Town . Land access to the area was difficult until a route from the west was established via Canterbury . As this route developed it became known as Illawarra Road, which is still one of the main access routes to the south-eastern suburbs of Sydney. The land nearer to this crossing of Cooks River
3597-431: The Australian coastline before 1606. Advocates of the Portuguese discovery theory endeavour to explain away this embarrassing lack of direct supporting evidence as being due to two factors: the Portuguese official secrets policy, which must have been applied with a degree of efficiency that is hard to credit, and the 1755 Lisbon earthquake which, they claim, must have destroyed all the relevant archival material. He dismisses
3706-651: The Australian penal settlements. Archaeological evidence from the shores of Botany Bay has yielded evidence of an Aboriginal settlement dating back 5,000 years. The Aboriginal people of Sydney were the Eora , the Dharawal and the Dharug people who comprised at least 28 known clans with traditional boundaries. The clans of the Botany Bay area were the Gweagal who occupied the south shore and
3815-426: The Dieppe cartographers, like Mercator’s southern continent with its promontory of Beach (Locach), were the product not of actual discovery by French or Portuguese navigators but of imaginative extrapolation from a few mis-identified or misplaced coasts in the southern hemisphere. Following Magellan’s expedition of 1519-1522, mis-identification of Marco Polo 's Java Minor ( Sumatra ) with the island of Madura allowed
3924-605: The Dieppe maps reflects 16th-century cosmography. In 2010, King received the Australasian Hydrographic Society 's Literary Achievement Award for 2010 in recognition of his work on the origins of the Dieppe Maps. In an article published in 2022, based on a presentation made to an international workshop at the Biblioteca Nacional, Lisbon, King said that there was no evidence in Portuguese records and charts of
4033-492: The Dieppe maps represented a blending of the latest knowledge circulating in Europe with older visions of world geography deriving from Ptolemy and mediaeval cartographers and explorers such as Marco Polo . Renaissance mapmakers such as those based in Dieppe relied heavily on each other's work, as well as on maps from previous generations, and thus their maps represented a mixture of old and new information often coexisting uneasily in
4142-403: The Dieppe maps, including Fitzgerald, McKiggan and most recently, Peter Trickett. Critics of the theory of Portuguese discovery of Australia, including A. Ariel, M. Pearson, W. A. R. Richardson, Gayle K. Brunelle and Robert J. King also concentrate on the "Jave la Grande" landmass of the Dieppe maps (see below). W. A. R. Richardson argues that Jave la Grande as it appears on the Dieppe world maps
4251-414: The Dieppe maps, the insertion in them of an Isle des Géants in the southern Indian Ocean , and of Catigara on the west coast of South America , and in their later versions the depiction of a fictitious coastline of a southern continent with numerous bays and rivers, showed the slight reliance to be placed on them with respect to outlying parts of the world and the influence still exercised on their makers by
4360-570: The Dieppe maps. If the Dauphin is not the record of real exploration, then what is it?" By far the most prolific writer on this theory, and also its most consistent critic, has been Flinders University Associate Professor W.A.R. (Bill) Richardson, who has written 20 articles relating to the topic since 1983. Richardson, an academic fluent in Portuguese and Spanish , first approached the Dieppe maps in an effort to prove they did relate to Portuguese discovery of Australia. His criticisms are therefore all
4469-527: The Dieppe school of cartographers flourished) were also the period in which French trade with the New World was at its 16th-century height, in terms of the North Atlantic fish trade, the fur trade, and, most important for the cartographers, the rivalry with the Portuguese for control of the coasts of Brazil and the supplies of lucrative brazilwood . The bright red dye produced from brazilwood replaced woad as
Beyond Capricorn - Misplaced Pages Continue
4578-561: The Eden area. The local Protector of Aborigines , George Augustus Robinson , wrote about the commencement of the building in July 1844. The building was left unfinished at the time of the death of two of the three brothers in 1846 and 1847. Other visitors and writers, including Lawrence Fitzgerald, have been unable to find the 15?4 date. Writing in Beyond Capricorn in 2007, Peter Trickett suggests
4687-593: The Gallery suggested might be a kangaroo . Martin Woods of the National Library of Australia commented: "The likeness of the animal to a kangaroo or wallaby is clear enough, but then it could be another animal in south-east Asia, like any number of deer species.... For now, unfortunately the appearance of a long-eared big-footed animal in a manuscript doesn't really add much." Peter Pridmore of La Trobe University has suggested
