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Was Captain Cook the first man on Australia?

Updated: 8/19/2019
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No. Captain James Cook was not even the first Englishmanto land in Australia.

Apart from the Australian Aborigines, the first visitors were Asian people. They visited the northern coast regularly for hundreds of years before Europeans set foot on the continent, to collect sea-slugs (trepang), a valued delicacy in Asia.

Willem Jansz/Janszoon was a Dutchman seeking new trade routes and trade associates, who became the first recorded European to step foot on Australia on the western shore of Cape York Peninsula in 1606.

Then, in 1616, Dutch sea-captain Dirk Hartog sailed too far whilst trying out Henderik Brouwer's recently discovered route from the Cape of Good Hope to Batavia, via the Roaring Forties. Reaching the western coast of Australia, he landed at Cape Inscription on 25 October 1616. His is the first known record of a European visiting Western Australia's shores.

The first Englishman to visit Australia was William Dampier, in 1688.

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