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Abel Tasman is important to Australia because he was the first European to discover Tasmania.

Abel Janszoon Tasman was a Dutch seafarer and explorer born in 1603 in the village of Lutjegast, Netherlands. Some time after Tasman joined the Dutch East India Company in 1634, he was ordered to explore the south-east waters in order to find a new sea trade route to Chile in South America. During this voyage, in 1642, he discovered a previously unknown island on his voyage past the "Great South Land", or "New Holland", as the Dutch called Australia. He named it "Antony Van Diemen's Land" in honour of the High Magistrate, or Governor-General of Batavia.

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12y ago

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