4796-610: The Gameygal on the north shore. It is possible that the Bidjigal clan lived between the Cooks River and the Georges River, but the evidence for this is unclear. Botany Bay is named Kamay in the Dharawal language . Lieutenant James Cook first landed at Kurnell , on the southern banks of Botany Bay, in what is now Silver Beach , on Sunday 29 April 1770, when navigating his way up
4905-456: The Mahogany Ship suggests that the eyewitness accounts actually relate to more than one shipwreck in the area. Johns concludes these wrecks were of early 19th-century Australian construction and are unrelated to Portuguese maritime activity. In 1847, at Limeburners Point, near Geelong , Victoria , Charles La Trobe , a keen amateur geologist, was examining shells and other marine deposits revealed by excavations associated with lime production in
5014-474: The Pilbara coast, and indicate that the Portuguese did communicate with the Aboriginal people of the Pilbara coast. Again, however there is no evidence that the contacts were intensive or extensive enough to give rise to any contact language. Von Brandenstein also claimed the Portuguese had established a "secret colony ... and cut a road as far as the present day town of Broome " and that "stone housing in
5123-518: The Vallard maps, giving an English translation and explaining where he believes the place is located. He also mentions the Mahogany Ship , the ruins at Bittangabee Bay on the south coast of New South Wales , various Aboriginal legends and alleged linguistic similarities, and various artefacts found in Queensland and New Zealand which he claims pre-date known European exploration, as further evidence of
5232-444: The area. A worker showed him a set of five keys he claimed to have found the day before. La Trobe concluded that the keys had been dropped onto what had been the beach around 100–150 years before. Kenneth McIntyre hypothesised they were dropped in 1522 by Mendonça or one of his sailors. Since the keys have been lost, however, their origin cannot be verified. A more likely explanation is that the "much decayed" keys were dropped by one of
5341-432: The argument Richardson advances against the theory relates to methodology. Richardson argues that McIntyre's practice of re-drawing sections of maps in his book was misleading because, in an effort to clarify, he actually omitted crucial features and names that did not support the Portuguese discovery theory. Richardson's own view is that a study of placenames on "Jave La Grande" identifies it as unmistakably connected to
5450-574: The basis for his book, without significant reference to any of the other existing Dieppe maps, has been questioned. The Vallard map of 1547 is not the first of the Dieppe maps, and Richardson argues Trickett incorrectly "assumes the unknown Vallard cartographer had access to much more information" because it contains more place names. Richardson adds that "the hybrid inscriptions [of the Vallard] are in an astonishing jumble of languages", many of which Trickett misreads or misinterprets; suggesting, for example, that
5559-625: The basis of the world maps of Gerardus Mercator and the Dieppe cartographers. With them, the Regio Patalis , shown as a promontory of the Terra Australis on Fine’s map, was identified with Marco Polo's Java Major, or Locach (also known as Beach). The ysles de magna and ye. de saill , shown off the east coast of J ave la Grande on the Harleian map, which appear as I. de Mague and I. de Sally on André Thevet ’s Quarte Partie du Monde , represent
SECTION 50
#17328547209385668-469: The bay is protected by the NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service as Kamay Botany Bay National Park . On the northern side of the mouth of the bay is the historic site of La Perouse, and to the south is Kurnell. Despite its relative isolation, the southern shore of the bay is dominated by an unusual mixture of pristine national park and heavy industrial use that includes Sydney Desalination Plant ,
5777-484: The bay on 18 January 1788. First contact was made with the local Indigenous people , the Eora , who seemed curious but suspicious of the newcomers. Two days later the remaining ships of the First Fleet arrived to found the planned penal colony . The land was quickly ruled unsuitable for settlement as there was insufficient fresh water; Phillip also believed the swampy foreshores would render any colony unhealthy as
5886-455: The bay was open and unprotected, the water too shallow to allow the ships to anchor close to the shore, and the soil was poor. The area was studded with enormously strong trees. When the convicts tried to cut them down, their tools broke and the tree trunks had to be blasted out of the ground with gunpowder. The primitive huts built for the officers and officials quickly collapsed in rainstorms. Crucially, Phillip worried that his fledgling colony
