So says the plinth on which a statue of Captain Cook stands in Hyde Park in Sydney.
I have always had a difficulty with the concept (initially drummed into me at school), that Captain Cook “discovered Australia”.

For a start, the Kooris that Cook saw, had been on the land for at least 40,000 years, so it is a very Eurocentric concept of discovery.

But what about the Dutch who came before Cook?
By 1644, the Dutch had comprehensively mapped the Northern, Southern and Western coasts of Australia and the oldest European structures in Australia are the makeshift forts built by the survivors of the Batavia wreck in 1629. The place was even marked on the maps as New Holland.

Some argue that Cook “discovered the East Coast”. but given that the other three coasts had already been mapped, finding the fourth is hardly an achievement. Far from exploring, it seems as if Cook knew exactly where he was going. As soon as he left New Zealand he took a bearing that led him almost exactly to the most southern part of the east coast.

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