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Did Captain Cook ‘discover’ Australia?
In October 2002 an archaeologist reported finding an object on
Fraser Island, off the coast of Queensland. The find seemed to
be a Portuguese cannon. If it was, it would probably have been
made in the 1500s. This would be a significant find!
Click to see the report.
1 What would this archaeological find, if genuine, suggest about
who ‘discovered’ Australia?
2 What meaning of ‘discover’ are we talking about here?
3 If someone had ‘discovered’ the east coast of Australia before
Cook, why might we not know about it?
A letter was written in response to this news (see below).
‘Cook missed the boat’
GREG BAKER, Belconnen
Canberra Sunday Times, 13 October 2002
CAPTAIN Cook may well be credited with discovering the east
coast of Australia in 1770 (CT, Oct 8), but we've known for at
least 25 years that the Portuguese mapped the east coast 200
years before Cook. See the 1977 book The Secret Discovery of
Australia: Portuguese ventures 200 years before Cook, by
Kenneth Gordon McIntyre.
4 The writer is definite: the Portuguese were there first. What
sort of evidence would you expect to find in McIntyre’s book to
justify this certainty by the letter-writer?
5 Here is one piece of evidence used by McIntyre. It is a map
drawn in 1550, and copied from an earlier map. People who
support the idea that the Portuguese discovered Australia use
this map as evidence. Is it a map of Australia? Discuss your
reactions.
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Click on the link here to see the map (From Australian
History Mysteries page 36).
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Here is an update of the finding at Fraser Island.
Click to see it.
6 What has happened to the evidence to support the Portuguese
‘claim’?
7 Do you think this should weaken the letter writer’s certainty?
The finding of the artefact and the reaction to it tell us that
the issue of who ‘discovered’ Australia is a ‘live’ one in
Australian history. There are, of course, many other ways of
looking at who ‘discovered’ Australia. To explore these, and to
see the sort of evidence that McIntyre used in his book, go to
Australian History Mysteries, unit 1: Who ‘discovered’
Australia? You may find the question very intriguing!
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