5995-492: The bay, as do some port facilities. Kamay Botany Bay National Park is located on the northern and southern headlands of the bay. The area surrounding the bay is generally managed by Transport for NSW . The land adjacent to Botany Bay was settled for many thousands of years by the Tharawal and Eora peoples and their associated clans. On 29 April 1770, Botany Bay was the site of James Cook 's first landing of HMS Endeavour on
6104-464: The claim that Cristóvão de Mendonça sailed down the east coast of Australia as sheer speculation, based on voyages about which no details have survived. In the same way, the re-assembling of sections of the "Jave La Grande" coastline so that it fits the straitjacket of the real outline of Australia relies upon a second set of assumptions. He argues taking that approach, "Jave La Grande" could be re-assembled to look like anything. Another dimension of
6213-747: The coasts of southern Java and Indochina . Emeritus Professor Victor Prescott has claimed Richardson "brilliantly demolished the argument that Java la Grande show(s) the east coast of Australia." However, Australian historian Alan Frost has recently written that Richardson's argument that the east coast of Java la Grande was in fact the coast of Vietnam is "so speculative and convoluted as not to be credible". In 1984, criticism of The Secret Discovery of Australia also came from master mariner Captain A. Ariel, who argued McIntyre had made serious errors in his explanation and measurement of "erration" in longitude. Ariel concluded that McIntyre erred on "all navigational ... counts" and that The Secret Discovery of Australia
6322-468: The community of nations)". In 2013 the essays, opinions and discussions presented on the colloquium were collected in a book entitled "Portugueses na Austrália", published by Coimbra University Press. The title of the book refers to the sixteenth century Dieppe maps of France which in part show land in a continent extending south of the Tropic of Capricorn that is in the area of Australia. Trickett claims that
6431-642: The date McIntyre saw may be random pick marks in the stonework. Trickett accepts Pearson's work, but hypothesizes that the Imlays may have started their building on top of a ruined Portuguese structure, thus explaining the surrounding rocks and partly dressed stones. Trickett also suggests the Indigenous Australian name for the area may have Portuguese origins. In 1944, nine coins were found on Marchinbar Island by RAAF radar operator Maurie Isenberg. Four coins were identified as Dutch duits dating from 1690 to
6540-488: The discovery of a map by Manuel Godinho de Eredia , claiming it proved a Portuguese visit to North Western Australia, possibly dated to 1601. In fact, this map's origins are from 1630. On finally locating and examining Erédia's writings, Major realised the planned voyage to lands south of Sumba in Indonesia had never taken place. Major published a retraction in 1873, but his reputation was destroyed. Major's interpretation
6649-493: The early 16th century that their navigators discovered Australia. He said that the large southern land, called Jave la Grande , or Terre de Lucac , on the world maps of the Dieppe school of marine cartography, which proponents of an early Portuguese discovery adduced in support, could be explained by setting those maps in the context of the development of cosmographic theory and its cartographic expression from Henricus Martellus to Gerard Mercator, 1491-1569. The southern continent of
SECTION 60
#17328547209386758-431: The east Kimberley could not have been made without outside influence". However, according to Nicholas Thieberger , modern linguistic and archaeological research has not corroborated his arguments. Mühlhäusler agrees, stating that "von Brandenstein's evidence is quite unconvincing: his historical data is speculative – the colonisation being clandestine, there are no written records of it and his claims are not supported by
6867-509: The east coast of Australia on his ship, HMS Endeavour . Cook's landing marked the beginning of Britain 's interest in Australia and in the eventual colonisation of this new "southern continent". Initially the name Stingrays Harbour was used by Cook and other journal keepers on his expedition, for the stingrays they caught. That name was also recorded on an Admiralty chart. Cook's log for 6 May 1770 records "The great quantity of these sort of fish found in this place occasioned my giving it
6976-516: The guns displays a Portuguese "coat of arms" is incorrect. In January 2012, a swivel gun found two years before at Dundee Beach near Darwin was widely reported by web news sources and the Australian press to be of Portuguese origin. However, later analysis by the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory indicated it was also of Southeast Asian origin. Further analysis suggests that
7085-463: The island Illa do Aljofar may have Polynesian origins. Trickett also reproduces a number of sketch maps, comparing Terra Java/ Jave La Grande of the A3-sized pages of the Vallard atlas with modern detailed knowledge of the Australian coast, but without showing any scale. Richardson argues this practice misleads the reader, and he previously argued Kenneth McIntyre's comparative sketches also misled in
7194-599: The islands inside the bay as Bare Island and a large mudflat, drying out at low tide, which he believed appeared as a large island to the Portuguese explorers. The seven islands outside the bay he identifies as a misplacing of the Five Islands Group (50 km away near Wollongong ); a representation of the North Head of Sydney Harbour and a representation of Cape Three Points (now Boudi , 70 km away near Broken Bay ). Following its initial reception online and in
7303-512: The land mass of Australia, after his extensive navigation of New Zealand. Later the British planned Botany Bay as the site for a penal colony . Out of these plans came the first European habitation of Australia at Sydney Cove . Although the penal settlement was almost immediately shifted to Sydney Cove, for some time in Britain transportation to "Botany Bay" was a metonym for transportation to any of
7412-595: The late 1970s and early 1980s by other writers, including Ian McKiggan and Lawrence Fitzgerald also added credence to the theory of Portuguese discovery of Australia. In 1994, McIntyre expressed pleasure that his theory was gaining acceptance in Australia: "It is gradually seeping through. The important thing is that ... it has been on the school syllabus, and therefore students have ... read about it. They in due course become teachers and ... they will then tell their students and so on". The central plank of
7521-701: The lead in the gun most closely resembles that from Andalusia in Spain, although it may have been recycled in Indonesia . The museum holds seven guns of Southeast Asian manufacture in its collection. Another swivel gun of Southeast Asian manufacture, found in Darwin in 1908, is held by the Museum of South Australia. In 2014, it was revealed that sand inside the Dundee beach gun was dated to 1750. Kenneth McIntyre first suggested in 1977 that
7630-407: The legendary Isles of Gold . However, Mendonça and other Portuguese sailors are then described as assisting with the construction of a fort at Pedir ( Sumatra ) and Barros does not mention the expedition again. McIntyre nominated Cristóvão de Mendonça as the commander of a voyage to Australia c. 1521–1524, one he argued had to be kept secret because of the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas , which divided
7739-424: The limeburners shortly before being found, as the layer of dirt and shells they were found below was dated as around 2300–2800 years old, making La Trobe's dating implausible. According to geologist Edmund Gill , and engineer and historian Peter Alsop , the error by La Trobe is quite understandable, given that in 1847 most Europeans thought the world was only 6000 years old. In 1916, two bronze cannon were found on
7848-449: The linguistic evidence he cites." In contemporary Australia, reports of textual and cartographic evidence, of varying significance, and occasionally artifacts are sometimes cited as likely to "rewrite" Australian History because they suggest a foreign presence in Australia. In January 2014, a New York Gallery listed a sixteenth-century Portuguese manuscript for sale, one page of which contained marginalia of an unidentified animal that
7957-582: The marginalia depicts an aardvark . Other texts originating from the same era represent a land to the south of New Guinea , with a variety of flora and fauna. Part of a map in Cornelis de Jode 's 1593 atlas Speculum Orbis Terrae depicts New Guinea and a hypothetical land to the south inhabited by dragons . Kenneth McIntyre suggested that although Cornelis de Jode was Dutch , the title page of Speculum Orbis Terrae may provide evidence of early Portuguese knowledge of Australia. The page depicts four animals:
8066-483: The more interesting. He suggests that he quickly realised that there was no connection between the Dieppe maps and modern Australia's coastline: The case for an early Portuguese discovery of Australia rests entirely on imagined resemblances between the "continent" of Jave La Grande on the Dieppe maps and Australia. There are no surviving Portuguese 16th-century charts showing any trace of land in that area, and there are no records whatsoever of any voyage along any part of
8175-430: The name of Stingrays Harbour". However, in the journal prepared later from his log, Cook wrote instead: (sic) "The great quantity of plants Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander found in this place occasioned my giving it the name of Botanist Botany Bay". Cape Banks is named after Joseph Banks and Cape Solander after Daniel Solander . Eighteen years later, Governor Arthur Phillip sailed the armed tender HMS Supply into
8284-452: The next four days the ship managed to limp along, searching for safety. In 1976, McIntyre suggested that Cook had been able to find a large harbour ( Cooktown harbour ) because he had access to a copy of one of the Dieppe maps. McIntyre felt Cook's comment in his Journal, which at the 1982 Mahogany ship Symposium he cited as "this harbour will do excellently for our purposes, although it's not as large as I had been told", indicated he carried
8393-886: The next twenty years. Australian history school textbooks also reflect the evolution of acceptance of his theories. The support of Helen Wallis, Curator of Maps at the British Library during her visits to Australia in the 1980s seemed to add academic weight to McIntyre's theory. In 1987, the Australian Minister for Science, Barry Jones , launching the Second Mahogany Ship Symposium in Warrnambool , said "I read Kenneth McIntyre's important book ... as soon as it appeared in 1977. I found its central argument ... persuasive, if not conclusive." The appearance of variant but essentially supporting theories in
8502-424: The old writers". He concluded: "This should surely make us hesitate to base so important assumption as that of a discovery of Australia in the sixteenth century on their unsupported testimony". The development of the theory of Portuguese discovery of Australia owes much to Melbourne lawyer Kenneth McIntyre 's 1977 book, The Secret Discovery of Australia; Portuguese ventures 200 years before Cook . McIntyre's book
8611-454: The popular press, a number of criticisms of the book have appeared, by scholars including Associate Professor (Spanish and Portuguese) W.A.R. "Bill" Richardson. Trickett repeatedly criticises "orthodox academics" for ignoring or denigrating the theory of Portuguese discovery of Australia , while acknowledging that the book is "not written as an academic treatise—it is aimed at a wider audience". Trickett's approach of using only one Dieppe map as
8720-425: The portrayal of "Jave La Grande" having no greater status that any other conjectural portrayal of Terra Australis . In a recent interpretation of the Dieppe maps, Professor Gayle K. Brunelle of California State University, Fullerton argued that the Dieppe school of cartographers should be seen as acting as propagandists for French geographic knowledge and territorial claims. The decades from about 1535 to 1562 (when
8829-638: The primary dyestuff in the cloth industry in France and the Low Countries. The Dieppe cartographers used the skills and geographic knowledge of Portuguese mariners, pilots and geographers working in France to produce maps meant to emphasize French interests in and dominion over territory in the New World that the Portuguese also claimed, both in Newfoundland and in Brazil. Brunelle noted that, in design and decorative style
8938-548: The real Wilsons Promontory." Commenting in 1985 on other writers who compared Australia's coast with the Dieppe Maps, Richardson wrote, "it is difficult not to express admiration for the extreme ingenuity exercised in their endeavours to 'correct' the Jave La Grande outline in order to compel it to conform more closely to the known outline of Australia." Writing in 2007 for an Australian mapmaking journal, he suggested Trickett has also taken an approach of "if evidence does not suit
9047-450: The same map. Academic debate about the Dieppe maps continues into the twenty-first century. In 2019, Professor Brian Lees and Associate Professor Shawn Laffan presented a paper arguing the Jean Rotz 1542 world map is a good "first approximation" of the Australian continent. Cartographic historian Robert J. King has also written extensively on the subject, arguing that Jave la Grande on
9156-408: The same scale. He acknowledges the bay is "too large to be Botany Bay in relation to the scale of the Vallard map as a whole". He explains that sixteenth century map-makers "enlarge(d) … important sections of their charts," such as this bay, hence its exaggerated size. The Vallard map original also shows two large islands in the bay and seven islands just outside the mouth of the bay. Trickett identified
9265-551: The same way. The issues in providing such sketch maps for comparison purposes are highlighted in Trickett's sketch map copy of Illa Do Magna , which he compares to a rough sketch map of New Zealand's North Island. Richardson adds that the lack of scale used in Beyond Capricorn' s sketch maps causes the reader "to fail to realise that [Trickett's adjusted] 'Wilsons Promontory' is some 17 degrees, nearly 2,000 kilometres, south of
9374-442: The ship's boats sounding the way for the crippled Endeavour . Nevertheless, the influence of McIntyre's interpretation can still be seen in contemporary Australian school curriculum materials. According to McIntyre, the remains of one of Cristóvão de Mendonça 's caravels was discovered in 1836 by a group of shipwrecked whalers while they were walking along the sand dunes to the nearest settlement, Port Fairy . The men came across
9483-457: The south of its actual location and attached to a greatly enlarged Terra Australis; it does not represent Australia, discovered by unknown Portuguese voyagers. Theory of Portuguese discovery of Australia The theory of Portuguese discovery of Australia claims that early Portuguese navigators were the first Europeans to sight Australia between 1521 and 1524, well before the arrival of Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon in 1606 on board
9592-480: The southern coast of Java Major (Java) to remain undefined, despite the survivors of Magellan’s expedition having made their return voyage to Spain by the south of Java (Java Major) rather than through the strait between Madura and Java as was understood from Antonio Pigafetta 's account of the voyage. This permitted cartographers to identify Java Major as a promontory of Terra Australis and with Marco Polo’s Locach . An adaptation of Oronce Fine ’s map of 1531 formed
9701-429: The southern side, the outer headland is Cape Solander , and the inner headland is Sutherland Point . The total catchment area of the bay is approximately 55 km (21 sq mi). Despite its relative shallowness, the bay now serves as greater metropolitan Sydney's main cargo seaport , located at Port Botany , with facilities managed by Sydney Ports Corporation . Two runways of Sydney Airport extend into
9810-471: The stone ruins at Bittangabee Bay , in Beowa National Park near Eden on the south coast of New South Wales , were of Portuguese origin. The ruins are the foundations of a building, surrounded by stone rubble that McIntyre argued may have once formed a defensive wall. McIntyre also identified the date 15?4 carved into a stone. McIntyre hypothesized the crew of a Portuguese caravel may have built
9919-455: The theory of Portuguese discovery of Australia suggests the continent called Jave la Grande , which uniquely appears on a series of 16th-century French world maps, the Dieppe school of maps , represents Australia. Speaking in 1982, Kenneth McIntyre described the Dieppe maps as "the only evidence of Portuguese discovery of Eastern Australia". He stressed this to point out "that the Mahogany Ship , and
10028-647: The theory. In 1899 he noted that the argument for the coasts of Australia having been reached early in the 16th century rested almost entirely on the supposition that at that time, "a certain unknown map-maker drew a large land, with indications of definite knowledge of its coasts, in the quarter of the globe in which Australia is placed". He pointed out that "a difficulty arises from the necessity of supposing at least two separate voyages of discovery, one on each coast, though absolutely no record of any such exists". He added: "The difficulty, of course, has been to account for this map in any other way". The delineation of Japan in
10137-523: The two islands discovered by Magellan during his voyage across the Pacific in 1522, which he called the Desventuradas , or Islas Infortunatos (Unfortunate Isles). The Jave la Grande and Terre de Lucac of the Dieppe maps represented Marco Polo's Java Major and Locach, displaced by the map-makers who misconstrued the information on Southeast Asia and America brought back by Portuguese and Spanish navigators. In
10246-417: The undiscovered world into two-halves for Portugal and Spain . Barros and other Portuguese sources do not mention a discovery of land that could be Australia, but McIntyre conjectured this was because original documents were lost in the 1755 Lisbon earthquake , or the official policy of silence. Most proponents of the theory of Portuguese discovery of Australia have supported McIntyre's hypothesis that it
10355-465: The west coast. Trickett uses one of the Dieppe maps in the highly decorated "Vallard" atlas of 1547 to demonstrate this. Trickett claims that Mendonça travelled down the east coast of Australia, sailing into Botany Bay and then around Wilsons Promontory to Kangaroo Island , before returning to Portuguese-controlled Malacca via the North Island of New Zealand . He also claims the Portuguese charted
10464-438: The wreck of a ship made of wood that appeared to be mahogany . Between 1836 and 1880, 40 people recorded that they had seen an "ancient" or "Spanish" wreck. Whatever it was, the wreck has not been seen since 1880, despite extensive searches in recent times. McIntyre's accuracy in transcribing original documents to support his argument has been criticized by some recent writers. Murray Johns' 2005 survey of 19th-century accounts of
10573-514: The writings of Pedro Nunes supported his interpretation of the distortion that occurred on the Dieppe Maps. Helen Wallis , Keeper of Maps at the British Museum , referred in 1988 to the interpretation "explosion" on the subject of the Dieppe maps. She herself argued the case for discovery of Australia by "a local Portuguese voyage otherwise unknown" seventy years before the Dutch , a chart of which
10682-449: Was Richard Henry Major , Keeper of Maps at the British Museum , who in 1859 first made significant efforts to prove the Portuguese visited Australia before the Dutch . A group of mid-16th-century French maps, the Dieppe maps, formed his main evidence. However, there is widespread agreement today that his approach to historical research was flawed and his claims often exaggerated. Writing in an academic journal in 1861, Major announced
10791-676: Was "presumably" brought back to Dieppe by the survivors of a French voyage to Sumatra led by Jean Parmentier in 1529–30. Cristóvão de Mendonça is known from a small number of Portuguese sources, notably the famous Portuguese historian João de Barros in Décadas da Ásia (Decades of Asia), a history of the growth of the Portuguese Empire in India and Asia, published between 1552–1615. Mendonça appears in Barros' account with instructions to search for
10900-499: Was Mendonça who sailed down the eastern Australian coast and provided charts which found their way onto the Dieppe maps, to be included as "Jave la Grande" in the 1540, 1550s and 1560s. McIntyre claimed the maps indicated Mendonça went as far south as Port Fairy , Victoria ; Fitzgerald claims they show he went as far as Tasmania ; Trickett states as far as Spencer Gulf in South Australia , and New Zealand's North Island . In
11009-418: Was a "monumental piece of misinterpretation." French cartographic historian Sarah Toulouse concluded, in 1998, that it seemed most reasonable to see in la Grande Jave , in the present state of the available sources, the pure product of imagination of a Norman cartographer who formed a school with his compatriots. In 2005, historian Michael Pearson made the following comment on the Dieppe maps as evidence of
11118-409: Was cleared and settled quite early in the infancy of the new colony. Sydney Airport , Australia's busiest airport, sits on the northwestern side of Botany Bay. Some of its runways go out into the bay. After World War II the mouth of the Cooks River was moved two kilometres west to make way for the airport extension. Land was reclaimed from the bay to extend its first north–south runway and to build
11227-475: Was examined critically by the Portuguese historian Joaquim Pedro de Oliveira Martins , who concluded that neither the patalie regiã on the 1521 world map of Antoine de La Sale nor the Jave la Grande on the Dieppe Maps was evidence of Australia having been visited by Portuguese visitors in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, but that this feature had found its way on to the maps from descriptions of islands of
11336-482: Was exposed to attack from Aboriginal peoples or foreign powers. Although his initial instructions were to establish the colony at Botany Bay, he was authorised to establish the colony elsewhere if necessary. As such, Phillip decided instead to move to the excellent natural harbour of Port Jackson to the north. On the morning of 24 January, the French exploratory expedition of Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse
11445-612: Was held at the Science Museum of the University of Coimbra in Portugal, to discuss Beyond Capricorn . The consensus of the experts was expressed by the chair of the colloquium, Francisco Domingues, who said: "the Portuguese went to Australia but Australia did not at all interest them", and "the Portuguese went to Australia; the English discovered it (in the sense of having given to it a place in
11554-496: Was inspired by the publicity surrounding the arrival in Australia of copies of several Dieppe maps, which had been purchased by libraries in Melbourne , Adelaide and Sydney . Despite a number of errors regarding place names, and "untenable" theories to explain misplacement on the Dieppe maps, his book was a remarkable effort considering it was written at a time when many maps and documents were inaccessible and document photography
11663-418: Was reprinted in an abridged paperback edition in 1982 and again in 1987 and it was found on school history reading lists by the mid-1980s. According to Tony Disney, McIntyre's theory influenced a generation of history teachers in Australian schools. A TV documentary was made of the book in the 1980s by Michael Thornhill and McIntyre and the theory featured in many positive newspaper reviews and articles over
11772-618: Was seen outside Botany Bay. On 26 January, the Supply left the bay to move up to Port Jackson and anchor in Sydney Cove . On the afternoon of 26 January, the remaining ships of First Fleet arrived at Sydney Cove. In 1789, Captain John Hunter surveyed Botany Bay after returning from the Cape of Good Hope, trading for grain. The good supply of fresh water in the area led to the expansion of its population in
11881-460: Was still in its infancy. Collingridge's theory did not find public approval, however, and Professors G. Arnold Wood and Ernest Scott publicly criticised much of what he had written. Collingridge produced a shorter version of this book for use in New South Wales schools; The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea . It was not used. Professor Edward Heawood also provided early criticism of
#937062